Questions & Answers about Kylpyhuoneesta puuttuu pyyhkeitä.
How is the partitive plural pyyhkeitä formed from the basic word for towel?
The basic word is pyyhe. Words ending in -e have a stem ending in -ee- and take the strong consonant grade, giving us the stem pyyhkee-. To make the partitive plural, we add -itä. One e drops out to make room for the plural i, resulting in pyyhkeitä.
If "towels" is plural, why is the verb puuttuu in the singular?
This is an "existential sentence" (expressing that something exists or is missing in a location). In Finnish, when you introduce plural things this way, they are put in the partitive plural (pyyhkeitä) and the verb always stays in the singular third-person form (puuttuu).
Why does the sentence use kylpyhuoneesta (from the bathroom) instead of saying "in the bathroom"?
The verb puuttua (to be missing) requires the location to be in the elative case (-sta/-stä), which usually translates to "out of" or "from". While in English things are missing in a room, Finnish logic says they are missing from it.
How does the word kylpyhuone (bathroom) change to get the -sta ending?
Kylpyhuone is a compound word ending in -e. Just like we saw with the stem for towel, words ending in -e double that vowel to -ee- before you add most endings. So, kylpyhuone becomes the stem kylpyhuonee-, and then we add -sta to get kylpyhuoneesta.
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