Learn how to ask "Who?"
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| 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! |
Comments
Hide