Breakdown of Hän osti noita kalliita deodorantteja eilen.
tuo
that
hän
he / she
kallis
expensive
ostaa
to buy
Questions & Answers about Hän osti noita kalliita deodorantteja eilen.
Why are noita kalliita deodorantteja in the partitive plural instead of the regular nominative plural?
In Finnish, the object of the sentence takes the partitive case if it represents an undefined amount. Because she bought "some of" those deodorants, we use the partitive plural. If she had bought a specific, closed group (such as "all of those deodorants on the shelf"), we would use the nominative plural: nuo kalliit deodorantit.
The basic word for "that" is tuo. How do we get noita from it?
The word tuo has an irregular plural stem. When you make it plural, the stem completely changes to noi-. To make it partitive plural, you simply add the partitive ending -ta to that plural stem, giving you noita ("those").
Why does the plural word kalliita look exactly like its partitive singular form?
Good catch! For adjectives and nouns ending in -is (like kallis), the partitive singular and partitive plural are completely identical. You can only tell it means "expensive ones" in the plural here because the other words around it (noita, deodorantteja) are clearly plural.
Why is there a j in deodorantteja?