Breakdown of Onko pojalla ajokortti? Hänellä ei ole ajokorttia.
olla
to be
hän
he / she
poika
boy
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
ajokortti
driver's license
Questions & Answers about Onko pojalla ajokortti? Hänellä ei ole ajokorttia.
Why does the first sentence use ajokortti but the second sentence uses ajokorttia?
This is the main rule for negative possession! When someone has something, the thing they have is usually in the basic form (nominative), like ajokortti. But when someone does NOT have something, the object must be in the partitive case. We add the partitive ending -a to make it ajokorttia.
Why is the boy pojalla instead of poika?
Finnish doesn't have a direct verb for "to have". Instead, it uses the adessive case, which is the -lla or -llä ending meaning "on" or "at". To say "the boy has", you literally say "at the boy is", which is why poika takes this ending.
Wait, why doesn't poika just become poikalla? Where did the "j" come from?
This happens because of a spelling rule called consonant gradation. When adding certain endings like -lla, the core of the word often softens. The word poika has a special change where the strong k turns into a j, making the stem poja- before adding the ending.
How does onko make this a question?
In Finnish, you can turn a sentence into a yes-or-no question by adding the question particle -ko or -kö to the word you are asking about, and putting that word first. By adding -ko to on (is), it asks "Is at the boy...?" which translates to "Does the boy have...?".
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