Learn Hardcore Finnish: Insinööri työskentelee pienessä yrityksessä.

Finnish has no articles like English a/an or the. The noun form insinööri (engineer) is just the basic nominative singular, and context tells you whether it means an engineer or the engineer.

So:

Insinööri työskentelee pienessä yrityksessä.
can be translated as
- An engineer works in a small company. or
- The engineer works in a small company.

The sentence itself doesn’t force a choice between definite and indefinite; that’s added in translation based on context.

Why is Insinööri capitalized here? Are job titles normally capitalized in Finnish?

Insinööri is capitalized only because it is the first word of the sentence.

In Finnish:

Job titles and professions are not capitalized in the middle of a sentence.
- Hän on insinööri. = He/She is an engineer.
Proper names (people, countries, etc.) are capitalized, but ordinary nouns like insinööri (engineer), yritys (company) are not.

So if the sentence started differently, you would write:

Tässä yrityksessä insinööri työskentelee paljon.
(Here in this company the engineer works a lot.)

Why don’t we use a pronoun like hän (“he/she”) in this sentence?

The subject of the sentence is the noun insinööri, so a pronoun is not needed.

Insinööri työskentelee pienessä yrityksessä.
= The engineer works in a small company.

If you use a pronoun, it usually replaces the noun, not repeats it:

Hän työskentelee pienessä yrityksessä.
= He/She works in a small company.

Using both together (Insinööri hän työskentelee...) is normally wrong or at least very marked and unusual in standard Finnish.

What exactly does työskentelee mean, and how is it formed from työskennellä?

Työskentelee is:

present tense
3rd person singular (he/she/it)
of the verb työskennellä (to work, to be employed, to be working).

Dictionary form: työskennellä (verb type 3)
Present stem: työskentele-
Add personal endings:

minä työskentelen – I work
sinä työskentelet – you work
hän työskentelee – he/she works
me työskentelemme – we work
te työskentelette – you (pl.) work
he työskentelevät – they work

So työskentelee is just the regular 3rd-person singular present form: (he/she) works / is working.

How do we know that työskentelee is present tense and not past tense?

In Finnish, the present tense has no extra tense marker; it’s just the stem + personal ending.

Present: työskentelee = works / is working
Past (imperfect): työskenteli = worked / was working

So:

The -ee at the end (työskentele + e) marks 3rd person singular in the present.
The past tense uses a different pattern (-i after the stem).

What case is the -ssä ending in pienessä yrityksessä, and what does it mean?

The ending -ssa / -ssä is the inessive case, usually translated as “in” or “inside”.

pieni yritys = a small company (nominative)
pienessä yrityksessä = in a small company (inessive)

So yrityksessä literally means “in (a/the) company”, and pienessä is “in (a/the) small”, agreeing with yrityksessä. English uses a preposition (in); Finnish uses an ending (-ssä).

Why do both pienessä and yrityksessä have the same ending -ssä?

Because in Finnish adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in:

case (here: inessive)
number (here: singular).

Noun:

yritys (company) → yrityksessä (in a company)

Adjective:

pieni (small) → pienessä (in a small …)

Together:

pienessä yrityksessä = in a small company

If the noun were plural, the adjective would also be plural:

pienissä yrityksissä = in small companies

Why is it yrityksessä and not something like yrityssä? Where does the kse come from?

This is a matter of the word stem and a bit of consonant gradation.

The nominative singular is:

yritys = company

But the stem used for most cases is:

yritykse-

From that stem you get:

Genitive: yrityksen (of the company)
Inessive: yrityksessä (in the company)
Illative: yritykseen (into the company), etc.

So yrityksessä = yritykse- + -ssä
The kse is part of the stem; it just doesn’t appear in the nominative form yritys.

Why is there -ssä with ä instead of -ssa with a?

This is because of vowel harmony in Finnish.

Words with front vowels (y, ä, ö) take the ä-version of endings:

yritys (y, y) → yrityksessä (inessive)
pieni (i, e – neutral, but no back vowels) → pienessä

Words with back vowels (a, o, u) take a-version:

talo (house) → talossa (in the house)
koulu (school) → koulussa (in the school)

So yrityksessä, pienessä correctly use -ssä.

Why does the adjective come before the noun in pienessä yrityksessä? Can it come after?

The normal word order in Finnish is:

adjective + noun

So:

pieni yritys = small company
iso talo = big house
vanha auto = old car

The adjective almost always comes before the noun in neutral statements. Putting it after the noun is very unusual and normally either wrong or very poetic/archaic. So yrityksessä pienessä would not be standard.

Could we move pienessä yrityksessä to another position in the sentence?

Yes, Finnish word order is fairly flexible, and the case endings keep the roles clear.

All of these are grammatically correct, with slightly different emphasis:

Insinööri työskentelee pienessä yrityksessä.
Neutral: says where the engineer works.
Pienessä yrityksessä insinööri työskentelee.
Emphasizes “in a small company”, e.g. in contrast to a big one.
Insinööri pienessä yrityksessä työskentelee.
Unusual, but can be used if you want a special emphasis on the engineer in a small company, not some other engineer.

The basic, most natural version is the original one.

How would the sentence change if we wanted “Engineers work in small companies” (plural)?

Then both the subject and the noun phrase in the inessive would be plural:

Insinöörit työskentelevät pienissä yrityksissä.

Changes:

Insinööri → Insinöörit (plural nominative) = engineers
työskentelee → työskentelevät (3rd person plural) = (they) work
pienessä yrityksessä → pienissä yrityksissä (plural inessive) = in small companies

What is the difference between työskentelee yrityksessä and työskentelee yrityksellä?

Both are possible, but they have different nuances because they use different location cases:

yrityksessä (inessive, -ssa/-ssä)
- Literally: in the company
- Typical for talking about working in a company as an organization or as a workplace in general.
yrityksellä (adessive, -lla/-llä)
- Literally: at the company / on the company
- Can be used when you think of the company more as a place, employer, or site, e.g. “at Company X”.

In many everyday contexts both might be heard, but yrityksessä is the default for “in a company” as in this sentence.

Does Insinööri työskentelee pienessä yrityksessä mean “The engineer works …” or “The engineer is working …”?

It can mean both:

The engineer works in a small company. (habitual, general state)
The engineer is working in a small company. (current ongoing situation)

Finnish present tense covers both the English simple present and present continuous. You choose which English tense to use based on context in translation. The Finnish form itself does not change.

How do you pronounce the words insinööri, työskentelee, and yrityksessä?

Very roughly using English-like hints:

insinööri
- in as in in
- si like see
- nöö: ö is between e in her and u in burn (but shorter, and with rounded lips)
- ri like ree
- Stress is on the first syllable: IN-si-nöö-ri
työskentelee
- työ: y is like German ü, French u; ö as above; overall työ is one syllable
- sken like sken in sketch but with e like in get
- te like teh
- lee with a long ee sound
- Stress on TYÖ: TYÖs-ken-te-lee
yrityksessä
- y again like German ü / French u
- ri as ree
- tyk: tük
- ses like sess
- final sä: säh (with front vowel ä)
- Stress on YRI: Y-ri-tyk-ses-sä

Key points:

Stress is almost always on the first syllable of the word in Finnish.
Long vowels (like öö, ee) and double consonants (ss) are really held longer and can change meaning.