Breakdown of Hän luulee, että ruoka on hyvää.
olla
to be
hän
he / she
hyvä
good
ruoka
food
että
that (conjunction)
luulla
to think, to suppose
Questions & Answers about Hän luulee, että ruoka on hyvää.
How do we get luulee from its dictionary form, and what verb type is it?
The dictionary form is luulla (to think/suppose), which is a Type 3 verb. Type 3 verbs end in two consonants and a vowel (like -lla, -sta, or -nna). To find the stem, you remove the final -la to get luul-, and then add an -e-, giving you the stem luule-. Finally, the hän ending requires you to double the final vowel, so luule- + e becomes luulee.
Does luulla mean the same thing as the other verb for "to think", ajatella?
Not exactly! Luulla means "to suppose," "to assume," or "to believe something is true." You use it when expressing an opinion or an assumption, like in this sentence. If you want to talk about the active process of thinking or pondering, you would use ajatella (which is also a Type 3 verb!).
In English, we can just say "She thinks the food is good." Can I drop the word että in Finnish?
No, you cannot. In English, the conjunction "that" is often optional, but in Finnish, you must always include että to connect the two parts of the sentence.
Why is the word for good, hyvää, in the partitive case instead of just the basic form hyvä?
When you have an "A is B" sentence describing an uncountable substance or mass noun (like ruoka, food, or kahvi, coffee), the descriptive adjective must be in the partitive case. Because food is treated as an uncountable mass, hyvä gets the partitive -ä ending to become hyvää.
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