Breakdown of Tämä musiikki ei häiritse poikaa.
tämä
this
poika
boy
ei
no / not (negative verb)
musiikki
music
Questions & Answers about Tämä musiikki ei häiritse poikaa.
How do we get häiritse from the dictionary form häiritä?
Häiritä (to disturb) is a Type 5 verb, which means it ends in -ita or -itä. To find the stem for these verbs, you remove the final -ta or -tä and add -tse, giving you the stem häiritse-. For negative sentences, you just use the negative verb (ei) plus this stem exactly as it is, with no extra personal endings.
Why is the boy translated as poikaa instead of its basic form poika?
Poikaa is in the partitive case. In Finnish, if a sentence is negative (like this one using ei), the object of the action must always be in the partitive case. Furthermore, the verb häiritä belongs to a group of verbs that always require their object to be in the partitive case anyway, even in positive sentences!
Why do we use ei for the negative word here?
In Finnish, the negative word is a verb that changes depending on the subject. The subject here is tämä musiikki (this music), which acts as an "it" (third-person singular). The correct form of the negative verb for he, she, or it is ei.
Why don't tämä and musiikki have special word endings?
Tämä musiikki (this music) is the subject of the sentence, which means it is doing the action. Subjects are usually in the basic dictionary form (the nominative case), which has no extra endings. Only the object (poikaa) changes its ending here.