Word
Minä en tiennyt, että sinä puhut totuutta.
Meaning
I did not know that you speak the truth.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Minä en tiennyt, että sinä puhut totuutta.
minä
I
sinä
you
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
puhua
to speak
Questions & Answers about Minä en tiennyt, että sinä puhut totuutta.
Why is there a comma before että?
In Finnish, you almost always put a comma before the conjunction että (that) when it introduces a subordinate clause. This is a strict punctuation rule, unlike in English where a comma isn't used there!
Why is puhut (you speak) in the present tense when the first part of the sentence is in the past tense?
In English, we often shift the tense in the second part of the sentence to match the first ("I didn't know that you spoke the truth"). Finnish doesn't do this. The että clause keeps the tense that was true at the actual moment being talked about. Since the person was speaking the truth right at that moment, Finnish uses the present tense puhut.
Why does the word for truth (totuus) end in -tta here?
It is in the partitive case, making it totuutta. The verb puhua (to speak) is a partitive verb, meaning it usually requires its object to be in the partitive case. Just like you say Minä puhun suomea (I speak Finnish), you must also use the partitive when speaking the truth.
How is the past tense negative en tiennyt (I did not know) formed?