Breakdown of Poika ei saanut miekkoja hirviöiltä.
poika
boy
ei
no / not (negative verb)
saada
to get
miekka
sword
Questions & Answers about Poika ei saanut miekkoja hirviöiltä.
How do we break down the word hirviöiltä?
It means "from the monsters." It is built from the base word hirviö (monster), plus the plural marker -i-, plus the ablative ending -ltä (from). We use -ltä instead of -lta because of vowel harmony—hirviö contains the front vowel ö.
Why is miekkoja (swords) in the partitive case here?
Because the sentence is negative (ei saanut). In Finnish, whenever an action doesn't happen, the object of that sentence must always be in the partitive case. Here, the boy didn't get swords, so we use the partitive plural.
The basic word for sword is miekka. Why does it change to miekkoja instead of "miekkaja"?
When forming the plural partitive of a word ending in -a, if the first vowel of the word is i or e (as in miekka), the final -a changes to an -o- before you add the plural partitive ending -ja. That is why it becomes miekkoja.
Why do we use saanut instead of the regular past tense form sai?
Because this is a negative past tense sentence. To say "did not get," you use the negative verb (ei) followed by the past participle of the main verb, which ends in -nut or -nyt. The positive form is poika sai (the boy got), but the negative is poika ei saanut (the boy did not get).