Questions & Answers about Mä haaveilis uudesta autosta.
Why is there no personal ending on haaveilis to show it means "I would"?
In spoken Finnish (puhekieli), it's very common to shorten the conditional marker -isi- to just -is and drop the personal ending. The standard written form here would be haaveilisin. Because the verb ending is dropped, the pronoun Mä (I) becomes absolutely necessary to show who is dreaming. Without it, haaveilis could mean "I would," "you would," or "he/she would."
How exactly do we build haaveilis from the basic verb haaveilla?
Haaveilla is a Type 3 verb. To make the conditional, you find the present stem (haaveile-) and add the conditional marker -isi-. The -e- from the stem is dropped when it meets the -i-, giving us haaveilisi-. Normally, you'd add the "I" ending -n to get haaveilisin, but this colloquial sentence just chops it down to haaveilis.
Why are "new car" in the elative case (uudesta autosta) here?
The verb haaveilla requires the thing you are dreaming about to be in the elative case (-sta/-stä). This is a strict rule for this verb, so in Finnish, you literally say you are dreaming "out of a new car."
Can I use this sentence to say I dreamt about a new car while I was sleeping?
No, haaveilla specifically means to daydream, wish, or long for something. If you want to talk about a literal dream you had while asleep, you must use the phrase nähdä unta (literally "to see a dream"), as in: Näin unta uudesta autosta.
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