Breakdown of Me mentiin sokkotreffeille, mut kumpikaan ei puhunu mitään.
mutta
but
me
we
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
puhua
to speak
Questions & Answers about Me mentiin sokkotreffeille, mut kumpikaan ei puhunu mitään.
Why does kumpikaan come before the negative verb ei in this sentence?
Kumpikaan means "neither (of the two)". You can say either ei kumpikaan puhunu or kumpikaan ei puhunu. Both are correct and mean the same thing, but putting kumpikaan first emphasizes that out of the two people, not a single one spoke. Notice that the negative verb ei is in the third-person singular here.
What would this sentence look like in standard written Finnish?
This sentence uses very common spoken Finnish. In standard written Finnish, it would be Me menimme sokkotreffeille, mutta kumpikaan ei puhunut mitään. The spoken version uses the passive form mentiin for "we went", shortens mutta to mut, and drops the final "t" from the past participle puhunut.
Why is sokkotreffeille in the allative case (ending in -lle) instead of the illative case (into)?
The word treffit (a date) is always plural. In Finnish, social events and gatherings often use the outer local cases, like the allative -lle (onto) and adessive -lla (on). So to say you go "to a date", you say you go "onto a date". The prefix sokko simply adds the meaning "blind".
The English translation says "spoke at all", but the Finnish uses mitään. Is this a double negative?