Questions & Answers about Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.
Finnish uses a special structure to express possession, often called the adessive + olla construction.
- Minulla on literally means something like “on me there is”.
- minulla is “on me” (adessive case of minä).
- on is the 3rd person singular of olla (“to be”).
So:
- Minulla on haastattelu. ≈ “There is an interview on me” → “I have an interview.”
You cannot say:
- ✗ minä on haastattelu (wrong person/structure)
- ✗ minä olen haastattelu (“I am an interview”)
For I have X, you almost always use [adessive pronoun] + on:
- Minulla on auto. – I have a car.
- Sinulla on kirja. – You have a book.
- Hänellä on koira. – He/She has a dog.
Yes, you can. Finnish word order is fairly flexible, and both are correct:
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.
- Minulla on haastattelu huomenna.
The difference is about focus and what you’re highlighting:
Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.
Emphasis on “tomorrow” – maybe you’re contrasting it with other days:
“Tomorrow (not today / not next week), I have an interview.”Minulla on haastattelu huomenna.
More neutral; you’re just stating that you have an interview, and then adding when.
In everyday speech, you’ll hear both. If you just want a plain, neutral sentence, Minulla on haastattelu huomenna is often slightly more neutral-sounding.
Huomenna is an adverb meaning “tomorrow (as a time)”.
Huominen is an adjective/noun meaning “tomorrow’s / the tomorrow”.
Use huomenna when you say when something will happen:
- Menemme elokuviin huomenna. – We’re going to the movies tomorrow.
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.
Use huominen when you talk about the next day or use it like an adjective:
- huominen päivä – tomorrow’s day
- huominen kokous – tomorrow’s meeting
- Huominen jännittää minua. – I’m nervous about tomorrow.
So in your sentence you’re answering “When?”, so you need the adverb huomenna.
Haastattelu is in the nominative singular (dictionary form) because:
- it’s a single, countable thing, and
- in this sentence, you talk about having one whole interview as an event.
In Finnish, the object of olla in the “minulla on X” possession structure is usually:
- nominative when the thing is a whole, countable item/event:
- Minulla on auto. – I have a car.
- Minulla on tentti. – I have an exam.
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.
You might see haastattelua (partitive) in different contexts, for example to express an ongoing process or an indefinite amount:
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelua koko päivän.
“Tomorrow I’ll be doing interviewing the whole day.” (more like I’ll be interviewing.)
But for a single scheduled interview, haastattelu (nominative) is the normal choice.
Pronunciation points:
- Stress: Always on the first syllable in Finnish: HAA-statt-eh-lu.
- aa: long a sound, held twice as long as a short a.
- st: like English st in “stop”.
- tt: a double consonant; you make the t sound a bit longer / “stronger”, like a brief stop between vowels.
- e: like e in “bed”.
- u: like oo in “book” (but a bit shorter and pure).
Rough guide (not perfect): HAH-stut-teh-loo, but with a clearly long aa in the first syllable and clear double tt in the middle: haa-statt-elu.
In the “minulla on” structure, the verb olla (to be) always appears in 3rd person singular: on, regardless of who has something:
- Minulla on haastattelu. – I have an interview.
- Sinulla on haastattelu. – You have an interview.
- Hänellä on haastattelu. – He/She has an interview.
- Meillä on haastattelu. – We have an interview.
- Heillä on haastattelu. – They have an interview.
The subject-like element is actually the adessive phrase (minulla, sinulla, etc.), not the personal pronoun in nominative. Grammatically, the structure is closer to:
- “There is an interview on me.”
- “There is an interview on you.”
So the verb is just “is” (on), and the person is indicated by the form of -lla/-llä on the pronoun.
You can grammatically say On haastattelu huomenna, but the meaning changes:
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelu. – I have an interview tomorrow.
- Huomenna on haastattelu. – There is an interview tomorrow. (But whose? It’s not specified.)
- On haastattelu huomenna. – Similar to the previous; “There is an interview tomorrow,” with a slightly more neutral or impersonal tone.
If you want to clearly say “I have an interview tomorrow”, you need minulla:
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.
Leaving it out usually makes the sentence sound general or incomplete from an English learner’s point of view.
Finnish has no articles (no “a”, “an”, or “the”). The simple word haastattelu can mean:
- an interview
- the interview
- sometimes just interview in a general sense
Context usually tells you which English article fits best. In your sentence:
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.
→ would normally be translated as “Tomorrow I have an interview.”
(because it’s a new, not previously mentioned event)
If you really want to emphasize one interview (and not two, for example), you can add yksi:
- Huomenna minulla on yksi haastattelu. – Tomorrow I have one interview.
But this is more like emphasizing the number, not like using the English article “a”.
Finnish often uses compound nouns. For job interview, the common word is:
- työhaastattelu – job interview
So you can say:
- Huomenna minulla on työhaastattelu. – Tomorrow I have a job interview.
Same structure, just a more specific noun.
Yes. In everyday spoken Finnish, people often:
- drop the -ni in minä and just say mä (in many dialects),
- simplify cases slightly,
- reduce minulla to mulla.
A very common spoken version is:
- Huomenna mulla on haastattelu.
Meaning is the same, but it sounds more informal. In writing (especially formal writing), prefer the standard:
- Huomenna minulla on haastattelu.