Questions & Answers about Minä tunnen heidän perheensä.
Why do we have both heidän and -nsä in this sentence?
In the third person (his/her/their), standard Finnish requires both the genitive pronoun (heidän for their) and the possessive suffix at the end of the noun (-nsä). You cannot drop heidän here, even though you are allowed to drop the pronoun for my or your.
Wait, shouldn't the object of tunnen end in -n? Why is it just perhe + -nsä?
You are right that the verb tuntea (to know someone) normally takes a total object ending in -n (like perheen). However, there is a special rule: when you add a possessive suffix to an object, the -n ending disappears! So the total object perheen plus -nsä simply becomes perheensä.
Why do we use tunnen instead of tiedän for I know?
Finnish has two common verbs for to know. Tietää is used for knowing facts or information. Tuntea is used when you know a person, a family, or are familiar with a place. Since we are talking about knowing people, tunnen is the correct choice.
Why does the suffix use an ä (-nsä) instead of an a (-nsa)?
This is because of vowel harmony. The word perhe only contains the front vowel e. Because there are no back vowels (a, o, u) in the word, the suffix must take the front-vowel form -nsä.
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