Questions & Answers about Käveleekö hän kylpylään?
How does the illative case work in kylpylään? I thought the endings were -hVn or -seen.
For most words ending in a single short vowel, like kylpylä (spa), the illative ('into' or 'to') ending is made by simply doubling that last vowel and adding -n. So kylpylä becomes kylpylään. The -hVn and -seen endings are used for words that end in two vowels or have a different syllable structure.
Why is the question ending -kö instead of -ko on Käveleekö?
This is because of vowel harmony. The verb kävellä has the front vowel ä. Because there are no back vowels (a, o, u) in the word, any endings attached to it must use front vowels too. Therefore, we use -kö instead of -ko to turn the verb into a question.
I learned the verb 'to walk' is kävellä. Why does it look like kävelee here?
Kävellä is a type 3 verb. To make the 'he/she' form, you drop the -llä ending to find the root, add an -e-, and then double that last vowel for the hän form. This gives us kävelee (he or she walks) before we attach the -kö question particle.
How do we know hän means 'she' in this sentence instead of 'he'?
We actually do not know from this sentence alone! Finnish uses the pronoun hän for both 'he' and 'she'. The translation says 'she' just to give one valid English option, but 'Is he walking to the spa?' would be exactly as correct.
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