Learn Hardcore Finnish: Tentti alkaa huomenna, ja minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee. - The exam starts tomorrow, and I have to write one more essay.

The person (I, you, he/she, etc.) is in the genitive case, not nominative:
- minä → minun
- sinä → sinun
- hän → hänen
- me → meidän
- te → teidän
- he → heidän
The verb pitää stays in 3rd person singular for all persons:
- minun pitää
- sinun pitää
- hänen pitää
- meidän pitää
- etc.

So minä pitää would be ungrammatical. The pattern is always:

[genitive pronoun] + pitää + infinitive
minun pitää kirjoittaa – I must write
sinun pitää opiskella – you must study

What is the difference between pitää “must” and pitää “to like”?

They are the same verb form pitää, but used in different fixed patterns:

pitää = must / have to
- Pattern: [genitive pronoun] + pitää + infinitive
- Example: minun pitää kirjoittaa – I must write
pitää = to like
- Pattern: pitää + [object in the elative case (-sta / -stä)]
- Usually conjugated in 1st person: pidän, not pitää:
  - Pidän kahvista. – I like coffee.
  - Pidätkö tästä esseestä? – Do you like this essay?

So:

minun pitää kirjoittaa = I have to write
pidän kirjoittamisesta = I like writing

Context and the form around pitää tell you which meaning is intended.

Can I say minun täytyy kirjoittaa instead of minun pitää kirjoittaa? Is there a difference?

Yes, you can. Both are very common and translate well as I must / I have to write.

minun pitää kirjoittaa
minun täytyy kirjoittaa

Nuance (often quite small in everyday speech):

täytyy can feel slightly stronger or more “external” obligation (rules, deadlines, necessity).
pitää can be a bit more neutral, often like “I should / I need to”.

In practice, most of the time they are interchangeable, and as a learner you can treat them as near-synonyms.

What does vielä add here? Why not just minun pitää kirjoittaa yksi essee?

vielä here means roughly still / yet / in addition.

Minun pitää kirjoittaa yksi essee.
= I have to write one essay.
Minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee.
= I still have to write one (more) essay. / I have to write one more essay.

It implies that:

Some essays may already be written, and
There is at least one remaining essay to do.

Other common uses of vielä:

Onko sinulla vielä kysymyksiä? – Do you still have questions?
En ole vielä valmis. – I am not ready yet.

Why do we say yksi essee (“one essay”) instead of just essee?

Finnish has no article words like a / an / the, so:

essee on its own can mean “an essay” or “the essay”, depending on context.

Including yksi makes the number explicit:

yksi essee = one essay (specifically the number “one”).

In this sentence yksi is used because the speaker wants to stress exactly one more essay:

minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä essee
= I still have to write an essay (could be interpreted as “some essay or other”)
minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee
= I still have to write one more essay (clearly 1 remains)

So yksi here replaces the English idea of “one more” rather than the indefinite article.

Why is essee in the basic form (nominative)? When would it change case after kirjoittaa?

The object of kirjoittaa can appear in different cases depending on meaning and aspect.

In minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee:

yksi essee is nominative (basic form).
This is normal when:
- The object is indefinite (not a particular, known essay), or
- The focus is on the activity of writing one essay, not on a specific completed result.

Compare:

Kirjoitan esseen.
- esseen = genitive object
- I will write the essay / I will write an essay (and finish it).
- Emphasis on a specific, completed result.
Kirjoitan essee (colloquial / some dialects) or kirjoitan esseetä.
- esseetä = partitive
- I am (in the process of) writing an essay / I will be writing an essay.
- Emphasis on ongoing / incomplete action.

With yksi essee in this context, it’s like saying:

I still have to write one essay (one unit of work), not necessarily highlighting which exact essay it is.

What exactly does tentti mean, and how is it different from koe?

Both relate to tests, but usage differs:

tentti
- Commonly: an exam, especially in universities or higher education.
- Often a bigger, more formal test covering a course or large module.
koe
- General word for test / exam in schools.
- Also means experiment in scientific contexts.
- More general, often used for smaller tests in basic/upper secondary school.

In many everyday situations they can overlap, but:

At university: you’ll usually hear tentti.
In school: you’ll more often hear koe.

So Tentti alkaa huomenna strongly suggests something like “the (course) exam starts tomorrow.”

Can I change the word order, e.g. Huomenna tentti alkaa or Minun pitää vielä kirjoittaa yksi essee?

Yes, Finnish word order is fairly flexible, but it affects emphasis.

Some natural variants:

Tentti alkaa huomenna, ja minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee.
– Neutral: the exam starts tomorrow; I still have to write one more essay.
Huomenna tentti alkaa, ja minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee.
– Emphasis on tomorrow: Tomorrow the exam starts…
Tentti alkaa huomenna, ja minun pitää vielä kirjoittaa yksi essee.
– Moves vielä earlier; focus slightly more on still having to write.

All of these are correct and idiomatic.

However something like:

Minun pitää vielä yksi essee kirjoittaa

is possible but sounds marked / poetic / heavily focused on yksi essee. In everyday speech, keep vielä next to the verb or before yksi:

Minun pitää vielä kirjoittaa yksi essee.
Minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee.

What is the difference between alkaa and aloittaa? Could I say Tentti aloittaa huomenna?

No, here you must use alkaa, not aloittaa.

alkaa = to begin / start (intransitive)
- Something starts by itself.
- Tentti alkaa huomenna. – The exam starts tomorrow.
aloittaa = to begin / start (something) (transitive)
- Someone starts something.
- Opettaja aloittaa tentin huomenna kello yhdeksän. – The teacher will start the exam tomorrow at nine.

So:

Tentti alkaa huomenna. ✅ (The exam begins tomorrow.)
Tentti aloittaa huomenna. ❌ (wrong, unless “the exam” is somehow a person starting something else)

You could say:

Aloitamme tentin huomenna. – We will start the exam tomorrow.

Why is there a comma before ja in Finnish here, when in English we often don’t put one before “and”?

In Finnish, commas follow different rules than in English.

In the sentence:

Tentti alkaa huomenna, ja minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee.

there are two independent clauses:

Tentti alkaa huomenna. – The exam starts tomorrow.
Minun pitää kirjoittaa vielä yksi essee. – I still have to write one more essay.

Rule of thumb in Finnish:

When two full main clauses are joined by ja (and), mutta (but), etc., you usually put a comma before the conjunction.

So the comma before ja is normal and required here, even though in English many people would write:

The exam starts tomorrow and I still have to write one more essay. (no comma)

Why doesn’t Finnish use words like “the” or “a” here, as in “the exam” or “an essay”?

Finnish simply does not have articles like a / an / the. The same bare noun can correspond to several English possibilities:

tentti
= an exam, the exam
essee
= an essay, the essay

Definiteness and specificity are understood from context, word order, and sometimes demonstratives like:

se tentti – that exam / the exam
tämä essee – this essay

In this context:

Tentti alkaa huomenna is naturally understood as “the exam starts tomorrow” (probably a known exam).
yksi essee is understood as “one (more) essay”.

So Finnish expresses the same ideas as English articles, but without separate little words. Context does the work.