En vihannut lounasta tänään, mutta pidän enemmän päivällisestä.

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Breakdown of En vihannut lounasta tänään, mutta pidän enemmän päivällisestä.

• mutta: but
• tänään: today
• enemmän: more
• lounas: the lunch
• päivällinen: the dinner
• pitää: to like
• vihata: to hate

Questions & Answers about En vihannut lounasta tänään, mutta pidän enemmän päivällisestä.

Why is “lounasta” used instead of “lounas” in this sentence?

In Finnish, when a verb is negated, the object typically appears in the partitive case rather than the nominative. “Lounas” is the dictionary form for “lunch,” and “lounasta” is its partitive form. This rule helps express incomplete or non-totalized actions or feelings—in this case, indicating that the lunch was not entirely “hated.”

Why does “pidän” take the object in the elative case as “päivällisestä”?

The verb “pitää” (meaning “to like”) follows a fixed construction where what is liked is expressed in the elative case (marked by the –stä ending). Thus, “päivällinen” (dinner) becomes “päivällisestä” to conform to the pattern “pidän jostakin,” which literally means “I like (of) something.”

What role does “tänään” play in the sentence?

“Tänään” means “today” and provides the temporal context. It specifies that the statement about not hating lunch applies to the events of today, anchoring the remark in a specific time.

Why is there a comma before “mutta” in the sentence?

Much like in English, Finnish uses commas to separate clauses for clarity. The comma before “mutta” (which means “but”) helps clearly demarcate the contrasting parts of the sentence, emphasizing the shift from the negative feeling about lunch to the positive preference for dinner.

How does negation affect the form of the verb and its object in this sentence?

Finnish expresses negation with a dedicated negative auxiliary. In the first clause, “en” (the first-person singular negative) appears before “vihannut” (the negative form of “to hate”), and as a consequence, the object “lounasta” is in the partitive case. This is a standard feature in Finnish grammar where negated verbs lead to their objects appearing in the partitive.

Why isn’t the subject “I” explicitly mentioned in the sentence?

Finnish verb conjugation inherently contains information about the subject. Both “en” and “pidän” clearly signal a first-person singular subject, making the use of an explicit pronoun like “minä” (I) unnecessary. This subject omission is common in Finnish when the context is clear.