Breakdown of Avaruusolennot muka sieppasivat hänet eilen illalla.
hän
he / she
ilta
evening
eilen
yesterday
muka
supposedly
avaruusolento
alien
siepata
to abduct
Questions & Answers about Avaruusolennot muka sieppasivat hänet eilen illalla.
Does using muka mean the speaker believes the abduction happened?
No, the exact opposite! The particle muka is used to express strong doubt, disbelief, or sarcasm about a claim someone else made. It translates to supposedly or allegedly, showing that the speaker thinks the alien story is ridiculous.
Could muka be placed somewhere else in this sentence?
Yes, muka is quite flexible, but its placement shifts the emphasis. Placing it early in the sentence after avaruusolennot emphasizes the absurdity of the whole claim. If you said Avaruusolennot sieppasivat muka hänet, the disbelief points more specifically at the claim that it was him who was abducted, rather than someone else.
Why is the object hänet instead of hänen?
This is a good rule to review: while regular singular nouns as total objects take the genitive-looking -n ending, personal pronouns like hän and the question word kuka have a special accusative form ending in -t. That is why we use hänet here.
Why does illalla have the -lla ending while eilen does not?
Eilen is inherently an adverb of time and does not take case endings. However, regular nouns for parts of the day need the adessive case (-lla or -llä) to express when something happens. So you combine the uninflected eilen with the adessive illalla to say yesterday evening.
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