Learn Hardcore Finnish: Hän pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin, vaikka meillä on astianpesukone. - She/He washes the forks and knives by hand, even though we have a dishwasher.

You can only tell the person’s gender from context, not from the word hän itself. In this sentence, hän just means “that person / he / she”, and you’d translate it according to what you know about the person in the larger context.

Why is it pesee and not something like pese or pesevät?

Pesee is the 3rd person singular present tense of the verb pestä (“to wash”).

Conjugation (present indicative) of pestä looks like:

minä pesen – I wash
sinä peset – you wash
hän pesee – he/she washes
me pesemme – we wash
te pesette – you (pl.) wash
he pesevät – they wash

Because the subject is hän (he/she), you must use the 3rd singular form, pesee.

Pese on its own would be an imperative form (“wash!”), and pesevät would go with he (“they wash”).

Are haarukat and veitset nominative or some kind of object case? Why do they look like basic plural forms?

Formally, haarukat and veitset here are plural total objects, and for plural total objects, the form is identical to the plural nominative.

haarukka → haarukat
veitsi → veitset

Because the washing is a complete, bounded action targeting identifiable items (all the forks and knives in question), Finnish uses the total object. In the plural, total object = nominative plural in form, so you see the same ending -t as you would for a subject.

Compare:

Hän pesee haarukoita ja veitsiä.
= He/She is washing (some) forks and knives (ongoing / unbounded → partitive plural -ita / -iä)

So they look nominative, but function as objects in this sentence.

Why is haarukat ja veitset (forks and knives) in the plural? Could it be singular instead?

You could say:

Hän pesee haarukan ja veitsen käsin…
= He/She washes the fork and the knife by hand…

…but that would usually mean just one fork and one knife.

In everyday context (especially with a dishwasher mentioned), it’s natural to talk about many items:

haarukat ja veitset → “the forks and (the) knives” / “forks and knives”

Finnish does not have a separate “definite article” (the), so haarukat ja veitset can cover “the forks and knives” if it’s clear which ones you mean from context (e.g. the ones after dinner).

What exactly does käsin mean, and why is it not kädet or käsillä?

Käsin here means “by hand” or “with (one’s) hands”.

Technically, käsin is the instructive plural form of käsi (hand). The instructive case is often used in fixed expressions meaning “by means of / using” something. A few examples:

käsin – by hand
junalla (adessive, similar function) – by train
omin silmin – with one’s own eyes

So:

Hän pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin.
= He/She washes the forks and knives by hand.

Kädet is just the plural nominative “hands”, and käsillä usually means something like “at hand / present” (different meaning), so those would not fit this “by hand” idea.

What does vaikka do here? Is it “even though” or “even if”?

In this sentence, vaikka means “although / even though”:

Hän pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin, vaikka meillä on astianpesukone.
= He/She washes the forks and knives by hand, even though we have a dishwasher.

So it introduces a contrasting fact: having a dishwasher contrasts with the choice to wash by hand.

Vaikka can also be used like “even if” in other contexts, often with a conditional, but here the meaning is clearly factual (“although”), not hypothetical.

Why is it meillä on astianpesukone instead of something like me omistamme astianpesukoneen?

Finnish usually expresses possession with the structure:

[Adessive form of the owner] + on + [thing]
literally: “on/at X is Y” → “X has Y”

So:

meillä on astianpesukone
= “At us is a dishwasher” → We have a dishwasher

Here:

me = we
meillä = “on us / at our place” (adessive)
on = is/are (3rd person singular form of olla)
astianpesukone = dishwasher

Omistaa (“to own”) exists, but in everyday Finnish you normally use [X:lla] on Y to say someone has something.
Me omistamme astianpesukoneen is grammatical but much heavier and more formal, sounding like a legal/property statement.

Why is it meillä on, not meillä olemme or something with “are”?

In the “have” construction, Finnish always uses on (3rd person singular of olla) regardless of who the owner is:

Minulla on kirja. – I have a book.
Sinulla on auto. – You have a car.
Meillä on astianpesukone. – We have a dishwasher.
Heillä on talo. – They have a house.

Compare this with the “to be” forms:

me olemme – we are
he ovat – they are

So:

Me olemme kotona. – We are at home.
Meillä on astianpesukone. – We have a dishwasher.

Two different structures:

olemme / ovat… → describes what the subject is.
[X:lla] on… → describes what X has.

How is astianpesukone built, and why is it all one word?

Astianpesukone is a compound noun, made of:

astia – dish, vessel
pesu – washing
kone – machine

So literally: “dish-wash-machine” → dishwasher.

Finnish normally writes such compounds as one word, not with spaces or hyphens, unless they get very long or ambiguous. So you get words like:

kahvinkeitin (coffee maker: kahvi
- keitin)
tietokone (computer: tieto
- kone)
sähköhammasharja (electric toothbrush: sähkö
- hammas
  - harja)

In this sentence, astianpesukone is in the basic (nominative) singular form: “a/the dishwasher”.

Why is there a comma before vaikka? In English you might or might not put a comma there.

Finnish punctuation rules are a bit stricter here: you normally put a comma before any subordinate clause, and clauses introduced by vaikka count as subordinate clauses.

So:

Hän pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin, vaikka meillä on astianpesukone.

You’d also use a comma if the order is reversed:

Vaikka meillä on astianpesukone, hän pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin.

In English, comma usage before “although / even though / even if” is more flexible, but in Finnish, the comma is standard.

Does pesee here mean “is washing” (right now) or “washes” (in general)? How do you know?

Finnish present tense (here: pesee) usually covers both:

“He/She washes…” (habitual, general)
“He/She is washing…” (right now)

The context decides which one you choose in English.

Since the sentence mentions a dishwasher they have, it’s natural to interpret it as describing a habit or typical behavior:

Hän pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin…
→ “He/She washes the forks and knives by hand…” (as a general habit)

But the same form pesee could also describe a current action with suitable context.

Could you drop hän and just say Pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin…?

In spoken Finnish and in very informal writing, people sometimes omit the subject pronoun when it is obvious from context:

Pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin, vaikka meillä on astianpesukone.

Listeners would usually understand that this refers to hän (“he/she”) if that person has already been mentioned.

However, in standard written Finnish, it is more natural and clearer to keep the pronoun:

Hän pesee haarukat ja veitset käsin…

For learners and in formal writing, it’s better to include the subject pronoun.

Does meillä here mean specifically “we have at our place/house”, or just “we have” in general?

Literally, meillä is the adessive of me:

me – we
meillä – “on us / at our place”

In possession sentences, it normally just means “we have”:

Meillä on astianpesukone. – We have a dishwasher.

But there is often a slight nuance of location or “our household”. In the context of a dishwasher, meillä can easily be heard as:

“We (in our home) have a dishwasher.”

So the structure [X:lla] on is both the grammar for “X has Y” and can carry a mild sense of “at X’s place / with X”.