Breakdown of Kun minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä ja yskä on paha.
Questions & Answers about Kun minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä ja yskä on paha.
Finnish doesn’t usually use “olla” + subject for “to have” like English does.
Instead, it uses a possession / state construction:
- minulla on X = I have X
- literally: on me there is X
Details:
- minulla = “on me” (adessive case of minä “I”)
- on = “is”
- flunssa = “(a) cold”
So “minulla on flunssa” literally means there is a cold on me → I have a cold.
- “minä olen flunssa” would literally mean I am a cold (nonsense).
- “minä olen flunssassa” (I am in a cold) also doesn’t mean “I have a cold.” It would sound odd or wrong in standard Finnish.
For illnesses, the usual pattern is:
- minulla on flunssa – I have a cold
- minulla on kuumetta – I have a fever
- minulla on päänsärky – I have a headache
Both kun and jos can be translated as “when” or “if” in English, but they are used differently.
- kun = when in the sense of whenever / every time that / in the situation that
It describes a known or typical situation. - jos = if
It introduces a condition that may or may not be true.
In this sentence:
- “Kun minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä ja yskä on paha.”
→ Whenever I have a cold, my throat is sore and my cough is bad.
This describes a typical, general situation.
You can say:
- “Jos minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä ja yskä on paha.”
That would sound more like:
- If I have a cold, (then) my throat is sore and my cough is bad.
So:
- kun = focusing on a recurring / known situation
- jos = focusing on a hypothetical condition
In Finnish, a subordinate clause (like one starting with kun, jos, että, etc.) is usually separated from the main clause by a comma.
- Kun minulla on flunssa, ← subordinate clause (when I have a cold)
- kurkku on kipeä ja yskä on paha. ← main clause
Rule of thumb:
If the clause begins with kun, jos, että, koska, vaikka, etc., you typically put a comma between that clause and the main clause.
Finnish often omits possessive words (my, your, his, etc.) with body parts and personal things when the owner is obvious from context.
- Kun minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä…
It is clear we are talking about my throat because I am the one who has the cold.
Possible variants:
- kurkku on kipeä – natural, everyday Finnish (owner understood)
- minun kurkkuni on kipeä – grammatically correct, but sounds heavier / more explicit; used if you really want to emphasize my throat as opposed to someone else’s.
So the simple “kurkku on kipeä” is the most natural in this kind of context.
Finnish often expresses things that English phrases with “have + noun phrase” as:
- body part + olla + adjective
So:
- kurkku on kipeä
= the throat is sore
= idiomatically I have a sore throat
Other similar patterns:
- pää on kipeä – (my) head is sore → I have a headache
- selkä on kipeä – (my) back is sore → I have back pain
- silmä on kipeä – (my) eye is sore / hurts
So Finnish says what is “sore / painful”, not what you “have” in English.
The repetition of “on” is natural and clear:
- kurkku on kipeä – the throat is sore
- ysk ä on paha – the cough is bad
You could grammatically say:
- kurkku ja yskä ovat pahat
= “the throat and the cough are bad”
But that would mean they share the same adjective “pahat” (plural of paha). You would lose the nice nuance of using different adjectives:
- kurkku on kipeä (sore)
- ysk ä on paha (bad, nasty, severe)
Finnish very often repeats “on” when there are multiple separate statements about the subject(s).
Paha literally means bad / evil, but in everyday use it often means “bad, nasty, severe, serious, unpleasant.”
In medical or symptom contexts:
- paha yskä – bad / nasty / strong cough
- paha flunssa – bad cold
- paha päänsärky – really bad headache
So “ysk ä on paha” could be translated as:
- The cough is bad
- The cough is nasty / quite severe.
English usually prefers a different adjective (e.g. “strong” or “really bad”), but “paha” is the natural Finnish word here.
Both nominative and partitive are possible with “olla” in this kind of construction, but they have different nuances.
minulla on flunssa (nominative)
→ I have a cold (seen as a whole, definite thing, like one identifiable episode of illness).
This is the most common, neutral way to say it.minulla on flunssaa (partitive)
→ literally “I have some cold / some amount of coldness.”
Sounds more like there is some cold-like condition going on, more vague, ongoing, or partial. It’s much less common in everyday speech.
So “minulla on flunssa” is the standard, idiomatic version here.
Here “ysk ä” is the subject of the sentence:
- ysk ä on paha – the cough is bad
Subjects in simple sentences are typically in nominative case.
The partitive form “ysk ää” would appear in other structures, for example:
- minulla on yskä – I have a cough (nominative)
- minulla on yskää – I have (some) coughing / I am coughing (some; more process-like)
But in “ysk ä on paha”, we are making a statement about the cough as a whole thing, so nominative “ysk ä” is correct.
Here “kipeä” and “paha” are predicative adjectives: they describe the state of the subject.
Pattern:
- [subject in nominative] + on + [adjective in nominative singular]
Examples:
- kurkku on kipeä – the throat is sore
- ysk ä on paha – the cough is bad
- auto on kallis – the car is expensive
- talo on iso – the house is big
You would only change the adjective if the subject is plural or in a different case and agreement is needed:
- kurkut ovat kipeitä – the throats are sore (plural subject → plural partitive adjective)
- nämä kurkut ovat pahoja – these cucumbers are bad (different meaning of kurkku)
In the original sentence, both kurkku and ysk ä are singular nominative, so the adjectives stay in basic nominative singular: kipeä, paha.
In Finnish, the present tense is used both for:
- Actions happening right now
- General truths / habits / typical situations
Here:
- Kun minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä ja yskä on paha.
This is a general statement about what is typically true whenever you have a cold.
So it corresponds to English:
- When I have a cold, my throat is sore and my cough is bad.
(= every time I get a cold, those things happen.)
The habitual / general meaning comes mainly from:
- the word kun (“whenever / when”)
- and the overall context, not from a special tense.
Yes, that alternative is grammatically correct, but the nuances change:
“Kun olen flunssassa”
- literally: when I am in a cold
- It sounds more metaphorical and less idiomatic than “kun minulla on flunssa”.
- Standard Finnish strongly prefers “minulla on flunssa” for “I have a cold.”
“minulla on paha yskä”
- literally: I have a bad cough.
- This is perfectly natural Finnish and is very common.
So a more idiomatic rephrasing would be:
- Kun minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä ja minulla on paha yskä.
Your original sentence:
- Kun minulla on flunssa, kurkku on kipeä ja yskä on paha.
is slightly more compact and just as natural.