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Questions & Answers about Me matkustamme itään.
The lesson is about the imperative mood. How would you change this sentence to command one person: "Travel east!"?
To form the command "Travel!" for one person, you need the verb stem. For Type 1 verbs like matkustaa, you can take the "we" form matkustamme and drop the -mme ending. This leaves the stem matkusta. So, the command is Matkusta itään!
Why is the word for east itään instead of the dictionary form itä?
When you travel towards a compass direction in Finnish, you usually use the illative or "into" case. To say "to the east", we take the basic word itä, double the last vowel, and add -n, which gives us itään.
Is it strictly necessary to use the pronoun Me in this sentence?
No, it is optional. The verb ending -mme already clearly means "we". You could simply say Matkustamme itään. Using Me just puts a little more emphasis on the fact that we are the ones traveling.
Does the verb matkustaa have any k, p, t consonant changes we need to worry about?
No. Even though there is a k and a t in the middle of the word, they are part of clusters (tk and st) that do not change in this word. The core stem stays as matkusta- whether you are saying matkustamme (we travel) or the imperative matkusta (travel!).