Sota tuhosi monta kaupunkia.

Finnish does not have articles.

So sota can mean war or the war, and kaupunkia can be understood without any word corresponding to a/an/the. Context tells you whether the meaning is general or specific.

In this sentence, English may translate it with the war, but Finnish does not need a separate word for that.

The roles are:

• sota = the subject
• tuhosi = the verb
• monta kaupunkia = the object phrase

So the basic structure is Subject + Verb + Object, which is the most neutral word order in Finnish too.

Sota is in the nominative, which is the normal case for the subject of a sentence.

Here, sota is the thing doing the action of destroying, so nominative is exactly what you expect.

Tuhosi is:

• past tense
• third person singular

It matches the singular subject sota.

So grammatically it means destroyed.

The dictionary form is tuhota = to destroy.

Its past tense follows a common Finnish pattern where verbs ending in -ta/-tä often form the past with -si:

• tuhota → tuhosi

You do not need to think of it as a direct one-letter change; it is just the normal past-tense stem for this verb type.

Monta is a quantifier meaning many.

It is the normal form used in expressions like:

• monta kaupunkia = many cities
• monta ihmistä = many people
• monta vuotta = many years

For a learner, it is best to memorize monta + partitive singular noun as a very common Finnish pattern.

Because after monta, Finnish normally uses the noun in the partitive singular:

• monta kaupunkia
• monta kirjaa
• monta taloa

So even though the meaning is plural in English, the Finnish noun appears in singular partitive.

That is why you do not say:

• monta kaupungit ❌
• monta kaupunkeja ❌

This is one of the most important Finnish number patterns.

After numerals and quantifiers like monta, the noun is often grammatically singular, even though the meaning is plural.

So:

• monta kaupunkia = many cities
• literally, the noun is singular in form
• but the whole phrase refers to more than one city

This feels strange to English speakers at first, but it is completely normal in Finnish.

Here monta kaupunkia is a total object in a positive, completed event: the war destroyed many cities.

In Finnish, that usually gives you:

• monta kaupunkia in a sentence like this

The form montaa is partitive, and you would expect it more in situations like:

• negation
• incompleteness
• ongoing or open-ended action

For example:

• Sota ei tuhonnut montaa kaupunkia. = The war did not destroy many cities.

So in your sentence, monta is the natural form.

Yes.

The whole phrase monta kaupunkia is the object of tuhosi.

A very important point in Finnish is that the object is not always a simple nominative-looking or accusative-looking noun. Quantified objects have their own pattern, and monta + partitive singular noun is one of those patterns.

So you should think of monta kaupunkia as one unit.

Yes, Finnish word order is more flexible than English word order.

The neutral order is:

• Sota tuhosi monta kaupunkia.

But other orders are possible for emphasis, for example:

• Monta kaupunkia sota tuhosi.

That puts more focus on many cities.

Even when the word order changes, the cases still help show what each part is doing.

Yes, that is possible, but it is not exactly the same pattern.

• Sota tuhosi monta kaupunkia = a straightforward quantified expression, very common and neutral
• Sota tuhosi monia kaupunkeja = also many cities, but now the whole noun phrase is in the partitive plural

The version with monta kaupunkia is the more basic pattern to learn first.

A learner should strongly memorize:

• monta + partitive singular noun

because it is extremely common and very Finnish.