Lumi näyttää kauniilta, kun se putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen.

The snow looks beautiful when it falls quietly in front of the balcony.

Breakdown of Lumi näyttää kauniilta, kun se putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen.

• kaunis: beautiful
• kun: when
• se: it
• näyttää: to look
• pudota: to fall
• parveke: the balcony
• lumi: the snow
• hiljaa: quietly
• eteen: in front of

Questions & Answers about Lumi näyttää kauniilta, kun se putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen.

Why is kauniilta used instead of kaunis?

Kauniilta is the ablative form (ending -lta/-ltä) of the adjective kaunis (beautiful).

With the verb näyttää in the meaning “to look / to seem (in some way)”, Finnish normally uses the ablative case:

• Se näyttää hyvältä. – It looks good.
• Lumi näyttää kauniilta. – The snow looks beautiful.

So the pattern is:

joku / jokin näyttää + adjective in ablative

someone / something looks/seems + adjective

If you said Lumi on kaunis, that would simply be “The snow is beautiful” (using the verb olla “to be”) and then the adjective stays in the basic form.

What exactly does näyttää mean here, and how is it different from olla?

In this sentence, näyttää means “to look / to appear / to seem”, not “to show”.

• Lumi on kaunis. – The snow is beautiful. (a straightforward statement of fact)
• Lumi näyttää kauniilta. – The snow looks / appears beautiful. (it gives that impression to the observer)

So:

• olla = to be (describing a fact or state)
• näyttää + ablative = to look / to appear (describing how something seems)

Why do we need the pronoun se in kun se putoaa? Could we leave it out?

You can actually leave it out in this sentence:

• Lumi näyttää kauniilta, kun se putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen.
• Lumi näyttää kauniilta, kun putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen.

Both are grammatically correct. In Finnish, when the subject is already clear from the previous clause, it is common to drop it in the subordinate clause.

Using se makes the subject very explicit and can feel slightly more emphatic or careful. Omitting se feels a bit more fluent / natural in everyday written Finnish, since it is obvious that putoaa refers to lumi.

Why is kun used here, and what nuance does it have?

Kun is a conjunction that often means “when” in a temporal sense. Here it introduces a time clause:

• …kun se putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen.
• …when it quietly falls in front of the balcony.

The nuance is that the snow looks beautiful at the time when it is falling.

Compare:

• kun – when / while (temporal)
  • Pidän lumesta, kun se putoaa hiljaa. – I like snow when it is falling quietly.
• koska – because
  • Lumi näyttää kauniilta, koska se putoaa hiljaa. – The snow looks beautiful because it is falling quietly.
• jos – if
  • Lumi näyttää kauniilta, jos se putoaa hiljaa. – The snow looks beautiful if it falls quietly.

So kun here simply sets the time frame.

Why is there a comma before kun?

In Finnish punctuation, a comma is usually placed before a subordinate clause introduced by conjunctions like kun, koska, että, jos, etc.

So:

• Lumi näyttää kauniilta, kun se putoaa…
• Lumi näyttää kauniilta, koska se putoaa…
• Lumi näyttää kauniilta, jos se putoaa…

This is more systematic than in English, where you might or might not use a comma before when depending on style and clause order. In Finnish, the comma is normal and expected in this position.

What does hiljaa mean exactly, and why not hiljaisesti?

Hiljaa is an adverb meaning “quietly / silently / gently / slowly”, depending on context. Here it suggests the snow is falling gently and quietly.

Hiljaisesti is also an adverb, more literally “quietly, in a quiet way”, and can sound a bit more formal or “bookish” in many contexts.

Both would be understandable, but:

• Lumi putoaa hiljaa. – very natural and common.
• Lumi putoaa hiljaisesti. – grammatical, but feels more formal or stylistic.

Hiljaa is simply the more idiomatic choice in everyday language for this kind of gentle, quiet movement.

How does parvekkeen eteen work grammatically?

Parvekkeen eteen is a postpositional phrase meaning “in front of the balcony”, with a sense of movement toward that position (“to in front of the balcony”).

Breakdown:

• parveke – balcony (nominative)
• parvekkeen – genitive singular of parveke
• eteen – illative form of ete (used almost only as the postposition eteen = “to the front (of)”)

Pattern:

[GENITIVE] + eteen → movement to in front of something
[GENITIVE] + edessä → location in front of something

So:

• parvekkeen eteen – to in front of the balcony (falling/moving there)
• parvekkeen edessä – in front of the balcony (already there, static location)

In this sentence, the use of eteen matches the verb putoaa (falls) – the snow is moving to that place.

Why is parvekkeen in the genitive form?

Many Finnish postpositions require the noun before them to be in the genitive. Eteen is one of these postpositions.

General pattern:

• talon eteen – in front of the house (towards there)
• auton taakse – behind the car (towards there)
• puun viereen – next to the tree (towards there)
• parvekkeen eteen – in front of the balcony (towards there)

So parveke must become parvekkeen (genitive), and together with eteen it expresses the full idea “(to) in front of the balcony”.

Why is lumi (singular “snow”) used, when English treats “snow” as an uncountable mass?

Finnish often uses a normal singular noun for things that English treats as mass/uncountable, especially when talking about a particular instance or scene:

• Lumi näyttää kauniilta. – The snow looks beautiful. (this snow here / what I see)
• Kahvi on kuumaa. – The coffee is hot.
• Sokeri on loppu. – The sugar is finished / gone.

If you want to emphasize “snow” in a more abstract or mass sense, you might also see:

• Lumi on kaunista. – Snow (as a substance, in general) is beautiful.

Here, using simple lumi fits well because we are talking about the snow that is falling in front of the balcony – a concrete scene, not snow in general as a concept.

Where does hiljaa belong in the sentence? Could we move it?

In the original:

• …kun se putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen.

That is very natural: verb (putoaa), then adverb (hiljaa), then destination (parvekkeen eteen).

Other possible orders:

• kun se hiljaa putoaa parvekkeen eteen – also fine, a bit more emphasis on the quietness.
• kun se putoaa parvekkeen eteen hiljaa – possible, but sounds less neutral and a bit marked; adverbs like hiljaa tend to go earlier, closer to the verb.

So the given word order is both natural and stylistically smooth.

Could we say Lumi näyttää kauniilta, kun se sataa parvekkeen eteen instead of putoaa?

You could, but the nuance changes.

Verbs:

• sataa – to rain / to snow (as a weather phenomenon)
  • Lumi sataa. – It is snowing.
• pudota – to fall (an object falling down from somewhere)
  • Lumi putoaa katolta. – Snow falls from the roof.

In your sentence:

• kun se putoaa hiljaa parvekkeen eteen suggests you are watching individual snowflakes or clumps falling down in front of the balcony, like a visual scene.
• kun se sataa parvekkeen eteen sounds more like “when it is snowing down in front of the balcony”, describing weather more generally.

Both are understandable, but putoaa fits nicely with the visual idea of flakes falling in front of the balcony.