Word
Pilvi on harmaa.
Meaning
The cloud is grey.
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 Pilvi on harmaa.
Why is there no word for "the" in this sentence?
Finnish doesn't have articles like "a" or "the". The word pilvi can mean "a cloud" or "the cloud" depending on the context.
Why is the adjective harmaa in its basic, unchanged form?
When you describe a single, countable thing in Finnish, the describing word (adjective) stays in its basic form (the nominative case). It perfectly matches the basic form of the subject, pilvi.
How would this change if we were talking about multiple clouds?
The noun and the verb would become plural: pilvet ovat (the clouds are). The adjective would change to the partitive plural case, becoming harmaita. So, "The clouds are grey" is Pilvet ovat harmaita.
Pilvi ends in an -i. Does this mean it changes in a special way when we add endings?
Yes! Because pilvi is an older Finnish word, its final -i usually changes to an -e- before you add most grammatical endings. For example, "of the cloud" is pilven and "in the cloud" is pilvessä.