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Heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia, vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua.

Heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia, vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua.
They have a habit of watching the news together, even though politics tires me.
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Questions & Answers about Heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia, vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua.

Why is it heillä on instead of simply he ovat?

Finnish usually expresses possession with the structure:

  • [adessive case] + on = “X has …”

So:

  • he = they (nominative)
  • heillä = on them / at them (adessive case)
  • on = is

Heillä on tapana… literally: “On them is (as a habit)…” → “They have a habit (of)…”.

You normally cannot say *he ovat tapana for possession.
Olla + adessive is the standard “have” construction in neutral Finnish.

What does the structure olla tapana + infinitive mean, and how is it different from just using a normal verb?

Olla tapana + infinitive means “to have a habit of doing something” or “to usually do something”.

  • He katsovat uutisia yhdessä.
    = They watch the news together. (neutral statement of fact / what they are doing or often do)

  • Heillä on tapana katsoa uutisia yhdessä.
    = They have a habit of watching the news together. (explicitly highlights it as a regular habit/tradition)

So olla tapana focuses on the habitual, customary nature of the action, not just the action itself.

Why is it tapana and not tapa in heillä on tapana?

Tapana is the essive case of tapa (“habit, way, custom”).

The pattern is:

  • olla tapana (tehdä jotakin)
    literally: “to be as a habit (to do something)”
    idiomatically: “to have a habit (of doing something)”

Using the essive (tapana) is part of a fixed expression:

  • on tapana = “is customary / is (someone’s) habit”

If you said heillä on tapa katsoa…, that would sound more like:

  • “They have a way/method of watching…” (focusing on how they watch)

Heillä on tapana katsoa… specifically emphasizes that it is their habit or custom to watch.

Why is katsoa in the basic form and not conjugated like katsovat?

After olla tapana, the following verb appears in the 1st infinitive basic form (the dictionary form):

  • olla tapana + [infinitive]

So:

  • Heillä on tapana katsoa…
    not *Heillä on tapana katsovat…

This is similar to English patterns like:

  • “They have a habit to watch the news”
    (English here could also use a gerund: “of watching the news”)

In Finnish, once you use olla tapana, the next verb stays in the infinitive.

Why is it uutisia and not uutiset after katsoa?

Uutisia is the partitive plural of uutinen (“(a) piece of news”).

The choice between uutisia and uutiset often reflects aspect / completeness:

  • katsoa uutisia
    = to watch (some) news / the news (as an ongoing broadcast)
    → partitive suggests an ongoing, unbounded activity

  • katsoa uutiset
    = to watch the news (program) from beginning to end
    → total object: the whole news broadcast is watched

In everyday speech, katsoa uutisia is very common when talking about watching the news program in general, focusing on the activity rather than on completing one specific episode.

That’s why yhdessä uutisia is natural here: they have a habitual activity of watching news together, not just “one entire news program” once.

Could the word order be katsoa uutisia yhdessä instead of katsoa yhdessä uutisia? Does it change the meaning?

Yes, both are grammatically correct:

  • katsoa yhdessä uutisia
  • katsoa uutisia yhdessä

The basic meaning doesn’t change: “to watch the news together”.

Word order in Finnish often affects rhythm and emphasis rather than core meaning.
Placing yhdessä earlier puts a slight stress on the togetherness:

  • katsoa yhdessä uutisia – subtly highlights the joint activity.
  • katsoa uutisia yhdessä – a bit more neutral; the phrase uutisia yhdessä stays closer together.

In normal conversation, either word order is fine.

What does vaikka mean here, and is it “although” or “even if”?

In this sentence, vaikka means “although / even though”:

  • …, vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua.
    = “…, although politics tires me.”

Here, the speaker presents two facts:

  1. They have the habit of watching the news together.
  2. Politics makes the speaker tired.

So the meaning is concessive (“despite the fact that …”), not hypothetical.

Vaikka can also mean “even if” in other contexts (with a more hypothetical idea), but here it clearly means “although / even though”.

Why is there a comma before vaikka?

In Finnish, a subordinate clause introduced by a conjunction like vaikka, että, koska, jos etc. is normally separated from the main clause by a comma.

  • Heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia, vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua.

Main clause:

  • Heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia

Subordinate clause (introduced by vaikka):

  • politiikka väsyttää minua

So the comma marks the boundary between the two clauses. This is standard Finnish punctuation, even when English might sometimes omit a comma.

Why is politiikka in the basic form (nominative) and not politiikkaa?

In the clause politiikka väsyttää minua, politiikka is the subject of the verb väsyttää:

  • politiikka (nominative singular, “politics”)
  • väsyttää (3rd person singular verb, “tires / makes tired”)
  • minua (partitive singular, “me” as the experiencer)

Subjects in Finnish are normally in the nominative case, so politiikka is correct.

You might see politiikkaa (partitive) after other verbs, for example:

  • En seuraa politiikkaa. = “I don’t follow politics.”

Here politiikkaa is an object in partitive, after a negative verb. But as a subject of väsyttää, politiikka stays in nominative.

Why is it väsyttää minua instead of something like olen väsynyt or politiikka tekee minut väsyneeksi?

Finnish often expresses feelings and physical/mental states with a special impersonal-like verb pattern:

  • [something] + väsyttää + [experiencer in partitive]

So:

  • politiikka väsyttää minua
    literally: “politics tires me”
    idiomatically: “politics makes me tired / politics is tiring to me”

This pattern is common with verbs like:

  • väsyttää – to make (someone) tired
    Minua väsyttää. = I feel tired / I’m tired.
  • harmittaa – to annoy
    Minua harmittaa. = I’m annoyed.
  • pelottaa – to scare
    Minua pelottaa. = I am scared.

You can also say:

  • Olen väsynyt politiikkaan. (I am tired of politics.)
  • Politiikka tekee minut väsyneeksi. (Politics makes me tired.) – grammatically possible but sounds more formal/unusual.

Politiikka väsyttää minua is the most natural and idiomatic way to say this.

Why is minua in the partitive case and not minä or minut?

In the construction [something] väsyttää [someone], the person who experiences the feeling is put in the partitive case:

  • Minua väsyttää. = I am tired / I feel tired.
  • Politiikka väsyttää minua. = Politics makes me tired.

So:

  • minä = I (nominative)
  • minut = me (accusative)
  • minua = me (partitive)

With verbs like väsyttää, harmittaa, pelottaa, janottaa etc., the experiencer is regularly in partitive, not nominative or accusative.

Could the sentence start with the vaikka clause: Vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua, heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia? Is that correct?

Yes, that is perfectly correct:

  • Vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua, heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia.

Both orders are fine in Finnish:

  1. Heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia, vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua.
  2. Vaikka politiikka väsyttää minua, heillä on tapana katsoa yhdessä uutisia.

Changing the order mainly affects information flow and emphasis, not the basic meaning. Starting with the vaikka-clause highlights the concession (“Even though politics tires me, …”).

Is there any difference between heillä on tapana katsoa uutisia yhdessä and something simpler like he katsovat uutisia yhdessä?

Yes, the nuance is different:

  • He katsovat uutisia yhdessä.
    = They watch the news together.
    → A neutral factual statement; could be describing what they are doing now or what they do in general.

  • Heillä on tapana katsoa uutisia yhdessä.
    = They have a habit of watching the news together.
    → Explicitly marks it as a habit / custom, something they normally or regularly do.

So heillä on tapana adds the idea of regularity and tradition, not just a repeated action.

Could yhdessä be replaced with toistensa kanssa (“with each other”)? Would that sound natural?

You could say:

  • Heillä on tapana katsoa uutisia toistensa kanssa.

…but it sounds unnecessary and a bit clumsy here.
For “with each other / together”, yhdessä is the natural, short, idiomatic choice:

  • katsoa yhdessä = to watch together

Toistensa kanssa is more useful if you need to emphasize mutuality in contexts where “together” is not already obvious, or if the sentence might be ambiguous. In this specific sentence, yhdessä already clearly implies “with each other”, so yhdessä is better.