Minä kehitän uutta ohjelmaa.

I develop a new program.

Breakdown of Minä kehitän uutta ohjelmaa.

• minä: I
• uusi: new
• kehittää: to develop
• ohjelma: the program

Questions & Answers about Minä kehitän uutta ohjelmaa.

Why is the subject Minä explicitly included in the sentence even though Finnish often drops pronouns?

In Finnish the verb form already indicates the subject, so native speakers often omit the subject pronoun. However, including Minä adds clarity for learners and can emphasize who is performing the action.

What does the verb form kehitan tell us about the verb’s tense and person?

The form kehitan is in the present tense and is conjugated for the first person singular. The ending -n specifically signals that the subject is I, meaning “I develop.”

Why is the adjective in uutta not in its basic form uusi?

Finnish adjectives must agree with the noun they modify in case, number, and sometimes gender. Since the noun ohjelma appears in the partitive case as ohjelmaa (because the verb expresses an ongoing or processual action), the adjective uusi takes its partitive form uutta to match.

Why is the object ohjelmaa in the partitive case rather than the nominative?

Verbs that express development, creation, or other processual actions often take a partitive object in Finnish. Using the partitive case with ohjelmaa implies that the program is being developed and might still be in progress or not viewed as a complete, finished entity.

Is it possible to change the word order in this sentence without changing its meaning?

Yes, Finnish features a relatively free word order because the case endings clearly indicate the syntactical roles. For example, you could say Uutta ohjelmaa kehitän minä or Kehitän uutta ohjelmaa minä, and although the emphasis might shift, the overall meaning remains the same.