Breakdown of Uusi pyörätie vähentäisi liikennettä.
uusi
new
vähentää
to reduce
pyörätie
bike path
liikenne
traffic
Questions & Answers about Uusi pyörätie vähentäisi liikennettä.
This lesson is about the passive conditional. Is vähentäisi a passive form?
No, vähentäisi is the active conditional ("would reduce") because the sentence has a clear subject: uusi pyörätie. The passive conditional form taught in this lesson would be vähennettäisiin ("would be reduced" or "one would reduce").
How does vähentää differ from the similar-looking verb vähentyä?
Vähentää means "to reduce something" and takes an object. Vähentyä means "to decrease by itself" and does not take an object. Because the new bike path is actively doing the reducing to the traffic, we use the conditional form of vähentää.
Why is the object liikennettä in the partitive case?
Because traffic is treated as an uncountable mass. When a verb's object is an uncountable noun and you are referring to an undefined amount of it, Finnish uses the partitive case.
What is the base form of liikennettä, and how is the partitive ending formed here?
The base form is liikenne. Words ending in -e form the partitive by adding -tta or -ttä. Due to vowel harmony, the front vowels in liikenne require the -ttä ending, making it liikennettä.
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