Word
Meidän on noudatettava tätä uutta määräystä.
Meaning
We must follow this new regulation.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Meidän on noudatettava tätä uutta määräystä.
Why do we use meidän on here instead of meidän täytyy?
Both express obligation ("we must"), but the structure using a genitive subject, on, and the passive present participle (-tava/-ttava) is more formal and slightly stronger than täytyy. You will often see it in written Finnish, official rules, or strong recommendations.
How exactly is noudatettava formed from the basic verb noudattaa (to follow)?
It is the passive present participle. To build it, you take the passive stem of the verb. For a Type 1 verb like noudattaa, the strong -tt- weakens to -t-, and the passive marker -etta- is added. Finally, you attach the participle ending -va, giving us noudatettava.
If the subject is "we", why is the verb on instead of olemme?
In all Finnish necessity structures, including this one as well as sentences using täytyy or pitää, the auxiliary verb is frozen in the third-person singular. Therefore, it is always on regardless of who the genitive subject (meidän) is.
Why is the object tätä uutta määräystä in the partitive case? Do necessity sentences normally require that?