Breakdown of Kaikki etsivät onnellisuutta.
etsiä
to look for
kaikki
all, everything, everyone
onnellisuus
the happiness
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Questions & Answers about Kaikki etsivät onnellisuutta.
How is the word onnellisuutta built from the adjective for "happy"?
The base adjective is onnellinen (happy). To make an abstract noun from an adjective ending in -nen, you drop the -nen and add the suffix -suus. This gives us the nominative noun onnellisuus (happiness).
How does the nominative onnellisuus become onnellisuutta here?
Words ending in the suffix -uus or -yys form their partitive case by changing the final -s to -tta or -ttä. Therefore, onnellisuus directly becomes onnellisuutta.
Why is "happiness" in the partitive case (onnellisuutta) in this sentence?
The verb etsiä (to search, to look for) is a partitive verb. It dictates that its object must always be in the partitive case, because searching is fundamentally viewed as an ongoing or incomplete action in Finnish.
In English we say "Everyone searches" with a singular verb. Why does Finnish use the plural etsivät?
In Finnish, when the pronoun kaikki means "everyone" or "all people," it is grammatically treated as a plural word. Because the subject is plural, the verb must take the third-person plural ending -vat.