Word
Enkö minä ollut typerä eilen?
Meaning
Wasn't I stupid yesterday?
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Enkö minä ollut typerä eilen?
olla
to be
minä
I
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
eilen
yesterday
Questions & Answers about Enkö minä ollut typerä eilen?
How is enkö formed, and why does it use -kö instead of -ko?
Enkö is the negative verb en (I do not) combined with the question ending -ko/-kö. Because en only contains the vowel e, which is a neutral vowel, Finnish vowel harmony rules say it must take the front vowel version of the ending, which is -kö.
The English translation says 'Wasn't I', so why use ollut instead of the past tense olin?
In Finnish, the negative past tense is made using the negative verb (en, et, ei, etc.) plus the past participle of the main verb. For the verb olla (to be), that form is ollut. Since the negative verb en carries both the 'I' meaning and the negative tense, the main verb drops its personal ending.
Why does minä come between enkö and ollut?
In Finnish questions, the word with the question ending comes first. Here, that is the negative verb enkö. The subject (minä) typically comes right after the question word, followed by the main verb (ollut).
Why is typerä in the basic nominative form instead of the partitive case?