Peili yritti harhauttaa meitä.

Finnish does not have articles like a, an, or the.

So peili can mean either a mirror or the mirror, depending on context. In this sentence, English would most naturally use the mirror, but Finnish does not need a separate word for that.

Peili is in the nominative singular, which is the basic dictionary form.

Here it is the subject of the sentence, meaning it is the thing doing the action. The sentence structure is:

• Peili = subject
• yritti = finite verb
• harhauttaa meitä = infinitive phrase

Because the subject is singular, the verb is also singular.

Yritti is the past tense, third-person singular form of yrittää, which means to try.

A few related forms:

• minä yritin = I tried
• sinä yritit = you tried
• hän yritti = he or she tried

So peili yritti means the mirror tried.

After yrittää, Finnish normally uses the next verb in the first infinitive, which is the dictionary form.

So:

• yrittää tehdä = to try to do
• yrittää nähdä = to try to see
• yrittää harhauttaa = to try to mislead

In English, this is usually translated with to plus a verb. In Finnish, the infinitive form itself already does that job.

Meitä is the partitive form of the pronoun me.

The basic idea is:

• me = we
• meidät = us, as a total object
• meitä = us, as a partitive object

In this sentence, meitä means us and is the object of harhauttaa.

This is an object case question.

Here, Finnish uses the partitive object meitä. With harhauttaa, the partitive is very natural because the action is viewed as affecting or misleading the target rather than presenting a neat, clearly completed result.

So harhauttaa meitä sounds natural for mislead us.

Very roughly:

• meitä = us, as the target of an ongoing or non-bounded effect
• meidät = us, as a more total, bounded object

In real Finnish, this choice depends on verb behavior and how the situation is viewed, not just on direct English logic.

It is the object of harhauttaa.

The sentence is built like this:

• Peili = the mirror
• yritti = tried
• harhauttaa meitä = to mislead us

So the structure is basically:

The mirror tried [to mislead us].

The verb yrittää takes an infinitive complement, and the object belongs to that infinitive verb.

No. Finnish word order is fairly flexible.

The sentence as given is the most neutral, straightforward order:

Peili yritti harhauttaa meitä.

But other orders are possible for emphasis, such as:

• Meitä peili yritti harhauttaa.
  This puts extra focus on us.

• Harhauttaa meitä peili yritti.
  This is much more marked and stylistic.

So the original version is the plain, neutral way to say it.

A few useful pronunciation points:

• Stress is on the first syllable of each word.
• Double letters matter in Finnish and are held longer.

Word by word:

• Peili = roughly PEI-li
• yritti = Y-rit-ti, with a Finnish y sound similar to German ü or French u
• harhauttaa = HAR-haut-taa
• meitä = MEI-tä

Important length contrasts here:

• tt in yritti is a long t
• aa in harhauttaa is a long a

Those length differences are meaningful in Finnish, so they should not be ignored.

Yes.

Harhauttaa suggests misleading, leading astray, or throwing someone off. It often fits situations where someone or something causes you to form a wrong impression.

It is a bit different from:

• huijata = to cheat or trick
• pettää = to deceive, betray
• johtaa harhaan = to lead astray or mislead

So harhauttaa works especially well if the mirror creates a false impression or confuses perception.