The ones where the verb conjugates according to the person:
- Minä asun tuossa kerrostalossa. - I live in that apartment building. (The simple sentence. Nothing special here.)
- Me olemme opiskelijoita. - We are students. (A predicative sentence. Might cause confusion because of the occasional plural partitive.)
- Minä juon nyt kahvia. - I'm drinking coffee now. (A sentence with an object.)
- Minä tykkään opiskella suomea. - I like to study Finnish. (Two verbs, the second one in the basic form.)
- Minä menen nyt nukkumaan. - I'm going to sleep now. (Two verbs, the second one in ma-infinitive.) (Oh, you might like my post about the English -ing form.)
The ones where the verb is always in the same (3rd person singular) form. It's the personal pronoun that changes:
- Minulla on kokous neljältä. - I have a meeting at four o'clock. (Having something.)
- Baarissa oli paljon ihmisiä. - There were many people in the bar. (An existential clause, as in There is something somewhere. Again, you might need plural partitive.)
- Minun täytyy maksaa tämä lasku. - I have to pay this bill. (Having to do something.)
- Sinun kannattaa nyt lähteä. - You should leave now. (A sentence with kannattaa.)
- Tämä elokuva itkettää minua. - This movie makes me cry. (Sentences with feeling verbs.)
The sentences that express a change or a result can be in either category:
- Tulin äidiksi 31-vuotiaana. - I became a mother when I was 31 years old.
- Minusta tuli äiti 31-vuotiaana. - I became a mother when I was 31 years old.
Read more about this topic here: https://randomfinnishlesson.blogspot.com/2014/02/how-to-become-something-in-finnish.html
These ones have no personal pronoun at all:
- Ota lisää! - Take more! (This verb form is called imperative.)
- Saako täällä syödä omia eväitä? - Is it ok to eat your own food here? (A generic sentence, the subject could be anyone.)
- (On) tosi tylsää, että teidän pitää jo lähteä. - (It's) super lame, that you have to leave already. (Expressing your opinion with an adjective in the beginning of the sentence.)
- Suomessa juodaan paljon kahvia. - They drink a lot of coffee in Finland. (A passive sentence.)
If you want to read about forming questions, which you can do with all the sentence types, I have a post about the question words and another about the questions ending with ko or kö.
4 comments:
Thanks for your blog and for that kind of round up.
I could definitely read and use a post about those sentences that have a 'kind of subject' in the genitive (though I feel it's more a dative complement than a genitive subject) + modal verb + verb in 1st infinitive. Like «Ulkomaalaisten kannattaa opiskella suomea.» A short list or more example of modal verbs that require that construction would be great ! :-)
Tässä postauksessa on joitain sellaisia verbejä: http://randomfinnishlesson.blogspot.fi/2014/07/a-infinitive.html (Pahoittelen, että vastaan 3,5 vuotta myöhässä.:))
Ive read countless blogs and chapters and wrote down countless of my own charts but im still struggling with creating my own sentences. Would you give me a few quick and simple tips on how to translate an english sentence to finnish? I have alot of finnish in me and would love to learn it but im terrible. You can email me at the provided email i usei used to post this.
Challenge accepted! Give me a couple of English sentences that you'd like to say in Finnish and I'll write a blog post about them. I'm pretty sure that figuring out the sentence type is the key.
Post a Comment