Breakdown of Minä en ikinä koskisi hämähäkkiin.
minä
I
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
ikinä
ever, never
koskea
to touch
hämähäkki
spider
Questions & Answers about Minä en ikinä koskisi hämähäkkiin.
How do we form the negative conditional here?
To make a negative conditional, you use the negative verb (en, et, ei, etc.) plus the conditional marker -isi attached to the verb stem. Unlike the positive conditional, you do not add a personal ending to the main verb. For example, 'I would touch' is minä koskisin, but 'I would not touch' is minä en koskisi.
Why does hämähäkkiin have the illative (into) case ending -iin?
The verb koskea (to touch) is a rection verb that requires the object you are touching to be in the illative case. In Finnish, you don't just touch a thing, you touch into it! Since hämähäkki (spider) ends in a short vowel, we form the illative by doubling that last vowel and adding -n, giving us hämähäkkiin.
The translation says 'never', but I thought 'never' was ei koskaan. Can I use that here?
Yes, you can! Ei koskaan and ei ikinä both mean 'never'. In Finnish, you combine the negative verb (like en) with a word meaning 'ever' (koskaan or ikinä). Ikinä is often used for extra emphasis or in everyday spoken language, but they mean the exact same thing in this sentence.
Where does the stem for koskisi come from?
The dictionary form of the verb is koskea. To find the strong stem, we drop the final -a, giving us koske-. When we add the conditional marker -isi, the e at the end of the stem drops out because Finnish usually removes a short e when adding an i, resulting in koskisi.
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