Questions & Answers about Miksi te olette hotellissa?
Does starting the sentence with miksi change the word order of the rest of the sentence?
No, it doesn't. In Finnish, when you use a question word like miksi (why), it goes at the beginning, but the rest of the sentence stays in the normal subject-verb order. Notice how it says te olette (you are) and not olette te (are you).
Why is the verb olette instead of olet?
Olette is the form of the verb olla (to be) that matches the pronoun te. Te means "you" when you are talking to more than one person, or when you are speaking very formally to one person. If you were asking just one friend, you would say Miksi sinä olet...
What does the -ssa ending on hotellissa do?
The -ssa ending means "in" or "inside" (this is called the inessive case). It is added directly to the base word hotelli (hotel) to mean "in the hotel".
Where is the word for "the" in the Finnish sentence?
Finnish does not have articles like "a" or "the". The word hotellissa can mean "in a hotel" or "in the hotel", and you figure out which one makes sense from the context of the conversation.