Questions & Answers about Älä pelkää vapautta!
The lesson is about the -uus/-yys suffix, so why is the noun for freedom vapaus and not vapaauus?
The base adjective is vapaa (free). When adding the -uus suffix to a word that already ends in a long vowel, Finnish avoids creating a clumsy triple vowel. Instead of the awkward vapaauus, the vowels are simplified to give us vapaus.
How does the word vapaus become vapautta in this sentence?
Abstract nouns ending in -us or -uus have a grammatical stem that ends in -ut- or -uut-. For vapaus, the stem is vapaut-. To make it partitive, you add the partitive ending -ta directly to this stem, resulting in vapautta.
Why is the object vapautta in the partitive case?
The verb pelätä (to fear) requires its object to be in the partitive case. Many verbs expressing emotions, feelings, or ongoing attitudes behave this way in Finnish.
I know pelätä means to fear, but why is it written as pelkää here?
This is a negative command. To form a command for one person, you use Älä plus the present tense stem of the verb. For pelätä (a type 4 verb), you find the stem by taking the "I" form (minä pelkään) and dropping the -n. This leaves you with the command form pelkää.
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