Questions & Answers about Hän on tätä ideaa vastaan.
The current lesson is about postpositions that use the genitive case. Why does vastaan use the partitive case (tätä ideaa) here?
While most Finnish postpositions require the word before them to be in the genitive case (ending in -n), there are a few important exceptions. Vastaan (against) is one of those exceptions and requires the partitive case. That is why we see tätä ideaa instead of the genitive tämän idean.
How is the partitive form tätä ideaa built from tämä idea?
The pronoun tämä (this) has an irregular partitive form: tätä. For the noun idea, because it ends in a single vowel, you simply add an extra -a to the end to make ideaa.
Can I put vastaan before the words tätä ideaa, similar to how 'against' works in English?
No, in Finnish, vastaan acts as a postposition here, meaning it must come after the words it belongs to. You will always see it placed after the noun phrase, as in tätä ideaa vastaan.
The translation says 'He is', but could this also mean 'She is'?
Yes! The Finnish pronoun hän is completely gender-neutral and means both 'he' and 'she'. Without extra context, translating this sentence as 'She is against this idea' would be equally correct.
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