Learn Hardcore Finnish: Näimme harvinaisen eläimen järven rannalla.

In Finnish, subject pronouns are optional because the verb ending already tells you who is doing the action. Näimme alone means “we saw.” You can add me for emphasis or clarity (Me näimme), but it’s not required in everyday speech.

What tense does Näimme express, and how is it formed from the verb nähdä?

Näimme is the imperfect (simple past) tense of nähdä (“to see”). In the past, nähdä uses an irregular stem: the present stem nähd- becomes näi-, then you add the 1st-person-plural ending -mme. So you get näi + mme = näimme (“we saw”).

Why is the object harvinaisen eläimen instead of harvinainen eläin?

Because Finnish marks direct objects in a case when the action is viewed as complete. Here “we saw something” is a completed action, so the object takes the accusative, which for singular nouns looks like the genitive. Thus eläin (nominative “animal”) becomes eläimen (accusative), and the adjective harvinainen (“rare”) must match that case as harvinaisen.

Why do both harvinaisen and eläimen end in -en?

They’re both in the same case (accusative singular), and in Finnish adjectives agree with the noun in number and case. The accusative singular pattern for most nouns and their adjectives resembles the genitive singular (-EN), so each word takes -en.

Why are there no words for “a” or “the” in this sentence?

Finnish does not use articles like “a” or “the.” Whether something is definite or indefinite is inferred from context. Näimme harvinaisen eläimen can mean “we saw a rare animal” or “we saw the rare animal,” depending on the situation.

What roles do järven and rannalla play in järven rannalla?

This is a two-word location expression:

järven is the genitive form of järvi (“lake”), functioning like “of the lake.”
rannalla is the adessive case of ranta (“shore”) with -lla, meaning “on the shore.”
Put together, järven rannalla = “on the shore of the lake.”

Could we use the partitive harvinaista eläintä or the plural harvinaisia eläimiä here, and what difference would that make?

Yes, you can vary the object case and number to change nuance:

näimme harvinaista eläintä (partitive singular) emphasizes an incomplete or ongoing action: “we saw some rare animal (got a glimpse, not necessarily the whole creature).”
näimme harvinaisia eläimiä (partitive plural) suggests you saw several rare animals in an unspecific quantity.
näimme harvinaiset eläimet (accusative plural) means you saw all those rare animals under discussion, a complete list.
Which form you choose depends on whether you view the seeing as complete vs. partial and whether you mean one animal or many.