Keraamikko pyörittää dreijaa.

the potter's wheel

Breakdown of Keraamikko pyörittää dreijaa.

• pyörittää: to rotate (something)
• keraamikko: the ceramic artist; potter

Questions & Answers about Keraamikko pyörittää dreijaa.

Why isn’t there any word for a or the in this sentence?

Finnish does not have articles. So keraamikko can mean a potter, the potter, or just potter in a general sense, depending on context. The same is true for dreijaa: context tells you whether it is a wheel, the wheel, or a more general idea.

What form is keraamikko here?

Keraamikko is in the nominative singular, which is the basic dictionary form. In this sentence, it is the subject: the person doing the action.

So structurally:

• keraamikko = subject
• pyörittää = verb
• dreijaa = object

How is pyörittää built, and what does it suggest compared with pyöriä?

This is a very useful contrast in Finnish:

• pyöriä = to spin, rotate, go round
• pyörittää = to spin something, rotate something, make something turn

So pyöriä is intransitive: the thing itself is turning.
For example, a wheel spins.

Pyörittää is transitive: someone causes something else to turn.
That is why it fits here: the potter is making the wheel turn.

This kind of pair is common in Finnish: one verb describes something happening by itself, and another describes causing it to happen.