Learn Hardcore Finnish: Sairaalassa hoitaja mittaa kuumeen ja verenpaineen. - In the hospital the nurse measures the fever and blood pressure.

So sairaalassa literally means in the hospital / inside the hospital. Finnish normally uses a case ending (like -ssa) instead of a separate preposition like in.

Why is there no word for a or the before hoitaja?

Finnish has no articles at all – no equivalent of English a/an or the.

So hoitaja by itself can mean:

a nurse
the nurse

The exact interpretation comes from context, not from a special word. The sentence could be understood as:

At the hospital, the nurse measures the fever and blood pressure, or
In a hospital, a nurse measures the fever and blood pressure.

Both are possible readings of the same Finnish sentence.

What form is hoitaja, and how would it look in the plural?

Hoitaja is:

nominative singular, the basic dictionary form
and it is the subject of the verb mittaa.

To say nurses measure…, you would use the plural nominative hoitajat and change the verb to plural:

Sairaalassa hoitajat mittaavat kuumeen ja verenpaineen.
= At the hospital, nurses measure the fever and blood pressure.

So:

singular: hoitaja mittaa (the nurse measures)
plural: hoitajat mittaavat (the nurses measure)

What exactly is the verb form mittaa, and how do I say I measure or we measure?

Mittaa is:

3rd person singular
present tense
of the verb mitata (to measure).

It covers both English measures and is measuring.

Present tense forms of mitata:

minä mittaan – I measure / I am measuring
sinä mittaat – you (singular) measure
hän mittaa – he/she measures
me mittaamme – we measure
te mittaatte – you (plural) measure
he mittaavat – they measure

Finnish uses the same present form for both simple and continuous English forms (measure / is measuring).

Why are kuumeen and verenpaineen not just kuume and verenpaine? What case is this?

Kuumeen and verenpaineen are in the genitive singular case.

kuume → kuumeen
verenpaine → verenpaineen

Here the genitive is used as a total object: the nurse measures the fever and blood pressure as complete, countable things (takes the measurement).

This is the usual pattern with actions seen as completed and affecting the whole object, for example:

Hoitaja avaa oven. – The nurse opens the door.
(ovi → oven, genitive total object)

Similarly:

Hoitaja mittaa kuumeen ja verenpaineen.
The nurse measures (takes) the fever and blood pressure (fully, to get a result).

How would the sentence change if we used kuumetta and verenpainetta instead of kuumeen and verenpaineen?

Kuumetta and verenpainetta are partitive singular forms.

kuume → kuumetta
verenpaine → verenpainetta

In positive sentences, using partitive here would suggest measuring some fever / some blood pressure in a more open‑ended, not‑clearly‑completed way. With these standard medical measurements, native speakers strongly prefer the genitive:

mitata kuumeen, verenpaineen, pituuden, painon
(take the temperature, blood pressure, height, weight)

However, in negative sentences the partitive is required:

Sairaalassa hoitaja ei mittaa kuumetta eikä verenpainetta.
At the hospital the nurse does not measure (the) fever or blood pressure.

So:

affirmative, completed action → genitive (kuumeen, verenpaineen)
negative → partitive (kuumetta, verenpainetta)

What is the difference between kuume, kuumeen, and kuumetta?

All three come from the same noun kuume (fever):

kuume – nominative (dictionary form)
- Minulla on kuume. – I have a fever.
kuumeen – genitive (total object or possession)
- Hoitaja mittaa kuumeen. – The nurse measures (takes) the fever.
kuumetta – partitive (some/ongoing fever, or object in negative)
- Minulla on kuumetta. – I have (some) fever.
- Hoitaja ei mittaa kuumetta. – The nurse does not measure the fever.

So the stem is the same, but the case ending (and vowel changes) show the grammatical role.

I thought the genitive ending was -n, so why do we get kuumeen instead of kuumen?

You are right that the genitive is historically -n, but its form depends on the word type.

For most nouns ending in a vowel other than e, you simply add -n:

talo → talon (house → of the house)
sairaala → sairaalan (hospital → of the hospital)

But nouns that end in -e usually form the genitive with -en, which shows up as a doubled e in spelling:

huone → huoneen (room)
perhe → perheen (family)
kuume → kuumeen (fever)
paine → paineen (pressure)

So there is no form *kuumen; the correct genitive is kuumeen.

How is verenpaineen built? It looks like more than one word.

Verenpaineen comes from the compound noun verenpaine:

veri – blood
paine – pressure

In many Finnish compounds, the first part appears in its genitive form:

veri → veren
veren
- paine → verenpaine (blood pressure)

Then we put the whole compound into the genitive (for the object):

verenpaine → verenpaineen

Even though veren already looks like a genitive, you treat verenpaine as one word and only inflect the last part:

basic: verenpaine – blood pressure
genitive: verenpaineen – as in mittaa verenpaineen (measures the blood pressure)

Could the word order be Hoitaja mittaa kuumeen ja verenpaineen sairaalassa? Does that change the meaning?

Yes, that word order is completely correct:

Hoitaja mittaa kuumeen ja verenpaineen sairaalassa.

The basic meaning is the same. Finnish word order is fairly flexible. Changing it mainly affects emphasis or what is presented as old vs. new information:

Sairaalassa hoitaja mittaa…
– emphasizes the location first (in the hospital…), maybe contrasting with some other place.
Hoitaja mittaa… sairaalassa.
– starts with the nurse and the action, adding the location later.

Grammatically both are fine.

Could we use sairaalalla instead of sairaalassa? How would that change the meaning?

Sairaalassa uses the inessive case (-ssa, in/inside).
Sairaalalla would use the adessive case (-lla, roughly on/at).

For hospitals, the natural, neutral way to say at the hospital in this kind of sentence is sairaalassa. It covers both in the hospital building and at the hospital (as an institution).

Sairaalalla is possible but much less common and would usually suggest at the hospital area / premises / outside the building, or be dialectal. In standard language for this sentence, you want:

Sairaalassa hoitaja mittaa kuumeen ja verenpaineen.

How would I say this in the passive, like In the hospital, the fever and blood pressure are (typically) measured without mentioning the nurse?

You use the Finnish passive (sometimes called the impersonal):

Sairaalassa mitataan kuume ja verenpaine.

Points to notice:

mitata → mitataan (passive present)
There is no explicit subject; it means something like they measure / one measures / are measured.
The total objects are now in nominative (kuume, verenpaine), not genitive.

So Sairaalassa mitataan kuume ja verenpaine ≈ At the hospital, the fever and blood pressure are (routinely) measured.

How do I put the original sentence into the past tense: the nurse measured the fever and blood pressure?

Only the verb needs to change to past tense:

Sairaalassa hoitaja mittasi kuumeen ja verenpaineen.
= At the hospital, the nurse measured the fever and blood pressure.

Past tense forms of mitata (simple example):

minä mittasin – I measured
sinä mittasit – you measured
hän mittasi – he/she measured
me mittasimme – we measured
te mittasitte – you (pl.) measured
he mittasivat – they measured

How do I negate the sentence: At the hospital, the nurse does not measure the fever and blood pressure?

In Finnish, negation uses a special negative verb ei, and the main verb appears in a short base form. The object also switches to partitive in a negative sentence:

Sairaalassa hoitaja ei mittaa kuumetta eikä verenpainetta.

Breakdown:

ei – negative verb (3rd person singular here)
mittaa – connegative form of mitata (same as 3rd singular present)
kuumeen → kuumetta (genitive → partitive)
verenpaineen → verenpainetta (genitive → partitive)
eikä – and not

So the pattern is:

affirmative: mittaa kuumeen ja verenpaineen
negative: ei mittaa kuumetta eikä verenpainetta