Breakdown of Meidän tekee mieli juoda kahvia.
me
we
kahvi
coffee
juoda
to drink
tehdä
to do
mieli
mind / opinion (mind, mood)
Questions & Answers about Meidän tekee mieli juoda kahvia.
Why do we use the genitive meidän instead of the nominative me?
This sentence uses the mielitekorakenne (syntax of desire) structure. In this setup, the person who feels the desire (the experiencer) is always put in the genitive case. Therefore, the nominative me becomes meidän.
Why is the verb tekee in the third-person singular when the experiencer is 'we'?
In this structure, the phrase tekee mieli is impersonal and the verb always stays in the third-person singular. The grammatical subject of the verb tekee is actually the word mieli (mind), not the people wanting the thing. Literally translated, the sentence is 'our mind makes to drink coffee.'
Could I drop the verb juoda and just say Meidän tekee mieli kahvia?
Yes, you can! The tekee mieli structure accepts either a verb in the 1st infinitive (like juoda) or directly attaches to a noun in the partitive case. Meidän tekee mieli kahvia is perfectly natural and simply means 'We feel like some coffee.'
Why is kahvia in the partitive case here?
Kahvia acts as the object of the verb juoda (to drink). Because coffee is an uncountable mass noun and we are talking about an unspecified amount of it, the object rule dictates it must be in the partitive case.
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