Breakdown of Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina.
Questions & Answers about Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina.
The ending -ko / -kö is a question clitic. It turns the verb into a yes–no question.
- Direct question:
- Tuleeko hän? = Is he/she coming? / Will he/she come?
- Indirect (embedded) question:
- Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän... = He/She is not sure whether he/she will come...
In English you need a separate word (if, whether), but in Finnish you usually mark a yes–no question just by adding -ko/-kö to the verb, even inside another sentence.
In Finnish yes–no questions (including embedded ones) the conjugated verb with -ko/-kö usually comes first in its clause:
- Statement order: Hän tulee kokeeseen lauantaina.
- Question order: Tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina?
When you embed that question after Hän ei ole varma, you keep the question word order:
- Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina.
So: verb + -ko/-kö comes first, then the subject (hän), then the rest.
No, that would be wrong or at least very confusing.
- jos means if in a conditional sense (if X happens, then Y happens).
- Your Finnish sentence would sound like:
He is not sure, if he comes to the exam on Saturday (then what?) — it feels incomplete.
To express English “not sure if / whether”, you normally use a -ko/-kö question form:
- Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina.
= He/She is not sure if/whether he/she will come to the exam on Saturday.
They are not interchangeable:
Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän kokeeseen.
= He/She is not sure whether he/she will come to the exam.
This is a question inside a sentence (yes–no, come or not come).Hän ei ole varma, että hän tulee kokeeseen.
Literally: He/She is not certain that he/she will come to the exam.
This sounds like the speaker rather expects that he/she probably won’t come, or at least it questions the truth of the statement he will come.
So:
- tuleeko = embedded question (whether/if).
- että hän tulee = embedded statement (that he will come), with a slightly different nuance.
Kokeeseen is the illative case, which often means “into / to” (movement towards something).
- Base form: koe = an exam, a test
- Illative: kokeeseen = to the exam (going there)
So tulla kokeeseen literally means to come to (into) the exam.
Using just koe would be ungrammatical; Finnish needs a case ending to show the role of the noun.
They are different cases with different meanings:
kokeeseen = illative = to the exam (movement towards)
- Hän tulee kokeeseen. = He/She comes to the exam.
kokeessa = inessive = in the exam / during the exam (location/state)
- Hän on kokeessa. = He/She is in an exam / is taking an exam.
In your sentence, it’s about coming to the exam, so kokeeseen is the correct form.
Lauantaina is the essive case of lauantai (Saturday), and with days of the week the essive is used to mean “on [that day]”:
- lauantai → lauantaina = on Saturday
- Similarly: maanantai → maanantaina (on Monday), tiistai → tiistaina, etc.
So kokeeseen lauantaina = to the exam on Saturday.
Yes, you can leave it out:
- Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko kokeeseen lauantaina.
Finnish often drops the subject pronoun when it’s clear from context.
Both versions are correct:
- With pronoun: tuleeko hän kokeeseen… (a bit more explicit/emphatic)
- Without pronoun: tuleeko kokeeseen… (more compact; still clear because hän was just mentioned)
Finnish normally uses the present tense to talk about the future. Context and time expressions show that it’s future:
- Hän tulee kokeeseen huomenna. = He/She will come to the exam tomorrow.
- Tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina? = Will he/she come to the exam on Saturday?
So in tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina, the present form tulee (with -ko) covers the meaning of English “will come”.
Both exist, but they’re used a bit differently:
Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän kokeeseen...
= He/She is not sure whether he/she will come...
This focuses directly on this specific fact (coming to the exam).Hän on epävarma.
= He/She is insecure / unsure (in general).
To connect it to the exam, you’d usually say:- Hän on epävarma siitä, tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina.
So ei ole varma + (question clause) is a very natural way to say “is not sure whether …” about a particular situation.
In Finnish, you normally put a comma before a subordinate clause, including embedded questions.
- Main clause: Hän ei ole varma
- Subordinate (embedded question): tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina
These two clauses are separated by a comma:
- Hän ei ole varma, tuleeko hän kokeeseen lauantaina.
This is a standard punctuation rule in Finnish: main clause, comma, then the subordinate clause.