Questions & Answers about Moni ihminen lukee romaaneja.
Why is the word for novels romaaneja instead of romaania?
Romaania is the singular partitive ('a novel'), but here we need the plural partitive to say 'novels'. The base word is romaani. To make it plural partitive, the final i changes to e before adding the -ja ending, giving us romaaneja.
Why do we use the partitive plural for the novels here?
In Finnish, if an action is directed at an unspecified amount of plural things, the object takes the partitive plural. Since the sentence doesn't specify exactly which novels or how many are being read, romaaneja is in the partitive plural case.
Why are moni ihminen and the verb lukee in the singular when the English translation says 'many people read'?
The word moni (many) behaves uniquely in Finnish: it usually takes a singular noun and a singular verb. Even though the meaning is plural ('many people'), grammatically Finnish phrases it a bit like 'many a person reads'. That is why we use the singular ihminen and the singular verb lukee.
Could I say monet ihmiset lukevat instead?
Yes, you can use the full plural forms (monet ihmiset lukevat), but using the singular structure (moni ihminen lukee) is much more common and natural in Finnish when making general statements like this.