Questions & Answers about Hän laulaa opettajan kanssa.
Why is the word for teacher in the genitive case (opettajan) instead of the basic form (opettaja)?
In Finnish, many position words like kanssa (meaning with) are postpositions. This means they usually require the word they describe to be in the genitive case (ending in -n). You can think of it as literally saying the teacher's with.
Why does kanssa come after opettajan?
Because kanssa is a postposition! While English mostly uses prepositions (words that go before the noun, like with the teacher), Finnish mostly uses postpositions, which go after the noun they belong to.
The translation says She sings, but doesn't hän mean he?
Hän means both he and she! Finnish does not have gendered pronouns. You have to rely on the context of the conversation to know which one is meant. Here, we used she for the English translation, but it could just as easily be he.
Why does laulaa end with a double a here?
To make the he/she form (third person singular) of most verbs, you take the verb stem and double the last vowel. The stem for the verb to sing is laula-, so doubling the last vowel makes it laulaa. For this specific word, the dictionary form and the he/she form happen to look exactly the same!
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