Breakdown of Omalaatuiset taiteilijat tapaavat työskennellä yöllä.
yö
night
työskennellä
to work
tavata
to tend to / usually do (habitually)
omalaatuinen
eccentric
Questions & Answers about Omalaatuiset taiteilijat tapaavat työskennellä yöllä.
Doesn't tavata normally mean "to meet"?
Yes, but in this lesson's habitual structure, when tavata is used as an auxiliary verb followed by a 1st infinitive (here, työskennellä), it means "to be in the habit of" or "to tend to." So tapaavat työskennellä translates to "tend to work."
How is the word omalaatuiset formed?
It's a compound of oma (own) and laatu (quality, kind), combined with the common adjective suffix -inen. Literally meaning "of its own kind," it is used for "eccentric" or "peculiar." Since the base word is omalaatuinen, the -nen ending changes to the stem -se- before adding the plural -t, resulting in omalaatuiset.
Why do we use the adessive case yöllä for "at night"?
In Finnish, the adessive case (-lla/-llä) is the standard way to express the time of day an action occurs. Just like aamulla (in the morning) and päivällä (during the day), we use yöllä (at night). Using the inessive case yössä would sound overly poetic, as if they were physically lost "inside the night."
Could I use the phrase tehdä työtä instead of työskennellä here?
You could say tapaavat tehdä työtä, but työskennellä is much more natural when talking about someone's general professional activity, especially an artist's creative process. Tehdä työtä (to do work) places slightly more emphasis on the physical or mental exertion of a specific task.