Breakdown of Meillä ei ole tänään kiirettä.
olla
to be
me
we
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
tänään
today
kiire
hurry
Questions & Answers about Meillä ei ole tänään kiirettä.
Why is kiirettä in the partitive case instead of just being kiire?
In Finnish, when you say you don't have something, the thing you don't have must be in the partitive case. Because this is a negative ownership sentence (meillä ei ole), the basic word kiire (hurry) becomes kiirettä.
How do we get kiirettä from kiire?
For Finnish words that end in the letter -e (like kiire or huone), the partitive ending is always -tta or -ttä. We use -ttä here because of vowel harmony, since the word only contains the front vowels i and e.
The English translation says "we are not in a hurry", but the Finnish uses meillä ei ole ("we don't have"). Why?
Finnish doesn't use the verb "to be" for being in a hurry. Instead, Finns express this as having a hurry. Literally, this sentence translates to "At us is not today a hurry" (We don't have a hurry today).
Could I put tänään at the beginning or end of the sentence?
Yes! Finnish word order is quite flexible. Tänään meillä ei ole kiirettä and Meillä ei ole kiirettä tänään are also perfectly correct. Putting tänään right after the verb is just a very common and natural place for time words.
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