Learn Hardcore Finnish: Hän valittaa aina pienistä asioista kotona. - He/She always complains about small things at home.

Valittaa means “to complain,” “to moan,” or “to grumble.” It’s an intransitive verb in Finnish, but it takes a case‐marked complement (see next question). It corresponds closely to English “complain,” although colloquially you might translate it as “moan” or “nag” depending on context.

Why is pienistä asioista in the elative case (-istä) instead of the partitive or genitive?

The verb valittaa governs the elative case when you complain about something. In Finnish you say valittaa jostakin, literally “complain from something.”

pienet asiat = “small things” (nominative)
elative plural of pienet asiat = pienistä asioista = “from small things” → “about small things”
Using the partitive (pieniä asioita) would be ungrammatical here, and the genitive (pienien asioiden) isn’t used with valittaa.

What case is kotona, and how does it differ from kotiin and kotoa?

Kotona is the inessive case of koti (“home”), meaning “at home.”

kotiin (illative) = “into home” → “to home”
kotoa (elative) = “from home”
So inessive -ssa/ssä expresses location “in/at,” illative -Vn direction “to,” and elative -sta/stä origin “from.”

Why is the present tense used for something that seems habitual? Does Finnish have a continuous tense?

Finnish does not have a separate continuous aspect. The simple present covers both one-time and habitual/ongoing actions. To signal “always” or “habitually,” you add an adverb like aina (“always”). So Hän valittaa aina… can mean “He/She always complains…”

What does the pronoun hän mean, and is it gender‐specific?

Hän is the third person singular pronoun meaning “he” or “she,” but Finnish does not distinguish gender. Context or other words in the sentence tell you if it’s male or female.

Why is aina placed between the verb and the object? Can it go elsewhere?

Word order in Finnish is quite flexible, but the neutral position for manner/frequency adverbs like aina is often after the verb:

Hän valittaa aina pienistä asioista kotona.
You could also say:
Hän aina valittaa pienistä asioista kotona. (slightly more emphasis on “always”)
Or move aina for stylistic reasons; the meaning stays essentially the same.

Could we omit pienistä and just say Hän valittaa aina asioista kotona? Would the meaning change?

Yes, you can omit pienistä.

Hän valittaa aina asioista kotona = “He/She always complains about things at home.”
Dropping pienistä removes the nuance “small,” so you lose the idea that the things are trivial. It’s still grammatical and natural, just more general.

How flexible is word order in Finnish? Could we say Kotona hän valittaa aina pienistä asioista?

Finnish word order is more flexible than English, so you can front different elements to shift emphasis:

Kotona hän valittaa aina pienistä asioista → Emphasizes “At home…”
Pienistä asioista hän valittaa aina kotona → Emphasizes “About small things…”
The core relations (subject, verb, cases) remain clear, so these variations are all grammatical and convey slightly different focal points.

How would you express a similar idea, for example “He complains about his job at home”?

You keep the same structure:
Hän valittaa aina työstä kotona.
Here työstä is the elative of työ (“job”), so literally “complains from/about work,” and kotona still means “at home.”