Learn Finnish: Poliisi ei ollut ampunut. - The police had not shot.

In Finnish, the passive voice is only used when the doer of the action is unknown or unspecified. Here, the doer is explicitly stated as poliisi (the police). Because we know exactly who did not do the action, we must use the active pluperfect negative: ei ollut ampunut.

How would we say 'had not been shot' using the passive pluperfect negative from this lesson?

To make it passive, we drop the specific subject (poliisi) and use the passive past participle for the main verb. It becomes Ei ollut ammuttu (There had not been shooting / It had not been shot). Notice how the auxiliary verb is still the active ollut, but the main verb changes to the passive ammuttu.

Why does Finnish use the singular negative verb ei when 'the police' is plural in English?

In Finnish, poliisi is grammatically a singular word. It can refer to the police force as a whole institution or to a single police officer. Because it is singular, it takes the third-person singular negative verb ei, unlike English which treats 'the police' as a plural group.

What verb form is ampunut?

It is the active past participle (often called the NUT-participle) of the verb ampua (to shoot). In the active pluperfect negative, both the auxiliary verb (olla) and the main verb are put into this active participle form, giving us ollut ampunut.