Word
Vanhat silmälasit eivät ole enää ehjiä.
Meaning
The old glasses are no longer intact.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Vanhat silmälasit eivät ole enää ehjiä.
olla
to be
vanha
old
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
enää
anymore
Questions & Answers about Vanhat silmälasit eivät ole enää ehjiä.
Why is vanhat in the nominative plural (ending in -t) but ehjiä in the partitive plural?
Vanhat is an attributive adjective attached directly to the noun (silmälasit). It must match the noun exactly, so both are in the nominative plural (the standard plural form ending in -t). Ehjiä is a subject complement (predicative) coming after the verb olla. In Finnish, when a subject is plural, the adjective describing it after the verb is usually in the partitive plural.
How is the partitive plural ehjiä formed from the base word ehjä?
The dictionary form is ehjä (intact/whole). To form the partitive plural, we need the plural marker -i- and the partitive ending -ä. When adding -i- to a word ending in -ä, the final -ä is dropped. So: ehj- + -i- + -ä = ehjiä.
Why do we use eivät here instead of ei?
Just like "glasses" in English, silmälasit is grammatically a plural word (notice the -t at the end). Because the subject is plural, the negative verb must also be the "they" form, which is eivät. This is followed by the standard negative stem ole.
Why is enää placed in the middle of the sentence instead of at the end?