Tuntuu kuin dreija pyörisi liian nopeasti.

It feels as if the potter's wheel were rotating too quickly.

Breakdown of Tuntuu kuin dreija pyörisi liian nopeasti.

• liian: too (excessively)
• nopeasti: quickly
• kuin: than
• tuntua: to feel

Questions & Answers about Tuntuu kuin dreija pyörisi liian nopeasti.

Why does the sentence start with Tuntuu without any subject? Where is it?

Finnish often leaves out the kind of dummy subject that English needs.

• Tuntuu is the 3rd person singular present of tuntua.
• In sentences like this, Finnish uses it impersonally: Tuntuu... = It feels/seems...

So there is no separate word for English it here. Finnish does not need one.

What does tuntuu mean here exactly: feels or seems?

It is somewhere between feels and seems.

With tuntua, Finnish often expresses a personal impression rather than a hard factual statement. In this sentence, the speaker is not necessarily saying that the wheel truly is spinning too fast, only that it gives that impression.

So tuntuu here works like:

• it feels as if...
• it seems like...

What is the job of kuin in this sentence?