Breakdown of Me emme osta niitä kalliita shampoita.
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
me
we
kallis
expensive
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
Questions & Answers about Me emme osta niitä kalliita shampoita.
Why is 'those' translated as niitä here instead of the basic plural ne?
niitä is the partitive plural form of the pronoun se (it/that), which becomes ne (they/those) in the basic plural. In this sentence, the action is negative (emme osta, we do not buy). In Finnish, the object of a negative sentence must always be in the partitive case. Because there are multiple shampoos, the whole object phrase (niitä kalliita shampoita) takes the partitive plural.
How do we get the form kalliita from the basic adjective kallis (expensive)?
Words ending in -is have a special stem change for their plural forms. The plural stem of kallis is kallii-. To make it partitive plural, you just add the partitive ending -ta to this stem, resulting in kalliita.
Why does the loanword shampoo become shampoita in the partitive plural?
For nouns ending in a long vowel like the -oo in shampoo, you form the partitive plural by adding -ita. The -i- acts as the plural marker, and -ta is the partitive ending.
If we changed this to a positive sentence ('We buy those expensive shampoos'), would the object still be in the partitive plural?