Learn Hardcore Finnish: Sunnuntaina menemme taidemuseoon katsomaan vanhaa maalausta. - On Sunday we go to an art museum to see an old painting.

So instead of using a preposition like on, Finnish changes the ending of the noun. The capital letter here is just because it’s the first word in the sentence; days of the week are normally written with a lowercase letter in Finnish.

Why is there no separate word for “on” in “on Sunday”?

Finnish usually expresses what English does with prepositions (on, in, to, from, with, etc.) by using case endings on nouns.

In Sunnuntaina, the ending -na (essive) already contains the idea of “on (Sunday)”.
So you don’t say on sunnuntaina – the -na ending is the “on”.

This pattern appears everywhere:

koulussa – at school / in school (inessive -ssa)
Suomesta – from Finland (elative -sta)
taidemuseoon – to/into the art museum (illative -Vn / -oon)

Why is the verb menemme in the present tense if it means “we will go”?

Finnish has no separate future tense. The present tense is used for both:

present time: Nyt menemme taidemuseoon. – Now we are going to the art museum.
future time: Sunnuntaina menemme taidemuseoon. – On Sunday we will go to the art museum.

The time expression (Sunnuntaina) tells you that this is about the future.
So menemme is grammatically “we go / we are going”, but it’s naturally translated as “we will go” in this context.

Why is it menemme and not mennään? What’s the difference?

Both forms exist, but they mean different things.

menemme = “we go / we will go” (1st person plural, personal form)
mennään = “one goes / let’s go / we go” (impersonal/passive form)

So:

Sunnuntaina menemme taidemuseoon.
= On Sunday we (you know exactly who) will go to the art museum.
Sunnuntaina mennään taidemuseoon.
= On Sunday people / we (in general) will go to the art museum. More vague or colloquial “we”.

In careful or written language, menemme is the clear, personal “we” form.

Could the sentence also say Me menemme taidemuseoon? Where is the pronoun me?

Yes, you could say:

Me menemme sunnuntaina taidemuseoon katsomaan vanhaa maalausta.

However, in Finnish the personal ending on the verb (-mme = we) usually makes the pronoun me unnecessary, except when you want to emphasize it:

Me menemme, emme he. – We are going, not they.

In the original sentence, menemme already shows the subject is we, so me is simply omitted.

Why is it taidemuseoon and not taidemuseossa?

The choice of case describes direction vs location:

taidemuseo – art museum (basic form)
taidemuseoon – into / to the art museum (illative: movement into)
taidemuseossa – in the art museum (inessive: location inside)

In this sentence we are talking about going to the museum, so the illative is used:

menemme taidemuseoon – we go to / into the art museum

If you wanted to say “We are in the art museum”, you would say:

Olemme taidemuseossa.

How is taidemuseoon formed from taidemuseo?

First, note that taidemuseo is a compound noun:

taide – art
museo – museum
→ taidemuseo – art museum

To form the illative (“into, to”) of museo-type words:

museo → museoon (add -on; the oo is just the result of o + o)
taidemuseo → taidemuseoon

So:

stem: taidemuseo-
illative ending: -on
written together as taidemuseoon (pronounced with a long oo).

Why isn’t there a word like “to” before taidemuseoon?

Again, Finnish usually doesn’t use a separate word like English to before destinations. The case ending on the noun plays that role.

taidemuseo – art museum
taidemuseoon – to/into the art museum

Similarly:

Suomi → Suomeen – to Finland
kauppa → kauppaan – to the shop

So menemme taidemuseoon literally is “we go art-museum-into”. The -oon ending encodes the to/into meaning.

What form is katsomaan, and why not just katsoa?

katsomaan is the illative of the 3rd infinitive of the verb katsoa (“to look, to watch, to see”).

basic infinitive: katsoa – to look / to watch
3rd infinitive stem: katsoma-
illative: katsomaan

The 3rd infinitive in the illative (-maan / -mään) is commonly used to express purpose:

mennä syömään – go (in order) to eat
tulla katsomaan – come to look / to see
lähteä ostamaan – leave to buy

So menemme … katsomaan means “we are going (in order) to see”, i.e. “we’re going to see” as in the English infinitive of purpose.

Why do we say mennä katsomaan and not something like katsoa menemään?

In Finnish, when you describe going somewhere for a purpose, the natural pattern is:

mennä + (3rd infinitive illative of the other verb)
e.g. mennä katsomaan, mennä syömään, mennä ostamaan

The main verb of motion comes first (mennä), and the action that is the purpose of going is in the -maan / -mään form:

Menemme taidemuseoon katsomaan…
= We go to the art museum to see…

Reversing the order (katsoa menemään) would be ungrammatical and would not express this “go in order to X” meaning.

Why is it vanhaa maalausta and not vanha maalaus?

Both vanhaa and maalausta are in the partitive singular:

vanha maalaus – an/the old painting (basic form, nominative)
vanhaa maalausta – an old painting (partitive)

There are two main reasons for the partitive here:

The verb katsoa (“to look at, watch”) normally takes the partitive for its object when you’re just looking at something (no change happens to the object):
- katsoa elokuvaa – to watch a movie
- katsoa telkkaria – to watch TV
- katsomaan vanhaa maalausta – to see / look at an old painting
The partitive also fits the idea of an unspecified / not uniquely identified painting (“an old painting” rather than a very clearly defined, delimited event affecting it).

So katsomaan vanhaa maalausta is the natural way to say “to see an old painting” in Finnish.

Why do both vanhaa and maalausta have the same ending? What is going on grammatically?

In Finnish, adjectives agree with the noun they modify in:

case (nominative, partitive, etc.)
number (singular, plural)

Here, maalausta is partitive singular, so the adjective vanha also takes partitive singular:

vanha maalaus – old painting (nominative singular)
vanhan maalauksen – of the old painting (genitive singular)
vanhaa maalausta – (looking at) an old painting (partitive singular)

So the matching endings -a / -ta on vanhaa maalausta show that vanhaa belongs to and describes maalausta.

Could we say “sitä vanhaa maalausta” here? What would that change?

Yes, you could say:

Sunnuntaina menemme taidemuseoon katsomaan sitä vanhaa maalausta.

This would mean “that old painting”, referring to a specific painting already known to both speaker and listener (for example, one you’ve mentioned before).

vanhaa maalausta – an old painting (indefinite, just some old painting)
sitä vanhaa maalausta – that old painting (definite, specific)

The case (partitive) stays the same because the verb katsoa and the construction mennä katsomaan still require a partitive object.

Can we change the word order, for example: Menemme sunnuntaina taidemuseoon katsomaan vanhaa maalausta?

Yes, Finnish allows quite flexible word order. These are all grammatical:

Sunnuntaina menemme taidemuseoon katsomaan vanhaa maalausta.
Menemme sunnuntaina taidemuseoon katsomaan vanhaa maalausta.
Menemme taidemuseoon sunnuntaina katsomaan vanhaa maalausta.

The basic meaning remains the same: On Sunday we will go to the art museum to see an old painting.

Changing the word order mainly affects emphasis and focus:

Starting with Sunnuntaina emphasizes when.
Starting with Menemme is a bit more neutral and narrative: “We will go on Sunday to the art museum…”

What is the difference between mennä taidemuseoon and käydä taidemuseossa?

Both can appear in similar contexts, but the nuance is different:

mennä taidemuseoon – to go to / into the art museum
- focuses on the movement towards the museum
- case: illative (-oon) = into
käydä taidemuseossa – to visit the art museum
- implies a visit (you go there and come back)
- often used for shorter visits or “popping by”
- case: inessive (-ssa) = in

So you could also say:

Sunnuntaina käymme taidemuseossa katsomassa vanhaa maalausta.
= On Sunday we will visit the art museum to see an old painting.

Both are correct; mennä taidemuseoon just emphasizes the “going to” part a bit more.