Learn how to ask "When?"
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| Hei, minun nimeni on Paula. Hi everybody! I’m Paula. |
| Welcome to FinnishPod101.com’s “Suomea kolmessa minuutissa”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Finnish. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to ask the question "Where" in Finnish. |
| This time, we’re going to make "When" questions. |
| Let’s go! Aloitetaan! |
| So let’s imagine your friend is planning to visit your place and you would like to know when he is coming. You could ask him Milloin sinä tulet käymään? |
| "When will you come and visit?" |
| [slowly] Milloin sinä tulet käymään? |
| Let’s break down this answer. |
| First we had- |
| Milloin, which is the question word "When" in Finnish. |
| Sinä means “you". |
| tulet käymään is the conjugated form of tulla käymään, which means “to come and visit”. You still remember the verb tulla from an earlier lesson, right? |
| So, altogether it’s Milloin sinä tulet käymään? |
| "When will you come and visit?" |
| So the basic translation for “When” would be milloin in Finnish. Like if you want to ask "When were you born?" it would be Milloin sinä olet syntynyt? |
| Remember to always place the question word first in the sentence. |
| There are also more specific ways to ask the question “When”. The same as in English, milloin can be a somewhat vague question. |
| If you want to know something more exactly, you could ask Mihin aikaan? which would be translated as “At what time?” |
| For example, if you want to know at what time the train is leaving, you would ask |
| Mihin aikaan juna lähtee? |
| "At what time is the train leaving?" |
| [slowly] Mihin aikaan juna lähtee? |
| Juna is the Finnish word for “train”, and lähtee the conjugated form of the verb lähteä, meaning “to leave”. |
| Another one with the same meaning as Mihin aikaan would be Monelta. Literally, it means “at how many”, so you can think of it as meaning “at how many hours”. Do you still remember the ending -ko to indicate a question, that we learned in the last lesson? It can often be added, so it turns out as Moneltako. |
| So let’s say you are going to a concert, but you’re not sure what time it starts. You could ask - |
| Moneltako se konsertti alkaa? which would translate as “At what time is that concert starting?” |
| If you want to ask a question about duration such as "For how long have you been in Finland?" you would say Miten kauan olet ollut Suomessa? |
| So the expression “For how long” would be Miten kauan or kuinka kauan, which means the same thing. |
| Now let’s say you want to meet a friend. How would you ask "When will we meet?" in Finnish? You can actually use any of the question words milloin, mihin aikaan, or monelta to start with. For example, Milloin me tapaamme? |
| You start off with the question word milloin, and then me, which means “we”. |
| Here’s a new verb, tavata, “to meet”. When conjugated with me, it becomes tapaamme. |
| Milloin me tapaamme? “When will we meet?” |
| If you want to be specific about the year, month, or weekday, there is a slightly different way to ask. |
| “What year” would be minä vuonna. |
| For example in the sentence “What year did you graduate?”, in Finnish you would ask |
| Minä vuonna sinä valmistuit? |
| Or if you want to know about the month, it would be missä kuussa. |
| Like in the sentence “Which month were you born in?” |
| Missä kuussa sinä olet syntynyt? |
| If you want to ask a friend on what day she is free, you would use the expression minä päivänä. |
| Minä päivänä sinä olet vapaa? |
| Now it’s time for Paula’s Points. |
| You probably remember the word for “me” is minä in Finnish. Were you wondering why it was used in the questions minä vuonna and minä päivänä? Actually, minä is also a conjugated form of the question word mikä, meaning “what”! |
| So now we have learned how to correctly use the words for "When"! |
| In the next lesson, we’ll learn more about asking questions with "Who" in Finnish. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Suomea kolmessa minuutissa lesson. |
| Nähdään pian! |
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