Learn Hardcore Finnish: Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi. - Yesterday we had already done a tour in the city centre when the rain started.

Structure: imperfect of olla (to be) + past active participle
- olimme = we were / we had (past of olla)
- tehneet = done (past active participle of tehdä)

So “olimme jo tehneet” corresponds to “we had already done / had already taken” in English.

It shows that the tour was already completed before the later past event (the rain beginning).

Why do we use past perfect (“olimme jo tehneet”) instead of simple past (“teimme”)?

Finnish uses the past perfect to show clear order between two past events:

Event A: we had already taken the tour (olimme jo tehneet kierroksen)
Event B: it started raining (sade alkoi)

Using the past perfect makes it explicit that Event A happened earlier than Event B.

Compare:

Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.
→ We had already finished the tour before the rain started.
Eilen teimme kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.
→ We did the tour when the rain started.
The sequence is less clear; it can sound like the rain began during or right as you were doing the tour.

So “olimme jo tehneet” emphasizes that the tour was fully completed before the rain.

How is “olimme jo tehneet” formed grammatically?

It’s the past perfect (pluperfect) of the verb “tehdä kierros” (“to do/take a tour”):

Take olla in the imperfect, 1st person plural:
- minä olin
- sinä olit
- hän oli
- me olimme
- te olitte
- he olivat
Add the past active participle of the main verb in the correct number:
- singular: tehnyt (he/she/one person had done)
- plural: tehneet (we/they had done)

So:

me olimme tehneet = we had done
me olimme jo tehneet = we had already done

The -neet ending in tehneet matches the plural subject (we).

Why is there no “me” (we) in “olimme jo tehneet”? Is the subject pronoun optional?

Yes, in Finnish the personal pronoun is usually optional, because the person ending on the verb shows who the subject is.

olimme already contains -mme, the “we” ending.
So “olimme jo tehneet…” clearly means “we had already done…” even without “me”.

You could say:

Eilen me olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.

This is also correct, but:

Without me = neutral, normal style.
With me can add emphasis (“we (as opposed to others) had already done…”), or appear in more careful or contrastive speech.

In everyday Finnish, dropping the subject pronoun is very common when the verb form makes the subject obvious.

What case is “kierroksen”, and why not “kierros” or “kierrosta”?

“Kierroksen” is genitive singular, and here it functions as a total object (often called genitive-accusative).

Basic form (nominative): kierros = a round / a tour
Genitive: kierroksen
Partitive: kierrosta

In object position:

Genitive/accusative object → action is completed, total
Partitive object → action is ongoing, incomplete, or unbounded

So:

olimme jo tehneet kierroksen
→ we had already done the whole tour (completed).

If you said:

olimme jo tekemässä kierrosta
→ we were already in the middle of doing the tour (not finished).

So kierroksen signals that the tour was finished before the rain began.

What exactly does “kierros” mean here? Is it just “tour”?

“Kierros” literally means a round, lap, or circuit, and by extension a tour.

Common meanings:

tour / walk around an area:
- tehdä kierros kaupungissa = to take a tour/walk around the city
lap in sports:
- juosta yksi kierros = run one lap
round in games, drinks, etc.:
- ottaa vielä yksi kierros = have one more round

In this sentence, “tehdä kierros keskustassa” is best understood as:

to take a walk / have a look around the city centre,
to go for a tour of downtown.

So “kierroksen keskustassa” = a (whole) tour in the city centre.

What case is “keskustassa”, and what’s the difference from “keskustaan”?

“Keskustassa” is the inessive case (“in, inside”):

Basic form: keskusta = (city) centre, downtown
keskustassa = in the centre / in downtown
keskustaan = to the centre (allative: movement into the centre)

So:

kierros keskustassa
→ a tour in the city centre (you’re already there, moving around inside it)

Compare:

Menen keskustaan. = I’m going to the city centre.
Olen keskustassa. = I’m in the city centre.

In the sentence, “kierroksen keskustassa” clearly places the tour within the downtown area.

What does “jo” add to the meaning of “olimme jo tehneet kierroksen”?

“Jo” means “already”.

olimme tehneet kierroksen = we had done the tour
olimme jo tehneet kierroksen = we had already done the tour

It emphasizes that:

the tour was completed earlier than expected, or
completed before something else (here: before the rain started).

It can also hint at contrast:

Maybe someone expected you to do the tour later, but you had already done it.

The typical position is before the participle or verb part it modifies:

olimme jo tehneet (very natural)
jo olimme tehneet kierroksen (possible, but more marked/contrastive word order)

Why is there a comma before “kun”? Is that always required?

Yes, in standard written Finnish, you normally put a comma before subordinate clauses, and “kun” introduces such a clause.

Structure here:

Main clause: Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa
Subordinate clause: kun sade alkoi (“when the rain started”)

Rule of thumb:

If a clause is introduced by a conjunction like kun, että, koska, jos, vaikka, you separate it with a comma from the main clause.

So both of these need a comma:

Teimme kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.
Kun sade alkoi, olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa.

Spoken Finnish often drops pauses, but in writing, the comma is expected.

Could we also say “kun alkoi sataa” instead of “kun sade alkoi”? Is there a difference?

Yes, you can say either, and both are natural:

kun sade alkoi
- literally: when the rain began
- sade (rain) is a noun, and alkoi is its verb “began”.
kun alkoi sataa
- literally: when it started to rain
- sataa is the verb “to rain”, in the infinitive after alkoi (started).

Nuance:

kun sade alkoi feels a bit more noun-like / event-like: the rain as an event began.
kun alkoi sataa focuses more on the action of raining starting.

In most contexts, they are interchangeable in meaning. In your sentence, either choice works:

Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.
Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun alkoi sataa.

Why is it “kun sade alkoi” and not “kun sade oli alkanut”?

Both are grammatically correct, but they express slightly different timing:

kun sade alkoi
- simple past (imperfect)
- The moment the rain started is the point in time you’re talking about.
- The tour was already finished by that moment (hence the past perfect in the main clause).
kun sade oli alkanut
- past perfect: when the rain had begun
- Implies the rain had already started (and was ongoing) by the reference time.
- You’d usually then compare it to something even later in the past.

In your sentence, the focus is:
We had already done the tour at the moment when the rain started.
So simple past “alkoi” is the most natural choice.

Could I change the word order to “Kun sade alkoi, olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa”?

Yes, that’s fully correct and very natural.

Two acceptable variants:

Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.
Kun sade alkoi, olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa.

Differences:

Starting with Eilen puts more emphasis on “yesterday” as the general time frame.
Starting with Kun sade alkoi emphasizes the rain beginning as the starting point of your narrative.

Grammatically, both are fine; the choice is about focus and storytelling style, not correctness.

Why is the participle “tehneet” and not “tehnyt”?

The past active participle agrees in number with the subject:

Singular subject → tehnyt
- Hän oli jo tehnyt kierroksen. = He/She had already done the tour.
Plural subject → tehneet
- Me olimme jo tehneet kierroksen. = We had already done the tour.

In your sentence, the implied subject is “we” (plural), shown by olimme, so the participle must be plural: tehneet.

This number agreement between olimme (we were) and tehneet (having done, plural) is obligatory in standard Finnish.

Could we use the present perfect “olemme jo tehneet kierroksen” instead of “olimme jo tehneet kierroksen”?

Not in this sentence, because of the time adverb “Eilen” (yesterday) and the following past event:

Eilen fixes everything in the past.
The rain event “kun sade alkoi” is in the past (imperfect).

So the action that happened before that past event must be in the past perfect:

Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen…, kun sade alkoi.
= Yesterday we had already done the tour when it started raining.

“Olemme jo tehneet kierroksen” (present perfect) would normally refer to something relevant to now:

Olemme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa.
= We have already done the tour (and this is relevant to the present situation).

Mixing “Eilen” with present perfect would sound wrong in Finnish.

What is the role of “Eilen” at the start? Could it go elsewhere?

“Eilen” means “yesterday” and is a time adverb.

Typical, neutral place is at the beginning of the sentence:

Eilen olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.

You can move it, but the emphasis changes slightly:

Olimme eilen jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa, kun sade alkoi.
(Focus more on we had done it yesterday, rather than just telling the story of yesterday.)
Olimme jo tehneet kierroksen keskustassa eilen, kun sade alkoi.
(Possible, but starts to sound a bit clumsy or over-loaded at the end.)

The most natural, story-telling order is exactly as in your sentence:
time adverb (Eilen) – verb (olimme) – rest of clause – kun-clause.