Learn Finnish: Tuo uusi draama itkettää varmasti kaikkia. - That new drama surely makes everyone cry.

Tuo uusi draama itkettää varmasti kaikkia.

That new drama surely makes everyone cry.

Breakdown of Tuo uusi draama itkettää varmasti kaikkia.

all, everything, everyone

varmasti

certainly, surely

Questions & Answers about Tuo uusi draama itkettää varmasti kaikkia.

How is the verb itkettää formed from the basic verb for crying?

The basic verb is itkeä (to cry). By replacing the final vowel with the causative suffix -ttää, we get itkettää. This changes the meaning from doing the action yourself to causing someone else to do it.

Why is the object kaikkia (everyone) in the partitive case?

Causative verbs that trigger an emotion, feeling, or physical reaction (like itkettää, naurattaa for making someone laugh, or väsyttää for making someone tired) typically require a partitive object. This is because the emotional effect they cause is thought of as an ongoing, continuous process.

If the people are the ones actually crying, why isn't kaikki the subject of the sentence?

In causative sentences, the thing causing the reaction takes the role of the grammatical subject. Here, Tuo uusi draama (That new drama) is in the nominative case because it is doing the causing, while the people experiencing the tears become the object.

I have seen sentences like "Minua itkettää" without a clear subject. How is that different from this sentence?

When causative emotion verbs like itkettää are used without a nominative subject, they describe a spontaneous feeling, translating to feeling like doing something (literally "it makes me cry"). In this sentence, however, we have a specific, named subject (Tuo uusi draama) that is actively causing the feeling.