Word
Me emme myy harkkoa emmekä osta eristettä.
Meaning
We neither sell concrete block nor buy insulation.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Me emme myy harkkoa emmekä osta eristettä.
me
we
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
ostaa
to buy
myydä
to sell
Questions & Answers about Me emme myy harkkoa emmekä osta eristettä.
How does "neither... nor" work here, and why is it emmekä instead of eikä?
In Finnish, "neither... nor" uses the negative verb twice. The second part ("nor") attaches the clitic -kä to the negative verb. Because the subject for both actions is "we", both negative verbs must be conjugated for "we" (emme). This gives us emme... emmekä.
Why aren't the main verbs conjugated as myymme and ostamme?
In negative sentences, the negative verb (emme, emmekä) already shows who is doing the action. The main verbs just take their base negative form (the connegative), which are myy and osta.
Why are both objects (harkkoa and eristettä) in the partitive case?
In Finnish, if the verb is negative, the object of that verb must always be in the partitive case. Since we are not selling or buying these items, the actions are not completed, which triggers the partitive rule.
Harkko just takes an -a, so why does eriste become eristettä with two Ts?