Questions & Answers about En osta likaista paitaa.
Why does likainen (dirty) change to likaista in this sentence?
In Finnish, adjectives have to match the case of the noun they describe. Because paitaa (shirt) is in the partitive case here, the adjective describing it must also take the partitive case, becoming likaista.
Why are the shirt and the adjective in the partitive case to begin with?
Because the sentence is negative (en osta). In Finnish, when you say you are not doing something to an object, that object (and any adjective attached to it) must be in the partitive case.
How do you get the form likaista from the basic word likainen?
Words ending in -nen follow a special pattern. To find the stem, you replace the -nen with -s-. So, likainen becomes the stem likais-. Then you add the partitive ending -ta, which gives you likaista.
Why is the verb osta instead of ostan (I buy)?
In negative sentences, the negative word (en) already tells us who is doing the action ("I"). Because of this, the main verb (ostaa) drops its personal ending (-n) and just uses its basic stem (osta).
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