# Jos hallitus tekee uudet lait, ne vaikuttavat palkkaan ja lomaan



## rhitagawr

Dear Chums

I saw the following sentences on the Selkouutiset webpage Yle Uutiset | Yle Uutiset selkosuomeksi for 02/12/15.

_Jos hallitus tekee uudet lait, ne vaikuttavat palkkaan ja lomaan _and _Nyt hallitus ehkä tekee uusia lakeja.._.

_Uudet lait_ is the object, so I don’t see why it’s nominative in the first sentence, especially as the two sentences are very similar in meaning in that they both talk about what might happen in the future. I can see why it might be partitive in the second sentence: because we’re not sure exactly what the new laws are going to look like and it’s still a bit vague. I can even see the case (although it may not be a strong one) for the genitive _uusien lajen_ (I hope I’ve got that right) if we know everything about the proposed new laws and we think the government is going to introduce them all.


Has anyone got any thoughts, please?


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## Grumpy Old Man

You have reversed the order of the two uses. _Lakeja _appears before _lait _in the news item. _Lait _seems to be used because the laws have already been mentioned and the reference is to those particular laws.


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## rhitagawr

The _Jos_... sentence is the caption to the blue box at the top. But I agree. In the text, it appears after the _Nyt_... sentence, which is more important. Apologies for any confusion and thank you for your swift reply, Grumpy Old Man.


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## Grumpy Old Man

I hadn't noticed the caption, but I see nothing wrong there, either. _Lait _is used because even though _lakeja _doesn't occur in the blue box, the effects of the new laws are listed in it. The plural genitive would be _uusien la*ki*en_, but that would be incorrectly used in the sentence.


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## fennofiili

rhitagawr said:


> The _Jos_... sentence is the caption to the blue box at the top. But I agree. In the text, it appears after the _Nyt_... sentence, which is more important. Apologies for any confusion [...].



The confusion was caused by the presentation style in the news item (for which the permanent URL is 
Keskiviikko 2.12.2015 – the URL in the original post is for “today’s” news). It has a graphic with some text under it, but this information is a summary of the news item, so reading it first – which is rather natural – may cause an odd impression indeed.

There are some other oddities, too, though largely shared by other texts on the topic these says. The word “yhteiskuntasopimus” has been used for “social contract” in Finnish (as in the texts of Rousseau and other philosophers), but these days, it is used for an attempt to reduce salaries by 5%. Surprisingly few people have questioned such usage. The verb “tehdä” has not had the the object “laki” in normal Finnish; instead of saying “laki tehdään” we say “laki säädetään”. Probably the reason for writing “hallitus tekee lakeja/lait” is that by the constitution, it is the parliament and the president of the republic that have legislative power, not the government, but in practice, the parties in the goverment almost always make their parlament groups support the proposals. (This may actually fail in this case.) The use of “ehkä” (four times!) is odd, too. The prime minister has clearly said that unless “yhteiskuntasopimus” is made, the government implements the same effect with legislation.


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## rhitagawr

I suppose 'social contract' is an odd term for what is in essence a financial agreement between employers and presumably not very happy employees or an arrangement which the government can force on everyone. (I hope I've understood the situation correctly.) On the other hand, compared to the United Kingdom, Finland is a social democratic (small _s_, small _d_) country, so I didn't question the usage. Fennofiili seems to be suggesting it's a kind of euphemism.
I suppose you could say _make a law_ in English. But it wouldn't sound very elegant. It looks as though it's the same with _tehdä_ in Finnish.
Selkouutiset uses _ehkä_ a lot. Not being an expert on Finnish modal verbs, I took this to mean that it's the normal way of saying that something may happen (or have happened) although _perhaps_ and _may_ don't mean quite the same thing in English and _perhaps_ isn't very stylish.
Anyway thank you both for clearing up my question about the direct object.


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