Breakdown of Minä en uisi meressä, koska siellä on haita.
olla
to be
minä
I
siellä
there
koska
because
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
uida
to swim
meri
sea
hai
shark
Questions & Answers about Minä en uisi meressä, koska siellä on haita.
How do we form the negative conditional en uisi here?
To say 'would not', you use the negative verb (en, et, ei, etc.) and the conditional form of the main verb without its personal ending. For uida (to swim), you take the positive form uisin (I would swim) and just drop the final -n to get uisi.
Why is the singular verb on used in siellä on haita if 'sharks' is plural?
This is an 'existential sentence', which is how Finnish says 'there is' or 'there are'. In these sentences, the verb is always in the third-person singular form (on), regardless of whether the things being introduced are singular or plural.
Why is haita (sharks) in the partitive case here?
In existential sentences like siellä on, the items being introduced take the partitive case if they are plural or an uncountable mass. Haita is the partitive plural of hai (shark), showing that there is an unspecified amount of them.
Why does the word meri (sea) become meressä and not 'merissä'?
Old Finnish words ending in -i often change that -i to an -e- before adding endings. So meri becomes the stem mere-, to which we add the 'in' ending -ssä to make meressä (in the sea). If you wrote merissä, the -i- would actually be the plural marker, making it 'in the seas'.
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