Breakdown of Pomo katsoi minua ja siirsi viestit uusiin kansioihin.
minä
I
ja
and
uusi
new
katsoa
to watch
viesti
message
pomo
boss
siirtää
to move
kansio
folder
Questions & Answers about Pomo katsoi minua ja siirsi viestit uusiin kansioihin.
Why does kansioihin end in -ihin while uusiin ends in just -in?
Both words are in the illative plural ("into the"), which is the focus of this lesson. Because the base word kansio ends in two vowels (-io), adding just -in would create a difficult vowel cluster. To make it easier to pronounce, words ending in two different vowels or a long vowel take the -ihin ending. Meanwhile, the plural stem for uusi is uusi-, which safely takes the standard -in ending to become uusiin.
Why is "me" translated as minua (partitive) here?
The verb katsoa (to look at) is a partitive verb. In Finnish, whenever you look at someone or something, the target of your look must always be in the partitive case. Therefore, minä becomes minua.
Why is viestit (the messages) in the basic plural form, and not the partitive viestejä?
When an action is fully completed and affects the entire object, we use the "total object" form. For plural words, this form looks exactly like the basic plural ending in -t. The boss moved all of those specific messages, so we use viestit. If the boss only moved "some messages," we would use the partitive plural viestejä.
What is the base form of the verb siirsi, and why does it look like that?
The dictionary form is siirtää (to move or transfer). To make the past tense, the final -ä drops to make room for the past tense marker -i. In addition, the consonants -rt- change to -rs- before an -i. This is a very common past tense pattern in Finnish, just like lentää (to fly) becoming lensi (flew).
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