Learn Hardcore Finnish: Tuleva koe jännittää vielä vähän, vaikka olen kerrannut hyvin. - The upcoming exam still makes me a bit nervous, even though I have revised well.

Finnish doesn’t have a special future tense like English. Instead, it often uses the present tense or adjectival participles to talk about the future.

tuleva is the active present participle of tulla (“to come”), but in practice it works as an adjective meaning “upcoming / future / coming”.
So tuleva koe literally = “the coming test” → “the upcoming test”.

You cannot say *tulee koe to mean “the upcoming test”.

tulee koe would mean something like “a test is coming (will come)”, as a whole sentence, not as a noun phrase.
When you want to modify a noun (koe) with “coming/upcoming”, you need the adjective form tuleva, not the verb tulee.

So:

tuleva koe = the upcoming test
koe tulee = the test is coming / the test will take place

How does the verb jännittää work here? Why isn’t it olen jännittynyt or something like that?

Jännittää is a very common Finnish verb for “to feel nervous / excited (about something)”. It’s one of those “psych-verbs” that work a bit differently from English:

Grammatically, the thing causing the emotion is the subject, and
The person who feels it is usually in the partitive case (if mentioned at all).

Examples:

Minua jännittää koe. = “I’m nervous about the test.”
- Literally: “The test is making me nervous.”
- koe = subject
- minua (partitive of minä) = experiencer

In your sentence, the experiencer (minua) is simply left out because it’s obvious from context:

Tuleva koe jännittää vielä vähän…
→ “The upcoming test still makes (me) a bit nervous…”

Olen jännittynyt is possible but less natural here:

Olen vielä vähän jännittynyt tulevasta kokeesta.
= “I am still a bit tense/nervous about the upcoming test.”

That sounds more formal or descriptive of your state. Jännittää is the everyday, idiomatic way to say “I’m nervous / excited (about something).”

Where is “me” in this sentence? How would I say explicitly “I am nervous”?

In the original sentence, the “me” is implied, not stated:

Tuleva koe jännittää vielä vähän…
→ “The upcoming test still makes (me) a bit nervous…”

If you want to say it explicitly, you add minua in the partitive case:

Tuleva koe jännittää minua vielä vähän, vaikka olen kerrannut hyvin.
= “The upcoming test still makes me a bit nervous, even though I’ve revised well.”

Pattern to remember:

Minua jännittää = I’m nervous / excited.
Sinua jännittää = You’re nervous / excited.
Häntä jännittää = He/She is nervous / excited.

The experiencer is in partitive because it’s a typical pattern with emotion/feeling verbs in Finnish (minua pelottaa, väsyttää, hävettää, etc.).

What exactly does vielä vähän mean here? Is it “still a bit” or “a bit more”?

In this context, vielä vähän means “still a bit”:

Tuleva koe jännittää vielä vähän…
→ “The upcoming test still makes me a bit nervous…”

Nuance:

vielä = “still, yet” (continuing situation) or “more” depending on context.
vähän = “a little, a bit”.

So together it’s “a bit, still”. The idea: I am already somewhat calm, but there’s still a little nervousness left.

Compare:

Vähän vielä. – “A bit more.” (e.g. pouring more drink, adding more food)
Minua jännittää vielä. – “I’m still nervous.”
Minua jännittää vielä vähän. – “I’m still a bit nervous.”

The “more” meaning of vielä usually appears in contexts of adding/continuing something on top of an existing amount.

What does vaikka mean here, and why is the verb just olen kerrannut, not some special mood?

Here vaikka means “although / even though”:

…, vaikka olen kerrannut hyvin.
→ “…, although I have revised well.”

With real facts used in a contrast (“X is true although Y is also true”), Finnish typically uses vaikka + normal indicative verb forms, exactly like here:

Vaikka olen kerrannut hyvin = “Although I have revised well”

There is also a conditional with vaikka for hypotheticals or “even if” meanings:

Vaikka kerrattaisin hyvin, koe voisi silti jännittää.
= “Even if one revised well, the exam could still be nerve‑racking.”

So:

Fact / concession: vaikka
- indicative
  - Vaikka olen kerrannut hyvin, minua jännittää.
Hypothetical: vaikka
- conditional
  - Vaikka kerrattaisin hyvin, minua jännittäisi silti.

Your sentence is talking about real actions you’ve actually done, so indicative (olen kerrannut) is correct.

Why is it olen kerrannut instead of simple past kertasin? What’s the difference?

Both are possible, but they have slightly different nuances.

Olen kerrannut hyvin = present perfect
- Literally: “I have revised well.”
- Focus on the result up to now and its relevance to the present situation (the upcoming exam).
- Very natural when you’re talking about preparation leading up to something that hasn’t happened yet.
Kertasin hyvin = simple past
- “I revised well.”
- Neutral past; it just states a completed action in the past, without explicitly highlighting its connection to right now.

In this sentence, olen kerrannut fits nicely because the exam is in the near future, and your past revision is directly linked to your current state of being (still) a bit nervous.

What does the verb kerrata mean exactly, and why does it become kerrannut?

Kerrata means “to revise, to review, to go over (material again)”, especially for tests/exams.

kerrata kokeeseen = to revise for an exam
kerrata sanastoa = to revise vocabulary

Kerrannut is the active past participle (the -nut/-nyt form), used with olla to build the perfect tense:

olla (present) + kerrannut → olen kerrannut = “I have revised”.

Why the double rr and double n?

The dictionary form is kerrata (already with rr).
The stem for the participle is kerrann- (consonant gradation and suffix), then you add -ut/-yt → kerrannut.

You don’t need to memorize the full morphophonology right away; practically:

kerrata → olen kerrannut
This is the correct perfect form: “I have revised.”

Could I also say Seuraava koe jännittää instead of Tuleva koe jännittää?

Yes, but there’s a nuance.

tuleva koe = “the upcoming test”
- Focuses on the fact that it’s approaching in time.
seuraava koe = “the next test”
- Focuses on its position in a sequence (after the current/previous one).

In many real contexts, they overlap and both would be understood as “the upcoming/next test”. Slight differences:

If you’re in a course with many exams, seuraava koe might foreground that it’s the next one in the series.
tuleva koe is more neutral “the test that is coming up (in the future)”.

In your sentence, Tuleva koe jännittää… sounds perfectly natural and is probably the most idiomatic choice.

Could I start the sentence with Vaikka instead? Is the word order flexible?

Yes. Word order here is quite flexible. Both are grammatical:

Tuleva koe jännittää vielä vähän, vaikka olen kerrannut hyvin.
Vaikka olen kerrannut hyvin, tuleva koe jännittää vielä vähän.

They mean the same thing: “Even though I have revised well, the upcoming test still makes me a bit nervous.”

The difference is mainly in focus:

Version 1 starts from the feeling (the test makes me nervous) and then adds the contrast (“even though I’ve revised well”).
Version 2 starts from the contrast / background fact (I have revised well) and then gives the main point (it still makes me nervous).

Both are very natural spoken and written Finnish.