Questions & Answers about Pienet linnut lentävät metsään.
Why is the word for "small" pienet instead of just pieni?
In Finnish, adjectives have to match the noun they describe. Since linnut (birds) is plural, the adjective must also be plural. The basic word pieni gets the plural ending -t to become pienet.
The basic word for bird is lintu. Why does it change to linnut in the plural?
Adding the plural marker -t closes the syllable, which triggers a spelling change called consonant gradation. The strong nt in lintu softens to a double nn in linnut.
How do we know to use lentävät for "fly"?
The subject linnut (birds) is plural, so the verb needs the "they" ending. The basic verb is lentää, and adding the "they" ending makes it lentävät. It uses -vät instead of -vat because of vowel harmony, since the word has front vowels like e and ä.
Why does the word for forest, metsä, become metsään?
The ending here means "into" (the illative case). To say something is moving into a place, you usually double the last vowel of the word and add -n. So, metsä becomes metsään (into the forest).