Questions & Answers about Nainen keittää keittoa.
Why is the word for soup keittoa instead of just keitto?
Keittoa is in the partitive case. Because soup is a liquid or "mass noun" (you cannot easily count it), it takes the partitive ending -a when it is the object of the action. This shows she is cooking an indefinite amount of soup (some soup).
How do we know it means "is cooking" rather than "cooks"?
Finnish does not have a separate continuous tense like English does. The present tense verb keittää translates to both "cooks" and "is cooking". You simply figure out which one sounds best in English based on the context.
The words keittää and keittoa look very similar. Are they related?
Yes! They belong to the same word family, which is very common in Finnish. The verb keittää means "to boil" or "to cook in liquid", and the noun keitto (soup) is built directly from that verb.
Why does the verb keittää end with a double -ää here?
For third-person singular subjects like nainen (the woman), Finnish present tense verbs usually duplicate their final vowel. The verb's stem ends in ä, so it gets one more ä added to the end.
Learn Nainen keittää keittoa and more in Finnish
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free