Breakdown of Hän laulaa, kun hän on iloinen.
olla
to be
hän
he / she
iloinen
happy
laulaa
to sing
kun
when (conjunction)
Questions & Answers about Hän laulaa, kun hän on iloinen.
The current lesson is about the question word 'milloin' (when). Why does this sentence use 'kun' for 'when'?
Excellent question! Milloin is a question word used only when you are actually asking a question (like 'When does she sing?'). Kun is a conjunction used to connect two thoughts in a statement, meaning 'at the time that'. Because this sentence is a statement and not a question, we must use kun.
Why is there a comma before kun? We usually wouldn't use one in English here.
Finnish punctuation rules are stricter than English when it comes to commas. You generally must use a comma to separate two clauses (parts of a sentence that each have their own verb). Since laulaa (sings) and on (is) belong to separate clauses, Finnish requires a comma before the connecting word kun.
Does hän specifically mean 'she'?
No, hän is completely gender-neutral and means both 'he' and 'she'. We translated it as 'she' here to give you a natural English sentence, but without outside context, this Finnish sentence could equally mean 'He sings when he is happy.'
The dictionary form for 'to sing' is laulaa. Why does the 'she' form in this sentence look exactly the same?
It is just a coincidence! To create the hän form for this type of verb, you take the verb stem and double the last vowel. The stem here is laula-. When you add an extra a to the end for the hän rule, it becomes laulaa.
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