The Finnish Teacher

Objekti <> The Object

I've only ever taught Finnish in Finnish and always when it comes to the subject of "objekti", I just
want to explain it in English, because it's so simple, and yet it makes students of Finnish want to
move to Sweden. First, in case you don't know what the object is, I'll explain it for you using a
Finnish sentence as an example.

Mies lukee kirjaa.

A simple sentence, but there's so much to discuss. This sentence contains the 2 main things that
you need to be able to separate in your mind, a subject and an object.
So which is which and how can you tell? Well, the subject is usually a person for starters, however
the object can also be a person.

The subject is the thing or person in the sentence that is DOING SOMETHING. In other words, the
verb in the sentence is always telling us what the subject is doing. The word lukee is telling us
what the man is doing, it's not telling us anything about the book.

The object on the other hand, is that which is having something DONE TO IT.

STOP!
NOT ALL SENTENCES CONTAIN AN OBJECT. Here is an example:

Ajan kouluun autolla.

This is where people get confused. The word autolla is NOT THE OBJECT. There is no object in this
sentence. The word autolla is telling you how I get to school rather than what I drive to school.

However...

Ajan autoa kouluun.

Now we have an object. The car. The word autoa is telling you what I drive.
I'll give you an example in English.

Sentence A) I drive a car to school.

Sentence B) I go to school by car.

Sentence A contains an object, the car. The car is the object because it's having something done
to it i.e. it's being driven by me, the subject.
Sentence B however is not harboring an object. For the word car to be the object, I need to
include a verb that tells us what is happening to the car.

In other words, if somebody says to you "What do you drive?"

You can only answer that question with the object i.e. "a porsche" "a car" "a bus" or whatever.
You can't answer that question with "in a car" or "by car"

What does the object look like in Finnish?

The object is actually easy to spot in Finnish because it is always in one of three grammatical
cases, therefore if a noun is in any of the other 12 cases, you know that it's not the object.
The object is always either nominatiivi, partitiivi or akkusatiivi (basic form, partitive or accusative).

Akkusatiivi

The akkusatiivi or accusative form looks the same as the genitive form BUT IT IS NOT THE SAME AS
THE GENITIVE FORM! The accusative form tells us that something is complete or entire. It's kind of
the opposite to partitive, which usually tells us that something is just part or a little i.e. not
necessarily complete.
Some teachers don't tell students about this case, they call it "genetiivi" instead. They know that
it's wrong but they think that it makes life easier for the students. It doesn't. I spent quite some
time reading sentences like...
Mies luki kirjan...

and thinking "the man is reading the book's... the book's WHAT??????" because I was told at !rst
that in this case kirjan was the genitive form, which it isn't.

Let's look back at that sentence... Mies luki kirjan.

The fact that the word kirjan is in this form tells us that the man read the whole book to the end,
and THAT is what akkusatiivi means.

So how do I work out which of the 3 forms to put the object into?

That's the easiest bit. Just remember the following:

When is the object partitive?:

1. When the verb is a partitive verb such as odottaa, rakastaa, harrastaa, inhota
or vihata.
2. When the sentence is negative.
3. After a number.
4. When the action is happening now and will not necessarily be completed
entirely.
5. When the object is a mass noun (a word that can't be counted i.e. vesi, kahvi,
ilma, riisi).
6. When we're only talking about a part or some of something. (osa tai vähän)

When is the object in it's basic form?:

1. When the verb is in the passive form. (ostetaan, syödään, luetaan,

kirjoitetaan)
2. When the clause is nesessiivi. (minun täytyy, on pakko, sinun pitää)
3. When it is a command. (Ota! Syö! Avaa! Lukekaa!)

When is the object accusative?:

1. When the action is completed, done to the end.
2. When it is a plan to do something and see it through to the end.

And also remember this:

Partitiivi is more important than Nominatiivi

Nominatiivi is more important than Akkusatiivi

Sometimes you'll want to say something like: Don't read that book!

Ahaa, it's a command (imperative), meaning that the object (that book) has to be in it's basic
form right?

Älä lue tuo kirja!

Oh but wait a sec.... "Don't".... "Älä".... that's a negative word... and in a negative sentence the
object is partitive and partitive is more important than nominative, so...

Älä lue tuota kirjaa!

That's better. Now it's correct.

So, any time you're not sure what form the object needs to be in, the answer is in that part
written above in red. Memorise it! It will help you so much in your studies. Look out for the
subjects and objects when you read the newspaper or your text books.

Here's the same steps to follow again but written in Finnish. There's also an exercise at the
bottom that you can copy and paste into a word processor if you like.

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