Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Being interested in Finnish

When expressing interest in Finnish, these words are good to know:

Kiinnostaa - to interest


  • Tämä asia kiinnostaa minua. - This subject interests me. 


Kiinnostua - to become interested


  • Kiinnostuin tästä asiasta viime kesänä. - I became interested in this subject last summer. 


Kiinnostunut - interested


  • Olen kiinnostunut tästä asiasta. - I'm interested in this subject. 

Kiinnostava / mielenkiintoinen - interesting



Random sentences that might be interesting and useful:


  • Kiinnostaisiko sinua tulla meidän kokoukseen? - Would you be interested in coming to our meeting? 
  • Miksi tämä kiinnostaa sinua? - Why does this interest you?
  • en jaksa nyt kiinnostua mistään. - I don't have the energy to get interested in anything right now.   
  • Kiinnostuin klassisesta musiikista jo teini-ikäisenä. - I got interested in classical music already as a teenager. 
  • Olen kiinnostunut yrityksenne ostamisesta. - I'm interested in buying your company.
  • Valitettavasti en ole kiinnostunut tarjouksestanne. - Unfortunately, I'm not interested in your offer. 
  • Kuulostaa mielenkiintoiselta. - Sounds interesting.
  • Onpa mielenkiintoista! - How interesting

If you liked this, you might also like my post about being nervous and excited in Finnish.







About the author of Random Finnish Lesson:


My name is Hanna Männikkölahti. I am a professional Finnish teacher who gives private online lessons and simplifies books into easy Finnish. Please read more in www.linktr.ee/hannamannikkolahti and follow this blog, if you want to be the first one to know when I post something new.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Hanna, let me first compliment you for doing nice job with this blog. Those small portions of finish grammar are just very good to digest :)

I have some trouble with figuring out the use of partitive as a part of the predicate.
In a children´s book I sometimes read I found following sentences:
1) Mutta olisi mukavaa saada hetki huilata.
2) (…) perhosten kanssa on hauska lekkiä (…)
I just don´t get it, why it is "hauska" not "hauskaa" in the second sentence... there is an infinitive following the adverb in both cases. I feel so dull.Please help!!!

Hanna said...

Hei, thanks for the feedback and a challenging question!

I vaguely remember learning from somewhere that if the adjective is super common (whatever that is.. at least hyvä, hauska, kiva, mukava, tylsä - good, funny, nice, nice, boring), it can be either in nominative or in partitive.

- Oli mukava jutella teidän kanssa. (It was nice to talk with you)
- Oli mukavaa jutella teidän kanssa.

Ok, now this started bothering me so I went to get my Grammar book of Finnish by Leila White. The answer is on the page 323. Phew, I remembered it correctly. :)

Usually the adjectives are in partitive:

- Onpa erikoista, että kaupat ovat tänään kiinni. (How strange that the shops are closed today.)
- Mahtavaa, että sait sen työpaikan! (Great, that you got the job!)

The adjectives hyvä, paha and parempi (good, bad, better) are always in the nominative case.

- Onpa hyvä, että tulit. (How nice that you came)

If the predicative is a noun, it is also always in the nominative:

- Onpa harmi, että sinun pitää lähteä. (Too bad you have to leave. harmi= harm, nuisance, worry)

Oh, which children's book were you reading? :)

Anonymous said...

Hei Hanna, voi kiitos avustasi! You´ve cleared a lot for me. So I´ll stick to partitive by adjectives generally except for hyvä, paha and parempi. I think that´s a great strategy.

And thank you for replaying so quickly. I´ve noticed your response just yet, because I´ve kept checking under a false blog entry :-S

The book is called Hyvää yötä, Muumipeikko and is by Tittamari Marttinen. It has nice short chapters and only about 60 pages in total, so it makes me feel like reading in Finnish wouldn´t be almost any problem at all ;-) But seriously, it has lots of useful everyday phrases but still in nice written Finnish. I can really recommend it.

Thank you again and have a nice week!