Language/Finnish/Grammar/Sentence-Structure

Word Order in Finnish

Finnish language (suomen kieli) has relatively free word order (sanajärjestys). This can be demonstrated by list below.

All the forms of the sentence (lause) have same meaning (merkitys) and are fully understandable (ymmärrettävä).

Different sanajärjestykset have usually different emphasizations (painotukset) as follows:

• Kissat söivät eilen kanaa (The "normal form", means "("The" or not "the") cats ate (not specified how much) chicken yesterday (lit. "Cats ate yesterday chicken")
• Eilen kissat söivät kanaa (Emphasized what kind of food cats ate or answered to "Ovatko kissat syöneet kanaa?", "Have cats ate any chicken?")
• Kissat söivät kanaa eilen (It's emphasized that it happened yesterday)
• Kanaa söivät eilen kissat (It's emphasized that it happened by cats)
• Eilen kanaa söivät kissat (May be as an example answer to "Kuka söi kanaa eilen?", "Who ate chicken yesterday?", emphasized that is was cats)
• Söivät kissat eilen kanaa (May be as an example answer to "Ovatko kissat syöneet mitään?", "Have the cats ate?" or "Eli kissat eivät syöneet eilen mitään?", "So does that mean cats didn't ate anything yesterday?")
• Kanaa kissat söivät eilen (May be as an example answer to "Eli kissat söivät kanaa ja lohta toissapäivänä?", "So does that mean cats ate chicken and salmon day before yesterday?"
• Söivät kanaa eilen kissat (May be as an example answer to "Eli kukaan ei siis ole syönyt kanaa?", "So does that mean nobody have ate chicken?")
• Eilen kissat kanaa söivät (May be as an example answer to "Eli kissat söivät kanaa toissapäivänä?", "So does that mean cats ate chicken day before yesterday?", but emphasizes bit more that asker made mistake when compared to abovementioned "Kanaa kissat söivät eilen")
• Kanaa kissat eilen söivät (Sounds somewhat weird, would be usable in poetry)
• Söivät eilen kissat kanaa (Sounds somewhat weird, would be usable in poetry)
• Eilen kanaa kissat söivät (Sounds somewhat weird, would be usable in poetry)

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However, not kaikentyyppiset (all types of) lauseet are as freely mixable as one showed above. Esimerkiksi (as an example), if lause "Tomi syö aamiaista", "Tomi is eating breakfast" is changed to form "syö Tomi aamiaista", then it would primarily mean "Tomi, eat breakfast", but has also weird-sounding merkitys "Tomi is eating breakfast". This is because verb (verbi) 'syödä' is 'syö' in both 2nd person indicative present form and 2nd person imperative form. This is quite common among Finnish verbs, other examples (esimerkit) of this are 'leikata' (to cut, both these forms are 'leikkaa'), 'hypätä' (to jump, 'hyppää'), 'myydä' (to sell, 'myy') and 'viedä' (to bring away, 'vie').

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Also, if there is a comma (pilkku) or conjuction (konjunktio) like 'että', 'koska', 'vaikka', 'niin kuin', 'jotta', 'kun', 'kuin' somewhere within the lause then there is lot fewer mixing options with the same merkitys. Usually then you can mix words within each side of pilkku, but not between different sides. An esimerkkilause is:

• Hän nauroi, vaikka se tekikin kipeää (meaning "(S)he laughed even though it (laughing) made him/her feeling pain, lit. "(S)he laughed, though it made painful")

...which doesn't mean same if you start to mix words between two sides of the pilkku, as can be seen in following examples:

• Kipeää tekikin, vaikka hän se nauroi (not the same merkitys, sounds weird but can be understood as "And it indeed did feel painful, even (s)he only laughed")
• Hän tekikin, vaikka se nauroi kipeää (not the same merkitys, would otherwise be understandable, but "nauroi kipeää" means nothing)
• Hän se, vaikka nauroi tekikin kipeää (makes no sense)
• Hän vaikka, se nauroi tekikin kipeää (makes no sense)
• Hän kipeää, vaikka se tekikin nauroi (makes no sense)

Consider broadening your understanding by checking out these related lessons:How to Use Have, Past Participle in Finnish, Questions & Basic Sentence Structure.

Other Lessons

• Present Tense
• Past Participle in Finnish
• How to Use Be
• Pronouns
• Possessive Case in Finnish
• Indefinite Articles in Finnish
• Prepositions
• Adjectives
• Future Tense
• Past Tense