Breakdown of No niin, aloitetaan kokous!
kokous
meeting (formal)
aloittaa
to start (something)
no niin
well then, all right (discourse particle)
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Questions & Answers about No niin, aloitetaan kokous!
No niin is translated as "All right" here, but doesn't it have many other meanings?
Yes, no niin is a famous Finnish catch-all phrase! Its meaning depends heavily on tone and context. Here, it is said with an energetic, upbeat tone at the beginning of an event to signal a transition, meaning "All right" or "Okay then". In other contexts, with a heavy sigh, it can mean "Oh well", or with a sharp tone, it can be a reprimand.
Why is the passive form aloitetaan used to mean "let's start"?
In spoken Finnish and modern standard Finnish, the passive present tense is the standard way to express the first-person plural imperative (the "let's do something" structure). Even though it technically means "is started", translating it as "let's start" captures the actual intention.
If kokous (the meeting) is the object of the action, why isn't it in the genitive/accusative case like kokouksen?
This is a vital rule for Finnish objects: when the verb is in the passive voice, like aloitetaan, a total object must be in the nominative case rather than the genitive. Since "let's start" uses the passive structure, the object kokous drops the -n ending and stays in its basic nominative form.
Could we use the verb alkaa instead of aloittaa here, like aletaan kokous?