Breakdown of Opettaja pyytää meitä vastamaan kysymyksiin nopeasti.
kysymys
the question
me
we
pyytää
to ask
nopeasti
quickly
vastata
to answer
opettaja
the teacher
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Questions & Answers about Opettaja pyytää meitä vastamaan kysymyksiin nopeasti.
What tense and person is the verb pyytää in this sentence, and what does it mean?
pyytää is a present-tense, third-person-singular form of the verb pyytää, which means “to ask” or “to request.” Here it means “(the teacher) asks” or “(the teacher) requests.”
Why is meitä used instead of meidät or the nominative me?
The form meitä is the partitive of the pronoun “we.” In Finnish, many verbs that take an object in an incomplete or ongoing context use the partitive case. With pyytää you “ask someone to do something,” and that “someone” is put in the partitive. Hence pyytää meitä = “asks us.” You cannot replace it with meidät here.
What role does vastamaan play, and why does it end in -maan?
vastamaan is the first infinitive of vastata (“to answer/respond”) in its so-called -maan (illative infinitive) form. When Finnish uses one verb to request or help another verb’s action, the second verb appears in this -maan/-mään form. So pyytää meitä vastamaan literally = “asks us to answer.”
Why is kysymyksiin in the illative plural, and what does it express?
The verb vastata requires one to “answer something,” and Finnish expresses “something” with the illative case. Plural illative of kysymys (“question”) is kysymyksiin (“into questions” = “to questions”). Thus vastamaan kysymyksiin = “to answer questions.”
Why doesn’t Finnish use words like “to” or “that” between pyytää and vastamaan, as English does?
Finnish links many verbs of asking, telling, helping, etc., directly to an infinitive without conjunctions. Instead of “asks us to answer,” you simply say pyytää meitä vastamaan. If you did want a finite clause with “that,” you’d use että plus a conjugated verb:
• Opettaja pyytää, että vastaamme kysymyksiin nopeasti.
Why is nopeasti at the end, and could we move it elsewhere?
nopeasti is an adverb of manner (“quickly”). Finnish word order is quite flexible, but putting adverbs near the end is neutral/standard. You could also say:
• Opettaja pyytää meitä nopeasti vastaamaan kysymyksiin.
to slightly shift the emphasis onto the speed.
Why are there no articles (“a” or “the”) in this sentence?
Finnish does not have articles. Definiteness or indefiniteness is understood from context, so Opettaja can mean “the teacher” or “a teacher” without a separate word.