Learn Finnish: Ne ei oo kadottanu meiän avaimia.

In spoken Finnish (puhekieli), the letter d in the middle of a word is often dropped entirely. Because of this, the standard meidän simply becomes meiän. You will notice this happening a lot, such as with teidän becoming teiän.

Where does the form kadottanu come from?

This is a spoken version of the past participle. In standard written Finnish, "they haven't lost" uses the plural form: he eivät ole kadottaneet. However, spoken Finnish treats "they" verbs as singular, so it becomes ne ei ole kadottanut. Finally, as you are learning in this lesson, spoken Finnish drops the final -t from past participles, leaving us with kadottanu.

Why do we say Ne ei oo instead of He eivät ole?

There are three spoken-language changes happening here! First, spoken Finnish usually uses ne (those) instead of he to refer to people. Second, plural verbs are often simplified to their singular forms, so eivät becomes ei. Third, the verb ole is almost always shortened to oo in speech.

Why is the word for keys (avaimia) in the partitive case here?