Questions & Answers about Violetti hattu on kallis.
The translation says 'The violet hat', but where is the word for 'the' in the Finnish sentence?
Finnish does not have articles like 'a', 'an', or 'the'. Depending on the context, violetti hattu can mean 'a violet hat' or 'the violet hat'. Here, it makes the most sense to translate it as 'the'.
Why are both violetti and kallis in their basic dictionary forms here?
In Finnish, an adjective always has to match the form of the noun it describes. Because the noun hattu is the subject of the sentence and is in its basic dictionary form (the nominative case), the adjectives violetti and kallis also stay in their basic forms.
Violetti and hattu sound very similar to English. Are they related?
Yes, they are loanwords! Violetti shares the same root as the English word 'violet', and hattu comes from Germanic languages. Notice how Finnish often adds a vowel (like -i or -u) to the end of borrowed words because traditional Finnish words rarely end in a consonant.
If kallis means expensive, how do I say 'cheap'?
The Finnish word for cheap is halpa. If you wanted to say 'The violet hat is cheap', it would simply be Violetti hattu on halpa.