Word
Kissa on katolla.
Meaning
The cat is on the roof.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching Finnish grammar and vocabulary.
Questions & Answers about Kissa on katolla.
What part of katolla means "on"?
The ending -lla is what gives us "on" or "at" (the adessive case). We attach it directly to the end of the word.
The dictionary word for roof is katto. Why does it only have one 't' in katolla?
This happens because of a rule called consonant gradation. When we add an ending like -lla, a double consonant inside the word often shrinks to a single one. So, the double 't' in katto weakens to a single 't' in katolla.
Why did we use -lla instead of -llä here?
Because of vowel harmony. The word katto contains the vowels 'a' and 'o'. Since these are back vowels, we must use the back vowel version of the ending, which is -lla.
How do we know it translates to "The cat" and not "A cat"?
Finnish does not have words for "a" or "the". Instead, word order gives us a clue. Because Kissa is at the beginning of the sentence, it refers to a specific cat we already know about ("The cat"). To say "There is a cat on the roof", we would flip the order to: Katolla on kissa.