Breakdown of Keväällä jää ei ole vahva.
olla
to be
ei
no / not (negative verb)
vahva
strong
kevät
spring
jää
the ice
Questions & Answers about Keväällä jää ei ole vahva.
Why does the word for spring have a -llä ending here?
To say that something happens in a specific season, Finnish uses the adessive case, which means adding -lla or -llä to the end of the word. So, to say 'in spring', we add -llä to the stem of the word for spring.
The dictionary word for spring is kevät. Why did it change to keväällä?
Many Finnish words go through a stem change before you can add an ending. For words ending in -t like kevät, the -t drops away and the last vowel is doubled, giving us the stem kevää-. Then we add the -llä ending.
Why do we use -llä instead of -lla for the ending?
This is because of vowel harmony. The word kevät contains the front vowels e and ä. Because it has front vowels, any ending we add must also use front vowels, so we choose -llä instead of -lla.
Why does the sentence use ei ole instead of ei on for 'is not'?
In Finnish, the negative word ei works like a verb. The main verb that follows it drops its normal ending and just uses its base stem. So while the English word 'is' translates to on, for 'is not' we use ei plus the stem ole, making ei ole.
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