Breakdown of Jos rikot sääntöä, opettaja voi pyytää sinua laittamaan puhelimen pois.
Questions & Answers about Jos rikot sääntöä, opettaja voi pyytää sinua laittamaan puhelimen pois.
Rikot is the 2nd person singular present tense of the verb rikkoa (“to break”).
- rikon = I break
- rikot = you (sg.) break
- rikkoo = he/she breaks
- rikomme = we break
- rikotte = you (pl.) break
- rikkovat = they break
Finnish usually doesn’t need a separate pronoun like sinä (“you”) because the person is already marked in the verb ending (-t here shows “you”). You could say Jos sinä rikot sääntöä, but sinä is optional and adds emphasis: “If you (specifically) break the rule …”
Both jos and kun can translate as “if/when”, but they’re used differently:
- jos = if, used for a condition that may or may not happen.
- Jos rikot sääntöä… = If you break the rule… (it’s just a possibility)
- kun = often “when”, used when the speaker thinks the situation is certain or factual.
- Kun rikot sääntöä… = When you break the rule… (suggests it’s expected / happens regularly)
So jos fits here because it’s describing a conditional situation: if you break the rule, then the teacher can do something.
Sääntöä is the partitive singular of sääntö (“rule”).
Finnish objects appear in different cases depending on meaning. With rikkoa (“to break, violate”), you can see both:
- rikot säännön
→ You break the rule (a specific, complete act of breaking one rule) - rikot sääntöä
→ You are violating the rule / breaking the rules in a more general, ongoing or “in principle” sense.
In your sentence, sääntöä has a slightly more general/abstract feel:
“If you are breaking the rule / if you are in violation of the rule”.
It’s not wrong to say Jos rikot säännön, …; it just sounds more like a single, concrete rule being broken in one clear act.
Voi is the 3rd person singular present tense of voida (“to be able to, can, may”).
- opettaja voi pyytää = “the teacher can/may ask”
It expresses possibility or permission in a neutral way:
“The teacher is allowed to / is able to ask you …”
If you wanted “could” in the sense of a softer, more hypothetical suggestion or politeness, you might use the conditional:
- opettaja voisi pyytää sinua… = “the teacher could ask you…”
But the original sentence is stating a rule or procedural possibility, so voi (can/may) is natural.
Finnish has a very common structure:
pyytää + [person in partitive] + [3rd infinitive in -maan/-mään]
This means “to ask someone to do something”.
So:
- pyytää sinua laittamaan
= “to ask you to put (something)”
An alternative construction with että exists:
- opettaja voi pyytää, että laitat puhelimen pois
literally: “the teacher can ask that you put the phone away”
This is also grammatical, but:
- pyytää sinua laittamaan is more compact and very typical in spoken and written Finnish.
- It feels more like “ask you to do X” rather than “ask that you do X”.
So the sentence uses the standard “pyytää + partitive person + -maan infinitive” pattern.
Sinua is the partitive singular of sinä (“you” singular).
With pyytää (to ask), when you specify the person being asked, that person is usually in the partitive:
- pyytää sinua tulemaan = to ask you to come
- pyytää meitä auttamaan = to ask us to help
So here:
- opettaja voi pyytää sinua laittamaan…
→ “the teacher can ask you to put…”
This follows the pattern: pyytää + [person in partitive] + [-maan infinitive].
Laittamaan is the 3rd infinitive illative form of laittaa (“to put”).
The pattern is: laittaa → laittama- + an = laittamaan.
The illative (-maan/-mään) form of the 3rd infinitive is used after many verbs to express “doing something” as an action or goal, for example:
- mennä syömään = to go eat / to go to eat
- tulla auttamaan = to come to help
- aloittaa lukemaan (colloquial; standard says lukemaan with e, but you’ll see spoken variation) = to start reading
- pyytää sinua laittamaan = to ask you to put
So laittamaan here works closely with pyytää to mean “ask (someone) to put (something)”.
Using the basic infinitive laittaa after pyytää would be ungrammatical in standard Finnish in this structure.
Puhelimen is the genitive singular of puhelin (“phone”), and here it functions as a total object of laittaa.
Finnish distinguishes between:
- Total object (usually genitive singular or nominative)
→ the action is completed/affects the whole thing- laittaa kirjan pöydälle = to put the book on the table (the whole book)
- syön omenan = I eat the (whole) apple
- Partial object (partitive)
→ the action is incomplete, ongoing, or affects only part of something- syön omenaa = I am eating (some) apple / I eat apple (in general)
Here you are putting the whole phone away as a complete action, so puhelimen (total object) is natural.
- laittamaan puhelimen pois = to put the phone (completely) away
A partitive (puhelinta) would not be idiomatic in this context.
Pois is an adverb meaning “away, off, out (of the way)”.
It combines with verbs like laittaa to indicate putting/removing something away from its current position:
- laittaa kirjat pois = to put the books away
- ottaa kengät pois = to take off the shoes
- siirtää tuoli pois tieltä = to move the chair out of the way
So laittamaan puhelimen pois literally means:
“to put the phone away / off / out of sight.”
Pois isn’t part of the verb form itself; it’s a separate adverb that adds the directional meaning “away” to the action of “putting”.
Yes, in standard written Finnish that comma is normal and expected.
Rule of thumb:
- When a subordinate clause (here introduced by jos) comes before the main clause, you put a comma between them:
- Jos rikot sääntöä, opettaja voi pyytää…
- When the main clause comes first, you usually still keep the comma:
- Opettaja voi pyytää sinua laittamaan puhelimen pois, jos rikot sääntöä.
In informal texting/messages, people may skip commas more freely, but in proper writing, the comma here is standard.