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Lesson Transcript

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 "When" questions in Finnish.
This time, we are going to ask questions with the Finnish word for "Who?", Kuka.
Imagine you’re in class, and there seems to be a new classmate. You ask your friend
Kuka hän on?
Who is she?
[slowly] Kuka hän on?
So let’s break down this question.
First we had-
Kuka which is the basic question word for "Who" in Finnish.
Hän is the pronoun for “he” or “she”. As there is no gender used in the Finnish language, it can mean either.
On is the conjugated form of the verb olla, “to be”, which we learned in a previous lesson.
Altogether, it is Kuka hän on?
So in Finnish, "Who" is mainly translated as Kuka.
However, this can only be used in the singular, and in plural it usually gets the form ketkä or keitä.
For example, if you are browsing a photo album and want to ask who the people are, you would ask
Keitä nämä ovat?
“Who are these?”
The question word kuka also conjugates in all different cases both in the plural and the singular. In this lesson, we’ll take a look at the most commonly used ones.
When talking about animals, you usually use mikä. However, kuka is sometimes used when talking about a loved pet.
Kuka can also be used to ask who did something.
For example, Kuka ohjasi tämän elokuvan?
This means "Who directed this movie?"
Another form of kuka that’s used when you want to know who owns something is Kenen? In this case, the meaning is "whose".
So if you want to ask "Whose cell phone is this?" you will have to say Kenen kännykkä tämä on?
If we break down this question, it is-
Kenen, which is "whose"
kännykkä, which is “cell phone”.
Then we have tämä which simply means “this”.
And finally, on, which is the conjugated form of the verb olla, “to be”.
If you thought the item might be owned by more than one person, you would use the plural. In this case, the plural of kenen is keiden.
Another commonly used conjugation of kuka is kenelle, which means “for whom”.
So if you want to know "For whom is this letter?" you would ask
Kenelle tämä kirje on?
Or if it is for more than one person,
Keille tämä kirje on?
And if you wanted to find out “from whom” the letter is, the question word changes into
Keneltä tämä kirje on?
Or in the plural, if the letter had been written by more than one person,
Keiltä tämä kirje on?
Now it’s time for Paula’s Points.
This is a useful sentence to remember. You get a knock on your door, and you want to know who it is. You can simply ask Kuka siellä? which directly translated would mean “Who is there?”. Also, if you get a phone call and the caller forgets to introduce himself, you can politely ask
Anteeksi, kuka siellä on?
“Excuse me, who is this?”
In this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the word for "Who", kuka, and also its some of the common conjugations.
The next lesson will be our last of this absolute beginner series.
We will deal with the last question word Miksi. Do you already know what it means? If not, you’ll find out in the next Suomea kolmessa minuutissa lesson.
Nähdään pian!

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