Learn Finnish: Me olemme saunassa torstaina. - We will be in the sauna on Thursday.

The word for Thursday is torstai. To say "on" a specific day of the week, Finnish uses the essive case. We just add the ending -na (or -nä) directly to the day, making it torstaina.

Why is the ending -na instead of -nä for Thursday?

This is because of vowel harmony. The word torstai contains the vowels o and a, which are back vowels. Because of this, we must use the back vowel ending -na rather than the front vowel ending -nä.

The translation says "We will be", but doesn't olemme just mean "we are"?

Yes, exactly! Finnish does not have a separate future tense. You simply use the present tense verb olemme and let the context, like mentioning a day of the week (torstaina), show that the action is happening in the future.

What does the -ssa ending on saunassa do?

The ending -ssa means "in" or "inside" (this is known as the inessive case). By adding it to the base word sauna, we get saunassa, which translates to "in the sauna".

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