Questions & Answers about Minä otan kruunut kuninkailta.
Why does the word for "from the kings" (kuninkailta) look so different from the basic word kuningas?
Kuningas undergoes several changes here. First, its stem is kuninkaa- (notice the ng changes to nk, and the ending becomes -aa). To make it plural before adding a case ending, the last a changes to an i, creating the plural stem kuninkai-. Finally, we add the ablative suffix -lta ("from") to get kuninkailta.
Why do we use the ablative ending -lta for "from" here instead of the elative ending -sta?
In Finnish, the ablative case (-lta / -ltä) is used when you receive or take something from a person. The elative case (-sta / -stä) means "out of" and is mostly used when taking something physically out of a place or a container.
Why is the ending -lta and not -ltä?
This is due to vowel harmony. Because the base word kuningas contains the back vowels u and a, the ending must also use the back vowel a. Therefore, it takes -lta instead of -ltä.
Why does the object kruunut end in -t instead of being in the partitive case?
Kruunut is in the normal plural form, which acts as the complete object here. We use this form because it is a completed action targeting specific whole objects—you are taking the crowns. If the sentence meant "I take some crowns", you would use the partitive plural kruunuja.
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