Questions & Answers about Me kävelemme pohjoiseen.
The current lesson is about commands. If kävelemme means "we walk", how do I tell one person to "Walk north!"?
To form a command for one person, you use the verb's stem without any personal endings. The dictionary form is kävellä (to walk), which is a Type 3 verb. You find its stem by dropping the -lä and adding an -e-, which gives you kävele-. So the command is simply Kävele pohjoiseen!
Why is the verb spelled kävelemme and not "kävellämme"?
This happens because of how Type 3 verbs work. For a verb like kävellä, you don't just add the -mme ending to the dictionary form. As mentioned above, you first form the stem by removing the last two letters (-lä) and adding an -e-. This gives the stem kävele-, to which you add the "we" ending -mme to get kävelemme.
Why does the word for "north" end in -seen here?
Because the sentence describes movement towards a destination, you need the illative case (the "to" or "into" case). The basic word for north is pohjoinen. For words ending in -nen, the stem changes to -se- before adding endings (making the stem pohjoise-). The illative case ending is formed by doubling the last vowel and adding -n, which turns it into pohjoiseen.
Do I have to include the word Me (we) at the start of the sentence?
No, you can just say Kävelemme pohjoiseen. In Finnish, the verb ending (-mme) already clearly tells us that "we" are doing the action. The pronouns for "I", "you", "we", and "you all" are optional and are usually only included for emphasis.
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