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Questions & Answers about Sää on tänään epävakaa.
What part of speech is sää, and why is it in the nominative case?
sää is a noun meaning weather. It appears in the nominative singular because it functions as the subject of the sentence.
Why is the verb on used here?
on is the third-person singular form of the verb olla (to be) in the present tense. It links the subject sää to the adjective epävakaa.
What kind of word is tänään, and why doesn’t it have a case ending?
tänään is an adverb meaning today. Adverbs in Finnish do not take case endings, and they can move around in the sentence for emphasis.
What part of speech is epävakaa?
epävakaa is an adjective describing the state of sää. As a predicative adjective, it stands in the nominative singular to agree with its subject.
Why does epävakaa end with a double a?
The base adjective vakaa (stable) has a long final -aa in the nominative singular. Adding the prefix epä- does not change that, so you get epävakaa with the same long a at the end.
Why doesn’t the prefix epä- change to match vowel harmony?
The prefix epä- is a fixed morphological unit and is exempt from vowel harmony rules. It remains epä- even before back-vowel stems like vaka.
Why are there no articles like the or a in the sentence?
Finnish does not use definite or indefinite articles. A noun in the nominative case can express both “weather is unstable” and “the weather is unstable” without extra words.
Can I change the word order, for example placing tänään at the beginning?
Yes. Finnish has flexible word order for emphasis. You can say Tänään sää on epävakaa to emphasize the time, or Sää on epävakaa tänään without changing the core meaning.
How do you pronounce epävakaa, especially regarding stress and vowel length?
Primary stress in Finnish always falls on the first syllable, so you say EPÄ-va-kaa. Only the final -aa is a long vowel ([ɑː]); the other vowels are short.
Are there any common synonyms for epävakaa when talking about the weather?
Yes. You might hear vaihteleva (variable, changeable) or arvaamaton (unpredictable) to describe weather that keeps changing. Also epäsäännöllinen can be used more generally for irregular.