Breakdown of Miksi et kokeilisi jotakin uutta yrttiä?
uusi
new
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
miksi
why
jokin
something
kokeilla
to try (test out)
yrtti
herb
Questions & Answers about Miksi et kokeilisi jotakin uutta yrttiä?
Why is the verb kokeilisi used here instead of the present tense kokeilet?
The verb is in the conditional mood. Miksi et kokeilisi...? translates directly to "Why wouldn't you try...?". Just like in English, using the conditional makes the suggestion sound softer, friendlier, and more polite than simply asking "Why don't you try?" (Miksi et kokeile?).
Why are the words jotakin uutta yrttiä in the partitive case?
Is jotakin the same word as jotain?
Yes! Jotakin is the standard, written partitive form of the pronoun jokin (some, something). Jotain is just a shorter version of the exact same word. You will hear jotain much more often in everyday spoken Finnish, but both are grammatically correct and mean the same thing here.
How do we get the partitive form yrttiä from the base word yrtti?
The base word is yrtti (herb). Because it is a relatively new loanword (from the Swedish word 'ört'), its final -i doesn't change to an -e- before the partitive ending, which happens with older Finnish words (like lehti -> lehteä). We just add the partitive ending directly to the stem. It takes the front-vowel ending -ä instead of -a because of vowel harmony with the y in the word.
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