Breakdown of Älä korjauta tietokonetta!
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
tietokone
computer
korjauttaa
to have repaired
Questions & Answers about Älä korjauta tietokonetta!
What does the suffix in korjauta do to the verb's meaning?
It changes the base verb korjata (to repair) into the curative verb korjauttaa (to have something repaired by someone else). By using the -uttaa suffix, you are telling someone not to hire or ask another person to fix the computer. If you wanted to say "Don't repair it yourself!", you would use the base verb: Älä korjaa.
How do we form the imperative korjauta from the infinitive korjauttaa?
To form the second-person singular imperative, you use the first-person present stem and drop the personal ending -n. The present tense "I have it repaired" is korjautan, so dropping the -n gives korjauta. Notice the consonant gradation: the strong -tt- in the infinitive korjauttaa weakens to a single -t- in the imperative.
Why is the object tietokonetta in the partitive case here?
Because the sentence is negative (Älä). In Finnish, the object of a negative sentence is always in the partitive case, regardless of whether the action is complete or ongoing. If this were a positive command ("Have the computer repaired!"), the object would be in the nominative-like accusative case: Korjauta tietokone!
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