Breakdown of Hän ei koskaan mainitse sanaa.
hän
he / she
sana
word
ei
no / not (negative verb)
koskaan
never / ever
mainita
to mention
Questions & Answers about Hän ei koskaan mainitse sanaa.
The dictionary form of the verb is mainita (to mention). How do we get the form mainitse?
Mainita is a Type 5 verb (verbs ending in -ita or -itä). To find the stem for these verbs, you drop the -ta or -tä and add -tse. This gives us the stem mainitse-. For negative sentences, you simply use this bare stem right after the negative verb, which is why we say ei mainitse.
Why are there two words (ei koskaan) for never?
In Finnish, never is expressed by pairing a negative verb (like en, et, or ei) with the word koskaan, which actually means ever. So ei koskaan literally translates to does not ever.
Why does the word sana (word) have an extra letter at the end to become sanaa?
Sanaa is in the partitive case. An essential rule in Finnish is that if a sentence is negative, its object must be in the partitive case. We add an -a to the basic word sana to meet this rule.
How would I change this to a positive sentence: He mentions the word?
For a positive sentence in the he/she form, you take the stem mainitse- and double the final vowel, making it Hän mainitsee. You would also need to change the object from the partitive sanaa to the normal total object form sanan, because the sentence is no longer negative!
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