Haluan pidentää helmaa, koska se on liian lyhyt.
I want to lengthen the hem, because it is too short.
Breakdown of Haluan pidentää helmaa, koska se on liian lyhyt.
olla
to be
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
koska
because
haluta
to want
lyhyt
short
liian
too (excessively)
helma
the hem
pidentää
to lengthen
Questions & Answers about Haluan pidentää helmaa, koska se on liian lyhyt.
How is the verb pidentää formed from a dimension adjective?
Pidentää (to lengthen) is derived from the adjective pitkä (long). In Finnish, you can often create a verb that means to make something more of that adjective by modifying the stem and adding -ntää or -ntaa. The opposite action would be lyhentää (to shorten), derived from the adjective lyhyt (short) seen at the end of the sentence.
Why is the object helmaa in the partitive case?
We use the partitive helmaa because the action of lengthening doesn't specify an exact, measurable endpoint here. When you want to make something longer by an unspecified amount, the action is treated as open-ended, which requires a partitive object. If you specified completing the action to an exact length, you would use the genitive-accusative helman.
Since helmaa is partitive, why is the adjective lyhyt in the nominative case?
The second half of the sentence (koska se on liian lyhyt) is a completely new clause with its own grammar rules. Here, the pronoun se (referring to the hem) is the subject and is in the basic nominative case. Because lyhyt describes that nominative subject, it must also be in the nominative.
Does the word liian affect the case of the dimension adjective lyhyt?
No. Liian is an adverb meaning too or excessively. It is placed directly before adjectives like lyhyt or pitkä to show an extreme measurement, but it never changes its own form and does not force the following adjective into a different case.
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