Learn Hardcore Finnish: Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä, mutta maalla elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta. - Life in the city is sometimes busy, but in the countryside life feels calmer.

You would expect both to use the same case (since English says “in the city / in the countryside”), but Finnish uses two different, partly fixed patterns:

kaupungissa
- inessive -ssa = inside the city as a location
- neutral, physical location: in the city
maalla
- adessive -lla = originally “on / at (a surface or general area)”
- here it’s an idiomatic way to say “in the countryside”
- literally something like “on the land / on land”

So:

Elän kaupungissa. = I live in the city.
Elän maalla. = I live in the countryside.

You wouldn’t normally say *kaupungilla for this kind of general “life in the city” sentence, and *maassa would mean more literally “in the soil / on the ground” or “in a country (state)” in other contexts. The combination “kaupungissa … maalla” is the natural pair for city vs. countryside.

Why is it kiireistä and not kiireinen in “Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä”?

Kiireistä is the partitive singular of the adjective kiireinen (busy). Using the partitive here is a common Finnish pattern with olla (“to be”) when describing an ongoing or general quality, especially something a bit vague or unbounded:

Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä.
≈ Life in the city is sometimes (kind of) busy / full of busy-ness.

If you said:

Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireinen.

it would be grammatically possible, but it would sound more like you are talking about some particular phase or some specific instance of life, and the sentence would feel unusual; native speakers normally use partitive here.

So:

on kiireistä = life is (generally / characteristically) busy
partitive -a/ä / -ta/tä / -sta/stä often marks “not clearly bounded, not a single concrete thing” when used as a predicative.

Is kiireistä singular or plural? The -t- makes it look plural to me.

In this sentence, kiireistä is partitive singular, not plural.

For adjectives ending in -nen, the forms look a bit misleading if you’re used to English:

Adjective kiireinen (busy):

nominative singular: kiireinen
genitive singular: kiireisen
partitive singular: kiireistä
nominative plural: kiireiset
partitive plural: kiireisiä

So:

kiireistä (with -stä) = partitive singular
kiireisiä (with -ia / -iä) = partitive plural

In Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä, the subject elämä is singular and the predicative kiireistä agrees in number (singular) but is in the partitive case.

Why does the second part say “elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta” instead of “elämä on rauhallisempi”?

Both are possible, but they feel slightly different:

elämä on rauhallisempaa (more common version with partitive)
= life is calmer (a straightforward statement of fact)
elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta
= life feels calmer (how it is experienced / perceived)

The verb tuntua means “to feel / to seem”, and it’s used for subjective impressions:

Se tuntuu hyvältä. = It feels good.
Tilanne tuntuu vaikealta. = The situation feels difficult.

So in the original sentence, the writer is emphasizing how life is experienced in the countryside, not necessarily making a hard factual claim.

What form is rauhallisemmalta, and how is it built?

Rauhallisemmalta is:

the comparative of rauhallinen (calm, peaceful):
- rauhallinen → rauhallisempi (calmer, more peaceful)
in the ablative case (ending -lta / -ltä):
- rauhallisempi → rauhallisemmalta

So the full chain is:

rauha = peace
rauhallinen = peaceful / calm
rauhallisempi = more peaceful / calmer
rauhallisemmalta = (from) calmer → used with tuntua:
- tuntua + ablative = to feel X

Examples:

Tämä musiikki tuntuu rauhalliselta. = This music feels calm.
Maalla elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta. = In the countryside, life feels calmer.

Why does tuntua require rauhallisemmalta (ablative), not something like rauhallisempi in the basic form?

With the verb tuntua (“to feel / to seem”), Finnish normally uses an adjective in the ablative case (-lta / -ltä):

tuntua + [adjective]-lta/-ltä

Examples:

Se tuntuu hyvältä. = It feels good.
Elämä tuntuu vaikealta. = Life feels difficult.
Maalla elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta. = In the countryside, life feels calmer.

So rauhallisemmalta is not random: it’s the required case pattern with tuntua. Using plain rauhallisempi here would be ungrammatical.

Why is elämä repeated in the second clause (“… mutta maalla elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta”)? Could we just say “… mutta maalla tuntuu rauhallisemmalta”?

You can say:

… mutta maalla tuntuu rauhallisemmalta.
= “… but in the countryside it feels calmer.”

However, that version is more vague: the subject is not stated. It could mean:

It feels calmer to me / to us / to people,
rather than life itself being what feels calmer.

Finnish normally requires an explicit subject except in certain special cases (like weather expressions). Here, by repeating elämä, you make it completely clear that:

elämä (life) is what feels calmer in the countryside.

So:

… maalla elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta.
= specifically: life feels calmer.
… maalla tuntuu rauhallisemmalta.
= more like: it / things / being there feels calmer.

Can joskus (“sometimes”) go in other positions, and does the meaning change?

Yes, joskus is fairly flexible in word order. All of these are grammatical:

Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä.
Elämä kaupungissa on kiireistä joskus.
Joskus elämä kaupungissa on kiireistä.

They all mean roughly “Life in the city is sometimes busy.”
The difference is emphasis:

Version 1 (original) is the most neutral, very natural.
Version 3 (Joskus at the start) puts a bit more emphasis on sometimes:
- Sometimes, life in the city is busy (as opposed to always or never).

Finnish tends to keep adverbs like joskus near the verb, but movement for emphasis is common and normal.

Why is the word order “Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä” instead of “Kaupungissa elämä on joskus kiireistä”?

Both orders are possible, but they feel different:

Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä.
- elämä is the starting point (topic): Life in the city is sometimes busy.
Kaupungissa elämä on joskus kiireistä.
- kaupungissa is now the topic: In the city, life is sometimes busy.

The first version (subject first) is more neutral and is usually what beginners are taught. The second version shifts the focus slightly to the place (in the city vs. somewhere else), which fits with the contrast to maalla later.

In natural speech and writing, Finnish moves elements around more freely than English does, mainly to express what is already known (topic) and what is new or contrasted (focus).

Why is mutta used here and not vaan? Aren’t both “but”?

Finnish has two common words translated as “but”:

mutta
- general “but”, used in most contrasts
- can connect almost any two clauses:
  - Haluan lähteä, mutta olen väsynyt.
    = I want to go, but I’m tired.
vaan
- “but rather / but instead”
- used after a negation, to correct or replace something:
  - En asu kaupungissa, vaan maalla.
    = I don’t live in the city, but (rather) in the countryside.

In your sentence there is no negation, so mutta is the correct word:

Elämä kaupungissa on joskus kiireistä, mutta maalla elämä tuntuu rauhallisemmalta.
= Life in the city is sometimes busy, but in the countryside life feels calmer.