Breakdown of Onko sinun koskaan tehnyt mieli suomalaista salmiakkia?
olla
to be
suomalainen
Finnish / Finn
sinä
you
koskaan
never / ever
tehdä
to do
mieli
mind / opinion (mind, mood)
salmiakki
salty licorice
Questions & Answers about Onko sinun koskaan tehnyt mieli suomalaista salmiakkia?
Why does this sentence use onko instead of oletko since the English translation says 'Have you'?
In the tekee mieli (craving) structure, the person experiencing the desire is not the grammatical subject. Instead, they are in the genitive case (sinun). The verb is always fixed in the third-person singular. To form a question in the perfect tense, we use the third-person auxiliary on plus the question particle -ko, resulting in onko.
How do you form the perfect tense for the tekee mieli structure as seen in this sentence?
You combine the auxiliary verb olla in the third-person singular (on) with the active past participle of tehdä, which is tehnyt. The word mieli remains unchanged. Together, on tehnyt mieli translates to 'has craved'.
Why is the object suomalaista salmiakkia in the partitive case rather than the accusative?
When the object of your craving in the tekee mieli structure is a noun, it takes the partitive case. This indicates you are craving an indefinite amount of a mass noun, like 'some Finnish salty licorice'.
Since the verb is in the perfect tense (on tehnyt), why doesn't the word mieli change its form?
The word mieli is a fixed part of the idiom tehdä mieli. Historically, it acts as the grammatical subject of the phrase (literally 'the mind makes') and therefore stays in the nominative singular form regardless of who is doing the craving or what tense the sentence is in.
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