Questions & Answers about Menkäämme areenalle aikaisin!
How exactly is the formal imperative menkäämme formed from the verb mennä?
You use the consonant stem of the verb. For mennä, the stem is men-. To this, you add the imperative marker -kää- (using front vowels because the stem only contains the vowel 'e'), followed by the first person plural ending -mme.
Since this means "let's go", why wouldn't we just use the passive form mennään?
You absolutely would in everyday situations! The passive indicative form mennään is the standard way to say "let's go" in modern spoken and even standard written Finnish. The -kaamme/-käämme imperative is very formal, literary, or used for a dramatic, rhetorical effect.
Why do we use the allative case (areenalle) instead of the illative case (areenaan) for going to an arena?
In Finnish, open public spaces, event venues, and outdoor areas (like squares, yards, and stadiums) usually take the external local cases. You go "onto" the arena (areenalle) rather than "into" it.
The word aikaisin looks like a superlative form. Is it?
Structurally, it shares the exact same ending as a superlative plural instructive, but here it functions simply as the standard adverb for "early". While it derives from the adjective aikainen (early), as an adverb you can just treat aikaisin as a fixed vocabulary word rather than a complex grammatical form you need to decipher.
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