Learn Hardcore Finnish: Videopuhelu häiritsee, jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa. - A video call is distracting if everyone talks at the same time.

Context decides how you translate it into English. Here, the meaning is general: “A video call / Video calls are disturbing if everyone speaks at the same time.”

The important grammar point:

videopuhelu is in the nominative singular, acting as the subject of häiritsee.

What verb is häiritsee, and how is it formed?

Häiritsee is the 3rd person singular present tense of the verb häiritä (“to disturb, to bother, to interfere with”).

Conjugation of häiritä (present tense):

minä häiritsen – I disturb
sinä häiritset – you disturb
hän häiritsee – he/she/it disturbs
me häiritsemme – we disturb
te häiritsette – you (pl.) disturb
he häiritsevät – they disturb

So Videopuhelu häiritsee literally:

“A video call disturbs / A video call is disturbing.”

The form häiritsee matches the singular subject videopuhelu.

Why doesn’t the sentence say Videopuhelu on häiritsevä (“is disturbing” as an adjective)? Is there a difference?

You could say Videopuhelu on häiritsevä, jos…, and it would be understood, but it sounds more like a description or evaluation:

“A video call is a disturbing (kind of) thing if…”

Using the verb häiritsee is more natural and direct in Finnish:

Videopuhelu häiritsee = “A video call disturbs / bothers (people).”

Two main differences:

Verb vs. adjective
- häiritsee: an actual action, “it disturbs (someone)”
- on häiritsevä: describes a property, “it is disturbing”
Implied object
- With häiritsee, Finnish can leave the object unstated. It’s understood as “disturbs people / the participants / us”.
- With on häiritsevä, there’s no implied “someone”; you’re just describing the video call itself.

In normal speech, Finns prefer the simple verb häiritsee here.

Who is being “disturbed” in Videopuhelu häiritsee? There is no object.

The object is left implicit, which is very common in Finnish when it’s obvious from context.

Videopuhelu häiritsee can be understood as:

“The video call disturbs people”
“The video call bothers us / the participants”

Finnish often omits generic objects like “people” or “us” if they’re clear. Compare:

Tupakointi häiritsee. – “Smoking is disturbing / Smoking bothers (people).”
Melu häiritsee. – “Noise is disturbing / Noise bothers (people).”

So structurally it’s transitive (something disturbs someone), but the “someone” is left unsaid.

Why is there a comma before jos? In English we usually don’t write a comma before “if” in this kind of sentence.

Finnish punctuation rules are different from English.

In Finnish, you normally put a comma between a main clause and a subordinate clause, regardless of the order:

Videopuhelu häiritsee, jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa.
Jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa, videopuhelu häiritsee.

Both have a comma between the two clauses.

Rule to remember:

Subordinate clauses introduced by words like jos (if), kun (when), että (that), koska (because) are usually separated from the main clause by a comma.

Why does it say jos kaikki puhuvat and not something like a future tense (“will speak”)?

Finnish doesn’t have a separate future tense. The present tense often covers both present and future meanings.

jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa literally: “if everyone speaks at the same time”
→ depending on context, this can mean “if everyone speaks at the same time” (general) or “if everyone will speak at the same time” (future).

So Finnish:

jos kaikki puhuvat
can translate to English as:
“if everyone speaks”
or
“if everyone is speaking / will speak”

The context decides how you translate it, but the Finnish grammar stays in the present.

Why is it kaikki puhuvat (plural verb) when in English “everyone speaks” uses a singular verb?

Kaikki literally means “all” (plural), not “everyone” as a grammatically singular pronoun.

kaikki = “all (people)”
kaikki puhuvat = “all [of them] speak”

Finnish treats kaikki as a plural subject, so the verb is plural:

Kaikki puhuvat. – “Everyone speaks / They all speak.”
Kaikki ovat täällä. – “Everyone is here / They are all here.”

English everyone is grammatically singular, but Finnish kaikki is grammatically plural. That’s why you see puhuvat, not puhuu.

(Colloquial speech sometimes uses singular kaikki puhuu, but in written standard Finnish, kaikki puhuvat is correct.)

What does yhtä aikaa literally mean, and what are these forms yhtä and aikaa?

Yhtä aikaa is an adverbial phrase meaning “at the same time / simultaneously”. Literally it is:

yhtä = partitive singular of yksi (“one”)
aikaa = partitive singular of aika (“time”)

So literally something like “(for) one time”, but idiomatically “at one (and the same) time” → “at the same time”.

Grammatically:

both words are in the partitive case
together they form a fixed expression yhtä aikaa used adverbially.

You use it like this:

He puhuvat yhtä aikaa. – “They speak at the same time.”
Älä tee kahta asiaa yhtä aikaa. – “Don’t do two things at the same time.”

Is there any difference between yhtä aikaa, samaan aikaan, and samanaikaisesti?

All can mean “at the same time / simultaneously”, but there are small differences in style and nuance:

yhtä aikaa
- very common, neutral, slightly colloquial tone
- used in everyday speech and writing
samaan aikaan
- also very common and neutral
- literally “at the same time”
- often interchangeable with yhtä aikaa
samanaikaisesti
- adverb formed from samanaikainen (“simultaneous”)
- sounds a bit more formal or technical
- used in more formal texts or when you want to sound precise

In your sentence, you could say:

Videopuhelu häiritsee, jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa.
Videopuhelu häiritsee, jos kaikki puhuvat samaan aikaan.

Both are natural. Samanaikaisesti would be correct but slightly more formal or technical in tone.

Is the word order fixed? Could I say Jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa, videopuhelu häiritsee or move words around?

The word order is flexible; both are correct:

Videopuhelu häiritsee, jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa.
Jos kaikki puhuvat yhtä aikaa, videopuhelu häiritsee.

The choice affects emphasis and flow, not grammar.

Other small variations also work:

Videopuhelu häiritsee, jos kaikki yhtä aikaa puhuvat. (more emphasis on yhtä aikaa)

But you normally keep the subject and verb together in each clause:

Videopuhelu häiritsee
kaikki puhuvat

Finnish allows rearranging adverbials like yhtä aikaa, but breaking subject + verb apart too much can sound marked or poetic.

Why is videopuhelu one word, not video puhelu? How do such compound words work in Finnish?

Finnish frequently forms compound nouns by writing the parts together as one word.

video
- puhelu → videopuhelu (“video call”)

In Finnish, this must be written as one word; writing video puhelu would look like two separate words (“video” + “call”) and feel incorrect.

Other examples:

kännykkä (mobile phone) + lasku (bill) → kännykkälasku (phone bill)
sähkö (electricity) + posti (mail) → sähköposti (email)

General rule: when in English you often have “X Y” (two nouns: video call, bus stop, coffee cup), Finnish very often has one compound word:

videopuhelu
bussipysäkki
kahvikuppi

Can this sentence be made negative? How would “A video call is not disturbing if everyone doesn’t talk at the same time” look in Finnish?

A natural Finnish version would be:

Videopuhelu ei häiritse, jos kaikki eivät puhu yhtä aikaa.

Breakdown:

Videopuhelu ei häiritse – “A video call does not disturb / is not disturbing”
- ei is the negative verb (3rd person singular)
- the main verb becomes the connegative form häiritse (no personal ending)
jos kaikki eivät puhu yhtä aikaa – “if everyone doesn’t speak at the same time”
- eivät is the negative verb for he (“they”)
- puhu is the connegative form of puhua

So in negatives:

main clause: Videopuhelu ei häiritse
subordinate: jos kaikki eivät puhu

This shows the typical Finnish pattern: negative verb (ei/en/et/…) + main verb in connegative form.