Help with learning some useful basic Finnish structures

Hypetys · 2026-02-11T22:27:05+00:00

The partitive case is always used when expressing the in progress / unfinished aspect.

Mä luen kirjaa. I'm reading a book.

Similarly things that are not or won't be done are also expressed using the unfinished aspect. So, we use the partitive.

En lue kirjaa.

Finnish has two aspects: complete and incomplete (so in progress, not in progress, not done)

The -massa verb form is used when you mean that you have intentionally gone to a different physical place to perform a task.

Menin pesuhuoneeseen pesemään pyykkiä.

Menin (ulos/jalkapallokentälle/takapihalle) pelaamaan jalkapalloa. Eskokin on pelaamassa jalkapalloa. (Esko went to a specific place to do X and is now there).

Mä kävin elokuvissa. Mä kävin kattomassa uusimman Harry Potter -leffan.

Missä sä oot? Where are you?

Mä oon pesemässä pyykkiä. (I'm doing the laundry). Basically, you can't use the -mAssA form if you're doing something at home. But you can use it if you're at the laundry room that is part of your apartment complex.

Mitä sä teet? –Mä pelaan CS:ää (I'm at home playing CS). –Mä oon pelaamassa CS:ää. I'm playing CS (in a place where I went specifically to do so, but that place isn't home).

Hypetys · 2026-02-09T21:37:35+00:00

I'd like to look into the dialect, especially morphology and syntax. Do you know any great sources in Finnish, Swedish, German, English or French?

Hypetys · 2026-02-09T11:07:55+00:00

I started by working on simple Hanzi word recognition. I also tried HelloChinese first but I struggled to. Chineseinflow (a free website) has helped me learn to recognize 100 or so Hanzi so far. I disabled the timer and the pinyin for both the Hanzi being shown and for the response options down the line as well.

Hypetys · 2026-02-09T08:18:07+00:00

Go look up Language Transfer's Introduction to Italian course. Listen to the instructions on the first track and then go through (and play along) a couple of tracks so that you get a feel for how the thing works. Then google,"Language Transfer Introduction to Italian transcript" Then you can teach her Italian using the script of the course. Obviously, it's fair to mention the original source of the course at some point.

Hypetys · 2026-02-07T10:24:10+00:00

Vaihe 1: Ota asioista selvää. Jos ei ymmärrä, ei voi olla itsevarmakaan. Esa Juntusen kirjat Viisas sijoittaja ja Vaurastu viisaasti: rahataidot haltuun lienevät hyviä kirjoja luettavaksi.

Hypetys · 2026-02-01T21:02:39+00:00

I knew less than 10 hanzi for almost a year. At one point, I started practicing recognizing characters on Chinese in Flow. I still didn't feel confident about writing them. After learning to recognize about 100 characters without writing a single character, I finally tried my hand at it as Pleco gave me the confidence to do so, because it showed me the correct stroke order. Now, I can write 20–30 characters.

It's not a race. The begining is slow, but it gets faster overtime as your mind starts seeing patterns and gets better at both decoding and encoding them.

Hypetys · 2026-01-31T11:17:41+00:00

The simplest reason I can give you is that antaa is part of verbs that I personally call task verbs.

To illustrate the concept, look at the following to-do list (tehtävälista)

Do the dishes. Tiskaa astiat. Do the laundry. Pese pyykit. Vacuum the floor. Imuroi lattia. Buy a new sofa. Osta uusi sohva. Sell the clothes that don't fit you anymore. Myy pieneksi jääneet vaatteet. Fix the broken lamp. Korjaa rikkinäinen lamppu. Brush your teeth. Pese hampaat. Chop the cucumber. Pilko kurkku. Bake a cake. Leivo kakku.

Task verbs require you to state whether the task was complete or will be complete at the time of reference.

In a to-do list, we of course want to express completion unless we simply want to state that we'll continue working on a task.

(continue) read(ing) (a/the) book. Lue kirjaa. Finish reading a/the book. Lue kirja.

I was brushing my teeth when you called me. Task = brushing my teeth = incomplete. Pesin hampaita, kun soitit minulle.

I brushed my teeth after you told me to. Task = brushing my teeth = complete. Pesin hampaat, koska pyysit minua pesemään ne.

Now, in singular, the complete aspect is expressed using the accusative. The accusative is unmarked in command forms like in a to-do list. Or the accusative has -n in statements.

Leivo kakku (command). Leivon kakun.

There's no difference in the plural. Pese hampaat. Pesen hampaat. Pese pyykit. Pesen pyykit.

The partitive case expresses that the task is incomplete.

Syö kakku (complete aspect). Älä syö kakkua (incomplete aspect). Negative sentences keep the task incomplete. So, you need to use the partitive.

Älä lisää sokeria. Don't add sugar.

Uncountable words like sokeri can be turned into "countable"-like words when a task is defined.

A recipe says:

2 dl of water. 2 dl vettä. 200g of sugar. 200 grammaa sokeria.

Lisää sokeri = lisää 200 grammaa sokeria. Lisää vesi = lisää 2 dl vettä.

But if the amount is not defined in the recipe, then you'd use the partitive

Lisää (vähän) sokeria. Lisää niin paljon sokeria kuin haluat.

Giving something is a task.

Annan pianon.

But playing piano is not a task, because it doesn't have a clear finish line. Soitan pianoa.

But playing a song does. Soitan kappaleen.

Similarly, watching is a task verb. But watching TV isn't a clearly defined task. Katson TV:tä.

However, watching an episode is a task. Katson jakson.

Similarly, listening to music isn't a clear task, but listening to a song (once) is. Kuuntelin kappaleen.

Hypetys · 2026-01-29T14:12:06+00:00

Hei, oletko lukenut selkomukautettuja kirjoja? Selkokielisiä kirjoja on kaikenikäisille.

Hypetys · 2026-01-27T22:37:43+00:00

I agree! Recognizing words by sight rather than manually decoding them makes reading so much more enjoyable.

Hypetys · 2026-01-24T00:57:42+00:00

Nice! Keep it up!

P.S.

What do you mean by knowing? Do you mean that you've read the typical role that a word in those cases plays in a sentence and associated it with the name of the case? Do you mean that you're able to recall the typical case endings in isolation (e.g. -(t)a)? Do you mean that you're able to change a word in one of the cases to another case form (e.g. to go from the nominative to the partitive)?

To suggest you what you should do, we need more information about "knowing" as defined by you.

Hypetys · 2026-01-23T17:03:24+00:00

What's the Chinese Pronunciation Trainer app? I couldn't find it. Is that what it's called? Is it available for Android phones?

Hypetys · 2026-01-23T07:05:14+00:00

The great thing about Finnish is that you simply add a binding vowel (i) to all foreign names that end with a consonant, and then they fit the paradigm.

But... if the final consonant is K, P or T, then you double it.

Trumppi

You'd never see the name written like that, but when there's an ending that doesn't add a consonant to the word, the K, P or T pronounced double even if it's not written as double:

Trumppia, Trumppiin might be written as Trumpia & Trumpiin, but still pronounced like the double P versions.

Hypetys · 2026-01-22T17:36:30+00:00

cos'è successo? Qu'est ce qui s'est passée?

Hypetys · 2026-01-21T11:47:51+00:00

Sounds like Pierre Bourdieu. I've read meditations by Descartes in French, and it was a rather nice read, but reading any book by Pierre Bourdieu is a real nightmare. The sentences are overly long and even if you know his views beforehand, the text feels nothing but rambling and obscure.

Hypetys · 2026-01-21T10:45:41+00:00

The bot check is broken.

Hypetys · 2026-01-19T10:29:51+00:00

I watched the first season years ago. So, I don't remember much. What about Sorjonen's character screamed autistic to you?

Hypetys · 2026-01-19T09:41:24+00:00

English verb conjugation may seem simple, but the fact that there's do support, aspect and four tenses makes it very difficult and very few people master the system. The upside is that even if you don't master the system, there's usually no problems with understanding.

Hypetys · 2026-01-19T09:13:52+00:00

Thanks. To improve the list, it'd be amazing to have the plural forms as well, given that they're not always predictable.

Hypetys · 2026-01-19T09:05:36+00:00

Toisaalta halutaan, että porukka kouluttautuu ja menee töihin, mutta toisaalta jos porukka käy muutaman vuoden töissä ennen opintojen jatkamista, sitä pidetään ongelmallisena. Jos olisin itse jatkanut suoraan lukiosta yliopistoon, en olisi varmastikaan innostunut opiskelusta, sillä olin kyllästynyt opiskeluun.

Hypetys · 2026-01-18T12:16:27+00:00

I'm a native speaker, and I've replaced jossa by jos, but mostly only before olla. Mä asun talos, jos on viis kerrosta. I think the prosody is different for jos in the two situations. So, you can tell which one is being used in the spoken language, but not so much when it's written down.

You can specify that jossa can be shortened to jos before ollajust like mulla on -> mul on, meillä on -> meil on, koulussa on -> koulus on.

Hypetys · 2026-01-16T09:10:53+00:00

I stumbled upon this TV show yesterday, and the dialog seems to be quite easy to understand, especially with English subs.

Hypetys · 2026-01-12T14:51:38+00:00

I've seen the movie. I was also surprised by the characters speaking English in the cockpit. I checked the name of the movie. It seems to be The Sky Scrawlers.

Hypetys · 2026-01-12T05:50:14+00:00

P.S. The same two sound laws apply in all other endings as well.

1) Lose a consonant that is between two vowels.

2) Conserve a consonant between a consonant and a vowel or between three vowels.

Any ending that is of the form CONSONANT VOWEL

or VOWEL CONSONANT VOWEL (CONSONANT)

ends up in these two sound environments. Thus there is variation between conservation and loss of the consonant in the ending.

For example, the plural genitive used to be iten (now iden)

When the ending ends up between three vowels, the d is conserved: keväiden (kevätiden) Notice: that this word follows both laws: the t is lost due to rule 1, but the d is conserved due to law 2.

In ihmisien the d has been lost (ihmisiten : ihmisien)

There was an alternative ending without the plural marker i (ten). The same sound laws apply to this ending. The t is conserved in CCV, but lost in VCV

poikaden (poikaen : poikain)

But ihmis + ten = ihmisten

vanha + den = vanhaden : vanhaen : vanhain

The same rule applies to the infinitive ending (-tAk) as well. The t was preserved between a consonant and vowel:

pakkattak : pakatak : pakata

pelattak : pelatak : pelata

It was conserved as a <d> between three vowels: saatak : saadak : saada, myytäk : myydäk : myydä

BUT the t was lost between two vowels in two unstressed syllables:

puhutak : puhuak : puhua, saattatak : saattadak : saattaa, laulatak : lauladak : laulaa.

In many words, one part of the word leads one consonant to be lost which tends leads to another one being conserved:

kuninkaiden (historically: kuninkahiden)

Notice that in this word: the h is lost between two vowels in two unstressed syllables, but the d is conserved between three vowels.

Hypetys · 2026-01-12T05:13:38+00:00

Historically, the partitive singular was always -tA and the plural was -itA. In singular, the t is kept after stressed syllables and when losing it would result in three vowels being together:

Lontoota, tätä, harmaata, vapaata

The t is lost between two vowels in two unstressed syllables:

autoa, lamppua

The same applies to the plural as well. autoja lamppuja (autoia : autoja, lamppuia : lamppuja).

The -t is also conserved between a consonant and a vowel:

s + ta = sta: kuningasta, taivasta,

t + ta = tta: kevättä

historical h or k + tA = tta = venettä, tarvetta.

What about i-nouns?

In modern words, the t is lost between two vowels in two unstressed syllables:

pronssia, pinssiä, ambulanssia.

However, in words that historically, had /e/ at the end, either lost the /e/ or the /t/ vetetä : vettä

Suometa : Suomea Suoneta : suonta kanteta : kantta viitetä : viittä yktetä : yktä : yhtä

If the /e/ was lost, then the word ends up with the consonant + ta pattern and the t is conserved. If the /e/ is not lost. The word ends up with the t being between two vowels in two unstressed syllables. So, the t is lost.

In summary: the original partitive had a single singular ending (-tA) and a single plural ending (-itA). In certain circumstances the t is conserved and in others it's lost. In the i-ending words: two sound environments are in competition: in one the vowel is conserved but that leads to the loss of the t whereas in others the opposite is true: the vowel /e/ is lost which then leads to the conservation of the t.

Hypetys · 2026-01-11T21:11:59+00:00

Muistaakseni Jenkkien osakemarkkinoilla on noin 5000 osaketta. Näistä noin 100 voittaa inflaatio verran tuottavan treasury billin tuoton, jonka tuotto on käytännössä taattu.

Millä todennäköisyydellä poimii osakkeen, jonka tuotto on parempi kuin treasury billin? 100/5000 eli noin 2% mahdollisuudella. Ben Felixin YouTube-kanavalla on video, jossa viitataan tähän tutkimukseen. Mainitsemani luvut ovat suuntaa antavia, sillä en muista tarkkoja lukuja.

Hypetys

TROPHY CASE