Word
Se sanoi mulle äsken, et se ostais auton.
Meaning
He said to me just now that he would buy a car.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Se sanoi mulle äsken, et se ostais auton.
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
auto
car
minä
I
sanoa
to say
Questions & Answers about Se sanoi mulle äsken, et se ostais auton.
Why does the sentence use se for 'he' instead of hän?
In spoken Finnish (puhekieli), se (literally 'it') is almost universally used for both 'he' and 'she'. Hän is mostly kept for written text or very formal speech.
Is mulle the standard way to say 'to me' in speech?
Yes! It is the everyday spoken version of minulle. You will hear mulle (to me) and sulle (to you) constantly in regular conversations.
What word is et short for?
It is the shortened spoken form of the conjunction että (that). In casual speech, many common function words lose their final vowels, which is exactly how puhekieli works.
Why does the verb look like ostais rather than ostaisi?
ostaisi is the standard written conditional form meaning 'would buy'. In spoken Finnish, the final -i of the conditional marker is frequently dropped, turning ostaisi into ostais.
Why is the car written as auton with an -n ending?