Learn Hardcore Finnish: Meidän perheemme ihailee nauravaa maalausta, jossa kaksi lasta halaa suurta puuta. - Our family admires a laughing painting in which two children are hugging a big tree.

Meidän perheemme = our family (literally “our our-family”)
- meidän = our (genitive of me)
- perheemme = perhe (family) + possessive suffix -mme “our”
Perheemme on its own already means our family because of -mme.
Adding meidän makes the possessor more explicit or a bit more emphatic, and is very common and natural in modern Finnish, especially in speech and informal writing.

So you could also say:

Perheemme ihailee nauravaa maalausta… – neutral, a bit more compact
Meidän perheemme ihailee… – also neutral, slightly more “spelled out”

Both are fine; neither is wrong.

Isn’t it redundant to have both meidän and the ending -mme?

In a strict logical sense, yes, it’s “double marking”: both elements show the possessor we / our. But in modern Finnish, this combination is:

extremely common, and
stylistically normal in everyday language.

Historically and in very formal or old‑fashioned style, you might see only the possessive suffix:

perheemme – our family
kodissamme – in our home

In contemporary speech and writing, though, pronoun + noun + possessive suffix is standard:

meidän perheemme, teidän lapsenne, hänen kirjansa, etc.

So it’s not considered clumsy redundancy; it’s just how possessives are naturally expressed now.

Why is the verb ihailee singular instead of plural ihailevat, since “our family” is many people?

In Finnish, the verb agrees with the grammatical form of the subject, not with its “real‑world” size.

Perhe (family) is a singular noun.
Therefore perheemme (our family) is grammatically singular.
So the verb must be 3rd person singular: ihailee.

Examples:

Perheemme asuu Helsingissä. – Our family lives in Helsinki.
Joukkue voittaa usein. – The team often wins.

Even if a group contains many people, if the subject is grammatically singular, the verb is singular.

What is nauravaa exactly, and why does it end in -vaa?

Nauravaa comes from the verb nauraa (to laugh).

The base form is the active present participle: naurava = laughing (as an adjective).
Finnish often turns verbs into adjective‑like forms this way:
- itkeä → itkevä – crying
- puhua → puhuva – speaking

In the sentence we have:

nauravaa maalausta

Here:

maalausta is in the partitive case (because of the verb ihailla; see below).
Adjectives must agree in case with their noun, so naurava also becomes nauravaa (partitive singular).

So nauravaa maalausta literally: of‑a‑laughing painting / a laughing painting (object).

Why is maalausta (partitive) used instead of maalaus?

The key is the verb ihailla (to admire).

In Finnish, some verbs always take their object in the partitive case. These are often called “partitive verbs”. Ihailla is one of them.

ihailla + partitive
- ihailla maalausta – to admire a painting
- ihailla taidetta – to admire art
- ihailla maisemaa – to admire the landscape

Using nominative (maalaus) or genitive (maalauksen) as a total object with ihailla is not standard; native speakers naturally choose the partitive.

So ihailee nauravaa maalausta is the normal, correct pattern:
ihailla + [partitive object].

Could we say nauravan maalauksen instead of nauravaa maalausta?

Not with ihailla.

Case pattern
- ihailla requires a partitive object, so maalausta is the correct form.
- maalauksen is genitive; it would not match the normal government of ihailla.
Participial form
- nauravaa maalausta – a laughing painting (adjective naurava
  - noun)
- nauravan maalauksen – “of a laughing painting” or “the painting of someone/something that laughs” (genitive nauravan
  - maalauksen)

Grammatically, nauravan maalauksen by itself is fine (e.g. Pidän nauravan maalauksen väreistä – I like the colours of the laughing painting), but in this sentence:

ihailee nauravaa maalausta is correct and natural.
ihailee nauravan maalauksen clashes with the verb’s normal case pattern.

Why is there a comma before jossa?

Jossa kaksi lasta halaa suurta puuta is a relative clause giving extra information about the painting.

Finnish punctuation with relative clauses is somewhat style‑dependent, but a common pattern is:

Use a comma before joka/jossa/missä… when the clause is non‑restrictive – it adds additional information, not something essential to identify which painting.

Here, we’re not distinguishing between different paintings; we’re just describing what the already‑known painting shows:

Meidän perheemme ihailee nauravaa maalausta, jossa kaksi lasta halaa suurta puuta.
→ Our family admires the cheerful painting, in which two children are hugging a big tree.

So the comma marks that the following jossa‑clause is an extra description of that painting.

Why do we use jossa and not joka, missä, or mikä?

The basic relative pronoun is joka (“which/that/who”), but it changes form according to case:

nominative: joka – which
genitive: jonka – whose / of which
inessive (“in”): jossa – in which
etc.

We use jossa here because the idea is “in the painting”:

maalaus, jossa kaksi lasta halaa suurta puuta
= a painting in which two children are hugging a big tree
(conceptually: in the painting, two children…)

What about the others?

joka – nominative; would mean “which … (as subject)”. Not correct for “in which” here.
missä – “where / in which” but more like a question word or a looser relative (“the place where…”). With concrete nouns like maalaus, jossa is more accurate and standard.
mikä – used as a relative pronoun for whole clauses or pronouns like se, kaikki; not used here.

So jossa is simply the inessive form of joka, matching the idea “in the painting”.

Why is it kaksi lasta and not kaksi lapset or kaksi lastaa?

In Finnish, when a number greater than 1 is directly followed by a noun, the noun is in singular partitive.

Pattern:

kaksi lasta – two children
kolme kirjaa – three books
viisi autoa – five cars

So:

kaksi – two
lapsi – child
lasta – partitive singular of lapsi
→ kaksi lasta – two (of) child → two children

Forms like kaksi lapset or kaksi lastaa are incorrect.
The plural meaning comes from the numeral, not from a plural ending on the noun.

Why is it suurta puuta and not suuren puun?

The object here is puuta (tree), and it appears in the partitive case. The adjective suurta must match its case.

So we have:

halaa suurta puuta
- halata – to hug
- puuta – partitive singular of puu
- suurta – partitive singular of suuri (big)

Why partitive?

Many verbs of emotion, perception, or continuous action naturally take partitive objects, especially when the action is seen as ongoing/atelic (not resulting in a clear “completed” change of state).
Halata (“to hug”) typically uses a partitive object, especially in the present, describing the action itself:
- Halaan sinua. – I’m hugging you.
- Halaa suurta puuta. – (He/She) is hugging a big tree.

You might encounter total objects with halata in some contexts, but halaa suurta puuta with partitive is the normal, natural choice here.

If you said halaa suuren puun, it would sound odd or forced to many speakers, as if trying to treat the hugging as some kind of “completed result” action, which doesn’t fit the semantics very well.

Do adjectives like nauravaa and suurta always have to match the noun’s case?

Yes. In Finnish, adjectives agree with their noun in:

case
number
and, where relevant, possessive suffix.

In the sentence:

nauravaa maalausta
- maalausta – partitive singular
- → nauravaa must also be partitive singular
suurta puuta
- puuta – partitive singular
- → suurta must also be partitive singular

Other examples:

iso talo – big house (nominative)
ison talon – of the big house (genitive)
isossa talossa – in the big house (inessive)
isoja taloja – big houses (partitive plural)

So you cannot mix, for example, naurava maalausta or suurta puu; the forms must match.

Could we describe the content of the painting in another way, instead of maalausta, jossa kaksi lasta halaa suurta puuta?

Yes. Finnish has several ways to describe what is shown in a picture/painting. The version in the sentence is:

maalausta, jossa kaksi lasta halaa suurta puuta
→ a painting in which two children are hugging a big tree.

Alternatives include, for example:

Using -sta/-stä (“of/from”) with the subject of the picture:
- Meidän perheemme ihailee nauravaa maalausta kahdesta lapsesta, jotka halaavat suurta puuta.
  – Our family admires a cheerful painting of two children who are hugging a big tree.
Using maalaus, jossa on… constructions:
- …maalausta, jossa on kaksi lasta halaamassa suurta puuta.
  – a painting in which there are two children hugging a big tree.

The original maalausta, jossa… structure is very natural and common for describing what’s happening inside a picture.