Questions & Answers about Parvi mehiläisiä lentää puuhun.
Why is the verb lentää singular when there are many bees flying?
The grammatical subject of this sentence is the singular word parvi (a swarm). When a singular collective word like parvi or joukko (a group) is the subject, the verb agrees with it and stays in the singular, even though the group contains many individual things.
Why is mehiläisiä in the partitive plural?
It tells us what the swarm consists of. To say a swarm 'of' bees in Finnish, the container or group word is in the nominative (parvi) and the things making up the group are in the partitive plural (mehiläisiä).
Why does the sentence use puuhun (into the tree) instead of just puussa (in the tree)?
The verb lentää (to fly) expresses movement toward a destination. Finnish uses the illative case (the 'into' case) to show where the movement ends. If the bees were already inside the tree and just flying around in there, you would use the inessive case puussa.
How is the ending for puuhun formed?
The illative ending usually just lengthens the final vowel and adds -n (like talo becoming taloon). But when a short word already ends in a double vowel, like puu (tree), you insert an -h-, repeat the last vowel, and add -n. This gives us puu + h + u + n = puuhun.
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