Breakdown of Voit oppia sanaston toistamalla sanoja.
sana
word
oppia
to learn
voida
can, to be able to
sanasto
the vocabulary
toistaa
to repeat
Questions & Answers about Voit oppia sanaston toistamalla sanoja.
How do we form toistamalla ("by repeating"), and what does it mean here?
This is the third infinitive in the adessive case. We take the strong verb stem of toistaa (to repeat), which is toista-, add the third infinitive marker -ma-, and then the adessive ending -lla (on/at). Together, the -malla or -mällä ending translates to "by doing" something—in this case, "by repeating".
Why is the object sanaston in the genitive/accusative case rather than the partitive (sanastoa)?
The genitive-looking accusative case (sanaston) tells us that the action is meant to be completed: you are learning the entire specific vocabulary. If the sentence used the partitive (sanastoa), it would mean learning some vocabulary, or that the learning process is still ongoing.
Why is sanoja in the partitive plural?
Even though toistamalla acts like a descriptive phrase here, it is still built from a verb and can take its own object. Because you are repeating an indefinite amount of words, the object sanoja (words) must be in the partitive plural.
How are the words sanaston and sanoja related?
Both come from the root word sana (word). The suffix -sto or -stö is used in Finnish to create collective nouns. A collection of words becomes a vocabulary (sanasto). Another common example of this is kirja (book) becoming kirjasto (library).
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