Breakdown of Hänen terveytensä parantuu pian.
hän
he / she
terveys
health
pian
soon
parantua
to get better, to heal (recover)
Questions & Answers about Hänen terveytensä parantuu pian.
How does the -tua suffix change the meaning of the verb parantuu?
The base verb is parantaa, which means "to cure" or "to make something better" (an action someone does to an object). By changing the ending to -tua, it becomes parantua, an automative verb. This means the action happens by itself, translating to "to get better" or "to improve". Since his health is improving on its own here, we use parantuu.
Why does the word terveys (health) change to terveytensä?
Words ending in -ys or -us often change their stem before grammatical endings are attached. For terveys, the stem becomes terveyte-. Then, the third-person possessive suffix -nsä ("his/her") is added to that stem, resulting in terveytensä.
Do I have to use both Hänen and the -nsä suffix to say "his health"?
In standard written Finnish, yes. For the third person ("his", "her", or "their"), you must use both the genitive pronoun (hänen) and the matching possessive suffix (-nsä or -nsa). In casual spoken Finnish, people often drop the suffix and just say hänen terveys (or sen terveys).
The translation says "will improve", but isn't parantuu in the present tense?
Yes, it is! Finnish does not have a dedicated future tense. Instead, it uses the present tense and relies on context words to show that the action hasn't happened yet. In this sentence, the adverb pian (soon) makes it clear that the improvement will happen in the future.
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