Learn Finnish: Heti kun olen kuorinut perunat, keitän ne. - As soon as I have peeled the potatoes, I will boil them.

When using temporal conjunctions like heti kun (as soon as) for future events, Finnish uses the perfect tense to show that the first action must be completely finished before the main action starts. It translates well to the English 'have peeled', emphasizing the strict sequence of events.

The English translation says 'I will boil', but keitän is just the present tense. How do we know it refers to the future?

Finnish does not have a separate future tense. You use the present tense (keitän) for both present and future actions. The future meaning is completely clear here because of the time sequence set up by the first half of the sentence.

Why is perunat in the plural nominative form (with a -t) instead of the partitive (perunoita)?

Because this is a fully completed action. You will peel the whole batch of potatoes completely before moving on to boiling them. When a plural object is involved in a fully completed action, it becomes a total object and takes the plural accusative case, which looks identical to the standard plural nominative ending in -t.

Why is the pronoun 'them' translated as ne instead of niitä?