Learn Finnish: On vaikea naurahtaa, kun tilanne on niin vakava. - It is hard to chuckle when the situation is so serious.

The base verb nauraa means to laugh continuously or in general. Adding the momentane suffix -ahtaa changes the meaning to describe a sudden, brief, or single action. In this context, naurahtaa means to give a quick laugh or to chuckle just once.

Why does the momentane suffix take the form -ahtaa rather than -ähtää here?

This is determined by standard vowel harmony. Because the root verb nauraa contains the back vowels A and U, any suffixes attached to it must also use back vowels. Therefore, we use -ahtaa instead of the front-vowel alternative -ähtää.

Why is the adjective vaikea in the nominative case instead of the partitive vaikeaa?

When a sentence follows the structure 'It is [adjective] to [do something]' where an infinitive verb like naurahtaa acts as the true subject, you can actually use either the nominative vaikea or the partitive vaikeaa. The nominative form is slightly more common in standard written Finnish, but both are grammatically correct and widely used.

The English translation starts with 'It is hard', so why doesn't the Finnish sentence start with 'Se on'?

Finnish does not use dummy pronouns like 'it' or 'there' to introduce general conditions or states of being. The verb on by itself is enough to express 'it is' in this structure, so adding se would sound unnatural to a native speaker.