Learn Hardcore Finnish: Pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt. - After running in the stairs for a long time, the short elevator ride feels easy, even though I am out of breath.

Pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt.

After running in the stairs for a long time, the short elevator ride feels easy, even though I am out of breath.

Breakdown of Pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt.

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Questions & Answers about Pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt.

Why is pitkän in the genitive case and not pitkä or pitkää?

Pitkän is genitive singular because it has to agree with juoksemisen, which is also in the genitive singular.

The structure is:

pitkä juokseminen = long running (nominative, basic form)
pitkän juoksemisen = of the long running (genitive)

The postposition jälkeen (after) always takes its complement in the genitive:

juoksemisen jälkeen = after (the) running
pitkän juoksemisen jälkeen = after the long running

So once juoksemisen is in the genitive because of jälkeen, the adjective pitkä must also be genitive: pitkän.

What exactly is juoksemisen? Is it a verb, an infinitive, or a noun?

Juoksemisen is the genitive form of the action noun juokseminen, which is formed from the verb juosta (to run).

Formation:

verb: juosta
stem: juokse-
action noun: juokseminen (running as a thing/activity)
genitive: juoksemisen

So in pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen, the phrase literally means:

“after the long running in the stairs”

This -minen form behaves like a normal noun (it declines in cases), similar to English running in after running / after the running.

Why is the phrase ordered as pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen? Could I say it in another order?

The core requirement is:

the genitive phrase that belongs to jälkeen must come before jälkeen:
(jonkin) jälkeen = after (something)

Within that genitive phrase, the structure is:

pitkän (adjective)
portaissa (location)
juoksemisen (head noun)

So:

pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen is natural:
- after the long running in the stairs

Some variation is possible, but not all orders are good:

✅ pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen (normal)
✅ portaissa tapahtuneen pitkän juoksemisen jälkeen (heavier, more formal)
❌ pitkän juoksemisen portaissa jälkeen – wrong: jälkeen wants its genitive complement right before it, and portaissa doesn’t fit nicely after jälkeen here.

So the given order is the most straightforward and idiomatic.

Why is portaissa in the inessive plural? What is the nuance compared to other forms?

Portaissa is:

base noun: porras (a step)
plural nominative: portaat (stairs)
plural inessive: portaissa = in/on the stairs

Reasons:

Plural:
When talking about stairs as a set of steps, Finnish normally uses the plural: portaat, portaissa.
Inessive (-ssa/-ssä):
This is the “inside / in / on” location case. For stairs, portaissa covers what English expresses as “on the stairs” or “up the stairs”.

Compare:

portaissa juosta = to run on/in the stairs (moving on the staircase)
portailla (adessive plural) often refers more to on/around the steps, e.g. sitting on the front steps.

So in this context, portaissa is the normal choice for “running up/down the stairs”.

Why does jälkeen come after the phrase instead of before it, like English after?

Jälkeen is a postposition, not a preposition. That means:

English: after the long run
Finnish: the long run jälkeen

Grammatically:

postposition: jälkeen
its complement: a genitive phrase before it
- pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen
- työn jälkeen = after work
- ruoan jälkeen = after the food/meal

So its normal, fixed pattern is [GENITIVE PHRASE] + jälkeen.

Why is lyhyt hissimatka in the nominative case?

Lyhyt hissimatka is the subject of the main clause:

lyhyt hissimatka = a short elevator ride
tuntuu = feels
helpolta = easy

So the basic subject–verb structure is:

(Se) lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta
→ That short elevator ride feels easy.

Subjects in Finnish are normally in the nominative (unless there is some special construction like partitive subjects, which this is not), so lyhyt hissimatka stays in the nominative.

Why is helpolta in the ablative case (-lta)? Why not just helppo?

With tuntua (to feel / seem), Finnish normally uses the ablative case (-lta/-ltä) on the describing word:

tuntuu hyvältä = feels good
tuntuu pahalta = feels bad
tuntuu oudolta = feels strange
tuntuu helpolta = feels easy

So the pattern is:

[subject in nominative] + tuntuu + [adjective in ablative]

Compare:

Se on helppo. = It is easy. (a more objective statement)
Se tuntuu helpolta. = It feels easy. (subjective experience)

Using bare helppo after tuntua (tuntuu helppo) is ungrammatical in standard Finnish.

What is the difference between tuntuu helpolta and on helppo here?

The nuance is:

on helppo = is easy
- describes a more objective or general property.
tuntuu helpolta = feels easy
- focuses on how it seems/feels to someone at that moment.

In the sentence:

lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt.
→ “a short elevator ride feels easy, even though I’m out of breath”

The speaker is emphasizing the subjective feeling of ease right after hard effort on the stairs, not making a general claim that elevator rides are easy.

Could we add minusta (or some other person) with tuntuu? Is it implied here?

Yes. With tuntua, the person who experiences the feeling is often expressed with an allative pronoun:

Minusta hissimatka tuntuu helpolta. = To me, the elevator ride feels easy.
Sinusta se tuntuu helpolta. = To you, it feels easy.

In your sentence, minusta is simply omitted because it’s clear from the context that the speaker is talking about their own experience (the same “I” as in olen hengästynyt).

So:

Lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu (minusta) helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt.

is perfectly natural with or without minusta.

What exactly does vaikka mean here? Is it more like although or even though?

In this sentence, vaikka introduces a concessive clause – something that is true but does not prevent the main clause from also being true.

… tuntuu helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt.
→ “… feels easy, although / even though I’m out of breath.”

So here vaikka ≈ although / even though.

A couple of notes:

With indicative (olen hengästynyt), vaikka usually means although / even though (a fact).
With conditional or in hypothetical contexts, vaikka can mean even if.

Here it clearly states a real situation: I am out of breath, yet it feels easy.

In vaikka olen hengästynyt, is hengästynyt an adjective or a verb form? How is it formed?

Hengästynyt is the past active participle of the verb hengästyä (to get out of breath).

verb: hengästyä = to get winded / out of breath
past active participle: hengästynyt
olen hengästynyt = literally “I have become out of breath”, but used like “I am out of breath”.

Participles like hengästynyt behave both like verb forms and like adjectives:

as a verb-related form: with olla they can form a kind of present perfect-like meaning
as an adjective: you can say hengästynyt ihminen = an out-of-breath person

In vaikka olen hengästynyt, it describes the state the speaker is in at that moment.

Why is it olen hengästynyt (present) and not olin hengästynyt (past), even though the running already happened?

The time reference in the sentence is:

first: pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen → after the long running in the stairs
then: what is true at that time:
- lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta
- (ja) olen hengästynyt

So we use present tense because:

the speaker is describing their current state: I am out of breath now, as the elevator ride feels easy.
if you were telling a past story in narrative past, you’d shift everything accordingly:
- … hissimatka tuntui helpolta, vaikka olin hengästynyt.
  → “the elevator ride felt easy, although I was out of breath.”

In the given sentence, the perspective is “right now, after running”, so olen hengästynyt is natural.

Could the first part be expressed with a finite verb instead of pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen? For example with kun?

Yes. You can rephrase the idea with a subordinate clause using kun (when):

Kun olen juossut portaita pitkään, lyhyt hissimatka tuntuu helpolta, vaikka olen hengästynyt.
→ “When I have run the stairs for a long time, a short elevator ride feels easy, even though I’m out of breath.”

Comparison:

pitkän portaissa juoksemisen jälkeen
- uses an action noun (juokseminen) + jälkeen
- a bit more compact and noun-like.
kun olen juossut portaita pitkään
- uses a full verb clause
- often feels slightly more colloquial / spoken-language-like.

Both are correct; the original is more “nominal” in style, but perfectly natural.