Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching Finnish grammar and vocabulary.
Questions & Answers about Jätän oven auki.
What tense and person is jätän, and what is its infinitive form?
Jätän is the first person singular present tense of jättää (to leave). The ending –n tells you the subject is “I,” so jätän literally means “I leave.”
Why is ovi in the form oven here?
Oven is the accusative/genitive singular form of ovi (door). In Finnish, direct objects often use the same form as the genitive, so oven marks “the/a door” as the thing being left open.
What part of speech is auki, and why doesn’t it change form?
Auki is an adverbial/resultative complement meaning “open,” describing the state in which the door is left. State adverbs like auki are indeclinable—they don’t take case or number endings.
Why aren’t there articles like “the” or “a” before ovi?
Finnish has no articles. Definiteness (“the” vs. “a”) is inferred from context and case marking rather than separate words.
Why is the pronoun minä (I) not written?
Finnish is a pro-drop language: subject pronouns are often omitted because the verb ending (here –n in jätän) already indicates who the subject is.
Could you switch the word order to something like auki jätän oven?
While Finnish word order is flexible, the neutral resultative pattern is Verb + Object + Complement. Fronting auki would sound marked or poetic and shift the emphasis to “open.”
What kind of grammatical construction is “jättää oven auki”?
This is a resultative construction (verb + object + result complement), where jättää takes an object (oven) plus a complement (auki) that expresses the resulting state (“open”).