Learn Hardcore Finnish: Lapset syövät marjoja suoraan metsästä pesemättä käsiä. - The children eat berries straight from the forest without washing their hands.

Lapset syövät marjoja.
The children are eating (some) berries.
Lapset syövät marjat.
The children eat the berries (a specific group you have in mind, e.g. the ones on the plate).

Why is käsiä also in the partitive plural?

Käsiä is the partitive plural of käsi (hand). It appears here because:

The structure pesemättä X (without washing X) behaves similarly to a negative sentence:
- Positive: Pesen kädet. – I wash (my) hands.
- Negative: En pese käsiä. – I do not wash (my) hands. (käsiä in the partitive)
The abessive form pesemättä (‘without washing’) doesn’t describe an actual completed washing action, but rather the absence of the action. In Finnish, objects of non‑happening / incomplete actions are typically in the partitive.

So:

pesemättä käsiä ≈ ‘without washing (their) hands’
partitive plural käsiä matches this “not done” / “not completed” idea.

What exactly is pesemättä grammatically, and why isn’t it a normal negative verb like eivät pese?

Pesemättä is:

the 3rd infinitive of pestä (to wash),
in the abessive case (-tta / -ttä),
meaning “without washing”.

So:

pestä – to wash
pesemä – 3rd infinitive stem
pesemättä – 3rd infinitive, abessive: ‘without washing’

In Finnish, abessive (-tta / -ttä) expresses “without (doing / having) X”:

syömättä – without eating
sanomatta – without saying
ilman pesemistä – without washing (more literal nouny version)

Why not use a normal negative verb?

If you said:

Lapset eivät pese käsiä.
The children do not wash their hands.

you’d be making a separate statement about not washing.

In Lapset syövät marjoja … pesemättä käsiä, pesemättä käsiä is a circumstantial phrase modifying how or in what condition they eat:

They eat berries without washing their hands.

So pesemättä is not the main verb; it’s a kind of adverbial expression telling under what condition the main action happens.

What case is metsästä, and how is it different from metsässä and metsään?

Metsästä is:

from metsä (forest)
in the elative case: -sta / -stä
basic meaning: “from (inside) the forest / out of the forest”

Difference from the other “forest” forms:

metsässä – inessive (in the forest)
- Lapset leikkivät metsässä. – The children are playing in the forest.
metsästä – elative (from the forest, from inside the forest)
- Lapset syövät marjoja suoraan metsästä. – They eat berries directly from the forest (i.e. from there, from among the trees, bushes, etc.)
metsään – illative (into / to the forest)
- Lapset menevät metsään. – The children go into the forest.

Here, suoraan metsästä emphasizes that the berries are being taken directly from the forest itself, not from a bowl or supermarket.

What does suoraan mean exactly, and why not suora?

Suora is the adjective: straight (a straight line, straight road, etc.).
Suoraan is the adverb: straight, directly.

Finnish often forms adverbs by adding -an / -en to an adjective stem:

suora → suoraan – straight → straight/directly
nopea → nopeasti is another pattern, but many follow -sti or other formations.

In the sentence:

suoraan metsästä = directly from the forest / straight from the forest

Using the adjective suora here would be ungrammatical, because you need an adverb to modify the verb phrase (syövät marjoja), not an adjective that modifies a noun.

Why is there no word for “their” before käsiä?

Finnish often omits possessive pronouns (my, your, his/her, their) when the owner is obvious from context, especially with parts of the body and clothing.

In pesemättä käsiä, it is naturally understood that:

the hands belong to the same subject as the main verb (lapset).

So the sentence means:

“The children eat berries ... without washing their hands.”

You can be more explicit:

pesemättä heidän käsiään – without washing their hands
pesemättä käsiään – using a possessive suffix (-än) on the noun (their hands)

These versions are grammatical and a bit more formal/explicit, but in everyday Finnish, simply käsiä is very normal when the owner is clear.

Why is the verb syövät and not syö?

Syövät is the present tense, 3rd person plural form of syödä (to eat).

Conjugation of syödä in the present tense:

minä syön – I eat
sinä syöt – you eat (sing.)
hän syö – he/she eats
me syömme – we eat
te syötte – you eat (pl.)
he syövät – they eat

The subject lapset is plural (“children”), so the verb must also be plural:

Lapset syövät – The children eat.

If you said Lapset syö, it would be ungrammatical standard Finnish, because the verb would be in 3rd person singular but the subject is plural.

Could the word order change, for example: Lapset syövät suoraan metsästä marjoja pesemättä käsiä? Does that change the meaning?

Yes, Finnish allows relatively free word order, and you can say:

Lapset syövät suoraan metsästä marjoja pesemättä käsiä.

This is still understandable and basically has the same meaning. However, the most natural and neutral order here is:

Lapset syövät marjoja suoraan metsästä pesemättä käsiä.

Some tendencies:

Putting marjoja right after the verb highlights what they are eating.
suoraan metsästä then specifies from where / in what way.
pesemättä käsiä comes last as an additional circumstance: without washing their hands.

If you move things around too much, the sentence may start to feel heavy or slightly unnatural, but the core meaning usually remains clear as long as the cases are correct.

Why is the subject Lapset in this form, not Lapsia or Lapsit?

Lapset is the nominative plural of lapsi (child): “children” as the subject.
Lapsia is partitive plural: used for indefinite / some (number of) children, often not as the subject in a simple sentence like this.
Lapsit is simply incorrect; Finnish doesn’t form this plural.

Typical subject forms:

Lapsi syö marjoja. – A child eats berries.
Lapset syövät marjoja. – (The) children eat berries.

You’d see lapsia in situations like:

Pihalla on lapsia. – There are children in the yard. (indefinite group)

Could the sentence use marjat instead of marjoja? What would change?

Yes, you could say:

Lapset syövät marjat suoraan metsästä pesemättä käsiä.

Then:

marjat (nominative plural) would mean “the berries”, a specific and complete set that you have in mind (for example, all the berries on a certain bush or all the berries you collected).

Difference in nuance:

marjoja → some berries, an unspecified amount, more general
marjat → those berries / all the berries (in question)

So the original with marjoja feels more like a general habit or description of what they do: they eat berries (some amount) directly from the forest, without washing their hands.

Who is understood to be doing the “washing” in pesemättä? Do we need to say it?

In Finnish, when you have a structure like:

[Subject] + [main verb] + [3rd infinitive in abessive]

the subject of the infinitive is usually understood to be the same as the subject of the main verb, unless something else is indicated.

So in:

Lapset syövät marjoja suoraan metsästä pesemättä käsiä.

we understand:

Lapset (they) eat berries…
…(they) do not wash hands.

You typically do not need to repeat the subject. It is automatically linked to lapset. If you did want to emphasize a different “washer,” you’d have to rephrase the sentence more explicitly.