Breakdown of Minua nolottaa, kun pudotan puhelimen.
minä
I
puhelin
phone
kun
when (conjunction)
pudottaa
to drop
nolottaa
to embarrass
Questions & Answers about Minua nolottaa, kun pudotan puhelimen.
How does the causative verb nolottaa work here, and what is its root word?
Nolottaa (to feel embarrassed / to embarrass) is formed by adding the causative suffix -ttaa to the adjective nolo (embarrassing, awkward). With these "feeling" verbs, the person experiencing the emotion is the grammatical object, which is why "I" is in the partitive case (minua), and the verb stays in the third-person singular.
Is pudottaa (to drop) also a causative verb?
Yes! It comes from the verb pudota (to fall). By adding the causative suffix -ttaa, the meaning changes from "to fall" to "to cause to fall", which we translate into English as "to drop".
Could I say minä nolotan instead of minua nolottaa to mean "I am embarrassed"?
No, that would mean "I am embarrassing someone else" because you would be the subject actively causing the feeling. When you are the one merely experiencing the embarrassment, Finnish uses the partitive for you (minua) and leaves the verb without a personal subject.
Why is the word for phone (puhelin) written as puhelimen here?
Puhelimen is the total object of the verb pudotan (I drop). Because you are dropping the whole phone, it takes the genitive-looking accusative ending -n. Notice the stem change from earlier lessons: words ending in -in change to the stem -ime- before adding an ending, so puhelin becomes puhelime- plus the -n.
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