Learn Finnish: Miksi jono on hidas tänään? - Why is the queue slow today?

In Finnish, time words like tänään (today) are very flexible. They typically go at the beginning or end of a sentence. You could also say Miksi tänään jono on hidas? or Tänään jono on hidas, depending on where you want to place the emphasis.

The word hidas is in its basic form here. What happens to it if we need to talk about multiple slow queues?

Adjectives ending in -as belong to a special group. To make the plural form, the -s drops, the vowel doubles, and the d strengthens to a t due to consonant gradation. So hidas becomes hitaat (slow, plural).

Does the word jono apply to digital queues as well as physical ones?

Yes! The word jono is used for a physical line of people at a store, a line of cars in traffic (autojono), and digital queues on a website.

How would I use the ordinals from this lesson to say 'I am first in the queue'?

You would say Olen ensimmäinen jonossa. You use the basic nominative ordinal ensimmäinen (first) to describe yourself, and add the 'in' ending to make jonossa (in the queue).