Breakdown of Te ette olisi löytäneet oikeaa suuntaa ilman opasta.
olla
to be
te
you (plural/formal)
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
löytää
to find
oikea
right (direction)
opas
the guide
ilman
without
suunta
the direction
Questions & Answers about Te ette olisi löytäneet oikeaa suuntaa ilman opasta.
Why is the auxiliary verb olisi used instead of olisitte if the subject is te?
In the negative perfect conditional, the negative verb takes the personal ending (ette). The auxiliary verb olla drops its personal ending and stays in the base conditional form olisi.
Why is the main verb in the form löytäneet?
This is the past active participle of löytää. Since the subject te (you, plural) is plural, the participle must also be plural. Therefore, the singular ending -nyt changes to the plural ending -neet.
Löytää usually takes a total object, so why is oikeaa suuntaa in the partitive case here?
You are right that finding something usually results in a total object (which often looks like the genitive case). However, because this is a negative sentence (ette olisi löytäneet), the object is forced into the partitive case. A negative action in Finnish almost always requires a partitive object.
Why is opasta in the partitive case?
The word ilman (without) is a preposition that requires the word following it to be in the partitive case. So, the nominative word opas (guide) becomes the partitive opasta.
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