Breakdown of Taikina ei kovennut, mutta se viileni.
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
mutta
but
ei
no / not (negative verb)
taikina
dough
viiletä
to cool down
koveta
to harden
Questions & Answers about Taikina ei kovennut, mutta se viileni.
How do we get kovennut from the verb koveta?
This is the negative past tense. To form the past participle for a Type 6 verb, you take the infinitive (koveta), remove the final -ta or -tä, and add -nnut or -nnyt. Together with the negative verb, you get ei kovennut (did not harden).
Why does viiletä (to cool down) turn into viileni here?
For Type 6 verbs, the conjugated stem always has -ne- in the middle, so the present tense stem is viilene-. To make it past tense, the final -e of the stem changes to the past tense marker -i, resulting in viileni (it cooled down).
Is it a coincidence that these verbs look like the adjectives kova (hard) and viileä (cool)?
Not at all! A huge number of Type 6 verbs are "change of state" verbs derived directly from adjectives. Koveta literally means "to become kova", and viiletä means "to become viileä".
Why do we need the pronoun se before viileni? Couldn't we just say "mutta viileni"?
In standard Finnish, you cannot drop third-person pronouns (hän, se, he, ne) the way you can drop first or second-person pronouns. Even though we just mentioned taikina (the dough), you still need to include se to act as the subject of the second clause.
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