Breakdown of Näyttelijän virhe harmittaa ohjaajaa.
virhe
error
ohjaaja
instructor / director
näyttelijä
the actor
harmittaa
to vex, to make (someone) sorry
Questions & Answers about Näyttelijän virhe harmittaa ohjaajaa.
How does the causative suffix work in harmittaa?
Why is ohjaajaa in the partitive case here?
Verbs that express causing an emotion, like harmittaa, strongly prefer a partitive object. This is because feeling an emotion is viewed as an ongoing, continuous state rather than an action with a definite beginning and end.
In English we often say the director is annoyed by the mistake. Why does Finnish use this structure instead?
Finnish very often uses emotion causative verbs to make the source of the feeling (the mistake) the active subject, and the person experiencing it the object. Using a -ttaa verb like this is the most natural and standard way to express these feelings in Finnish.
What is the base word for näyttelijän?
The base word is näyttelijä (actor). Here it has the genitive ending -n to show possession. As a bonus, näyttelijä itself is derived from the verb näytellä (to act) using the doer suffix -jä.