Breakdown of Sinun täytyy väistää kaikki iskut.
sinä
you
täytyä
to have to
kaikki
all, everything, everyone
isku
attack
väistää
to dodge
Questions & Answers about Sinun täytyy väistää kaikki iskut.
Why is "you" translated as sinun instead of sinä here?
Because of the verb täytyy (must). Verbs expressing necessity require their subject to be in the genitive case. This structure is often called a "necessive sentence," and you can think of its literal meaning as closer to "of you it is required to..."
Since this lesson is about the negative participle, how does the -maton/-mätön suffix apply to the verb väistää?
If you add the negative participle suffix to the strong stem of väistää (to dodge / avoid), you get väistämätön. This literally translates to "undodgeable" or "unavoidable," and it is the standard Finnish word for "inevitable." So, an unavoidable attack would be väistämätön isku.
Why is the object kaikki iskut (all attacks) in the basic nominative plural form rather than the partitive?
Because the action is complete and bounded—you must successfully dodge all of the attacks, not just an undefined amount of them. For total objects in the plural, Finnish always uses the nominative plural (ending in -t). Notice that while singular objects drop their accusative -n ending in täytyy sentences, plural objects just keep their normal nominative plural -t form.
Why doesn't the verb täytyy conjugate to match the subject?
Necessive verbs like täytyy (and pitää when used to mean "must") are frozen in the third-person singular. They never change endings to match the subject. To change who has to do the action, you only change the genitive subject word at the beginning (e.g., heidän täytyy = they must).
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