Word
Meidän täytyy vastata virallisesti venäjäksi.
Meaning
We must reply officially in Russian.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Meidän täytyy vastata virallisesti venäjäksi.
me
we
täytyä
to have to
vastata
to answer
virallisesti
officially
Questions & Answers about Meidän täytyy vastata virallisesti venäjäksi.
Why does "in Russian" use the ending -ksi (venäjäksi) instead of an "in" ending like -ssa?
When you talk about the language you are communicating in (speaking, writing, or replying as in this sentence), Finnish uses the Translative case ending -ksi. You cannot use the inessive -ssa for this; it has to be venäjäksi.
Notice that venäjäksi isn't capitalized here. Is that normal for languages in Finnish?
Yes! Unlike English, Finnish does not capitalize the names of languages or nationalities unless they appear at the very beginning of a sentence.
Why does the sentence start with Meidän (our) instead of Me (we)?
The verb täytyy (must / have to) requires its subject to be in the genitive case. So Me changes to Meidän. The verb itself always stays in the third-person singular (täytyy), and the action verb that follows it (vastata) must be in its basic dictionary form.
How is the word virallisesti (officially) formed?
It comes from the adjective virallinen (official). To make it an adverb meaning "officially", you find the word's stem (virallise-) and add the adverb ending -sti.