Breakdown of Anna minulle laturi, mutta älä jätä sitä lukusaliin.
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
minä
I
mutta
but
antaa
to give
jättää
to leave (something behind)
älä
don't (negative imperative)
lukusali
the reading room
laturi
the charger
Questions & Answers about Anna minulle laturi, mutta älä jätä sitä lukusaliin.
How do we form the negative command 'älä jätä'?
You use the negative imperative word älä (don't) followed by the connegative stem of the verb. For jättää (to leave), you find the stem by taking the 'I' form (jätän) and dropping the -n, which gives us jätä. Notice that the strong double tt weakens to a single t here!
Why is the word for 'it' in the partitive case (sitä)?
Because the action is negative! The second half of the sentence uses älä jätä (do not leave). In Finnish, whenever a verb is negative, its object must be in the partitive case.
Why doesn't the object laturi have an -n ending in the first part of the sentence?
Because Anna is an affirmative command. When giving a positive command to do something to a whole object, we drop the usual -n object ending. This means the object looks exactly like the basic dictionary form (laturi).
The English translation says 'in the reading room', but lukusaliin has an 'into' ending. Why?
The verb jättää (to leave) works differently in Finnish than in English. Finns think of the action as moving something into a place to leave it there. Because of this direction, jättää requires a directional 'to' or 'into' case, like the illative (-iin).
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