Jokainen oppipoika jää pajaan polttamaan hiiltä.
Every apprentice stays in the workshop to burn coal.
Breakdown of Jokainen oppipoika jää pajaan polttamaan hiiltä.
jäädä
to stay
polttaa
to burn (transitive)
jokainen
every / each (declinable)
paja
workshop
oppipoika
apprentice
hiili
coal
Questions & Answers about Jokainen oppipoika jää pajaan polttamaan hiiltä.
Why does this sentence use the form polttamaan instead of the basic infinitive polttaa?
This is the core rule for verbs of leaving, staying, and forgetting like jäädä. When you stay somewhere to do an action, that action must take the illative form of the third infinitive (the -maan or -mään form).
Why is it pajaan (into the workshop) instead of pajassa (in the workshop)?
The verb jäädä (to stay/remain) is directional in Finnish. Even though the English translation says 'stays in', Finnish logic treats it as 'is left into'. Therefore, the location must be in the illative case (pajaan) rather than the static inessive case (pajassa). This perfectly mirrors the 'into' logic of the -maan verb form.
Since 'every apprentice' implies a group of people, why is the verb jää in the singular?
The pronoun jokainen (each/every) strictly behaves as a singular word. Just like in English where we say 'every apprentice stays' rather than 'every apprentice stay', Finnish requires both the noun (oppipoika) and the verb (jää) to remain in the singular.
Why is the object hiiltä in the partitive case?
Hiili (coal) functions as an uncountable mass noun here. Because the apprentices are burning an open-ended, unspecified amount of coal, the object takes the partitive case.
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