Breakdown of Hän kävelee hiljaa kohti ovea ja lukee vuorosanan.
hän
he / she
ja
and
kävellä
to walk
lukea
to read
ovi
door
hiljaa
quietly
kohti
towards
vuorosana
the line
Questions & Answers about Hän kävelee hiljaa kohti ovea ja lukee vuorosanan.
Why is ovea in the partitive case here?
It is because of the preposition kohti ("towards"). In Finnish, many prepositions require the word that follows them to be in the partitive case. The base word is ovi (door), and its partitive form is ovea.
What does the base word for ovea look like, and how does it change here?
The dictionary form is ovi. Older Finnish words ending in -i often change the -i to an -e- before adding an ending. So, ovi becomes the stem ove-, and we add the partitive ending -a to get ovea.
Why does vuorosanan end in -n instead of being in the partitive case?
The -n ending shows that it is the object of the sentence and the action is complete (he reads the whole line). This is the accusative case (which looks exactly like the genitive case). If he were in the middle of reading it or only reading part of it, we would use the partitive: lukee vuorosanaa.
How is the word vuorosana formed?
It is a compound word made of vuoro (turn or shift) and sana (word). A "turn-word" makes perfect sense for a line spoken by an actor when it is their turn in a play or movie!
The word for "quietly" is hiljaa. Doesn't the Finnish adverb ending usually look like -sti?
Usually, yes! You could say hiljaisesti (from the adjective hiljainen, meaning "quiet"), but hiljaa is a very common, fixed adverb meaning "quietly" or "still." Finnish has a few of these shorter adverbs that skip the standard -sti ending.
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