Breakdown of Yksilöllä ei ole höyheniä, mutta sillä on sinisiä suomuja.
olla
to be
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
mutta
but
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
sininen
blue
yksilö
individual
suomu
scale
höyhen
feather
Questions & Answers about Yksilöllä ei ole höyheniä, mutta sillä on sinisiä suomuja.
Why use yksilöllä here instead of henkilöllä?
Henkilö specifically refers to a human person. Yksilö means "individual" or "specimen" in a broader sense, often used in biology for animals, plants, or abstract units. Since this sentence talks about feathers and scales, we are discussing an animal specimen, making yksilö the perfect choice.
How could we use the ablative of respect (like väriltään) in this sentence to practice the current lesson?
You could expand the second half to say mutta sillä on väriltään sinisiä suomuja (literally: "but it has scales blue in their color"). The ablative of respect väriltään (from väri + -ltä + -än) modifies the adjective sinisiä, elegantly specifying the exact aspect of the scales you are describing.
Why are höyheniä and suomuja both in the partitive plural?
In the first clause, höyheniä is in the partitive because it is the object of a negative "having" sentence (ei ole). In the second clause, sinisiä suomuja is partitive because it refers to an unspecified, plural amount of things. If you used the nominative plural (siniset suomut), it would mean the individual has all the specific blue scales in existence.
Why do we use the pronoun sillä instead of hänellä?
Because this yksilö (specimen) is clearly an animal, we use the non-human pronoun se (it). Sillä is the adessive case of se. If the sentence were about a human, you would use hänellä in standard Finnish, though it is worth remembering that in spoken Finnish, sillä is heavily used for humans too!
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