Breakdown of Voiko kuka tahansa hallita tätä maata?
tämä
this
kuka
who
maa
country
voida
can, to be able to
tahansa
any / -ever
hallita
to rule
Questions & Answers about Voiko kuka tahansa hallita tätä maata?
What does kuka tahansa mean, and does the word tahansa ever change?
kuka tahansa translates to 'anyone' or 'whoever'. The word tahansa is a fixed particle that never changes its form. If you need a different grammatical case in a sentence, only the pronoun kuka changes (for example, into the partitive ketä tahansa). Here it is the subject of the sentence, so it stays in the basic nominative case.
Why is the object of the sentence tätä maata in the partitive case?
Why does the sentence start with Voiko instead of the subject kuka tahansa?
To form a yes/no question in Finnish, you add the question particle -ko or -kö to the verb and move that verb to the very beginning of the sentence. Here, the verb voi (can) takes the -ko ending.
Why isn't the main verb hallita conjugated here?
It follows the modal verb voi (from voida, meaning to be able to). Modal verbs in Finnish require the second verb in the chain to be in its basic dictionary form (the first infinitive), similar to how we say 'can rule' instead of 'can rules' in English.
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