Ystäväni joukkue harjoittelee jalkapalloa kentällä meidän talomme takana.

My friend’s team practices football on the field behind our house.

Breakdown of Ystäväni joukkue harjoittelee jalkapalloa kentällä meidän talomme takana.

• minun: my
• ystävä: the friend
• -llä: on
• harjoitella: to practice
• meidän: our
• talo: the house
• takana: behind
• jalkapallo: the football
• joukkue: the team
• kenttä: the field

Questions & Answers about Ystäväni joukkue harjoittelee jalkapalloa kentällä meidän talomme takana.

Why does ystäväni have the ending -ni instead of a separate word for “my”?

Finnish often marks possession with a possessive suffix attached directly to the noun.

• ystävä = friend
• ystäväni = friend + -ni (“my”) → my friend

So ystäväni literally means “my friend” without needing a separate word like my. You can add the pronoun for emphasis: minun ystäväni = “my friend (as opposed to someone else’s)”.

Can ystäväni mean both “my friend” and “my friends”? In this sentence, which one is it?

Yes. The suffix -ni does not itself show singular vs. plural, so:

• ystäväni tulee = my friend comes (verb is singular)
• ystäväni tulevat = my friends come (verb is plural)

In Ystäväni joukkue…, the natural reading is singular: my friend’s team. If it were “my friends’ team,” Finnish would normally use a clear plural form like ystävieni joukkue (“my friends’ team”), not ystäväni joukkue.

In the phrase ystäväni joukkue, whose team is it exactly?

Ystäväni joukkue is understood as “my friend’s team”. Finnish typically puts the possessor first and the thing possessed after it inside the same noun phrase:

• ystäväni joukkue ≈ “my friend’s team”
• ystäväni talo ≈ “my friend’s house”

If you wanted to say “my team”, you’d usually mark team instead: joukkueeni (“my team”). If you wanted “my friends’ team”, you’d say ystävi(e)ni joukkue.

Why is harjoittelee in the singular even though a team has many players?

The grammatical subject of the sentence is joukkue (“team”), which is singular in Finnish. Verbs agree with the grammatical number of the subject, not with the real-world number of people in that group.

So:

• joukkue harjoittelee = the team practices (3rd person singular)
• pelaajat harjoittelevat = the players practice (3rd person plural)

Even though a team consists of many people, the word joukkue behaves like any other singular noun.

Why is jalkapalloa in the form with -a (partitive) instead of just jalkapallo?

Jalkapalloa is the partitive singular of jalkapallo (“football / soccer”). The verb harjoitella (“to practise”) normally takes its object in the partitive case, especially when we talk about an ongoing activity or a hobby.

So:

• harjoitella jalkapalloa = to practise (the activity of) football
• Similarly: opiskella suomea = to study Finnish, pelata jalkapalloa = to play football

Using bare jalkapallo here (harjoittelee jalkapallo) would sound ungrammatical or at least very odd to a native speaker.

What does the ending -llä in kentällä mean, and why is it used here?

The ending -lla / -llä is the adessive case, which often means “on” or “at” a surface or place.

• kenttä = field
• kentällä = on/at the field

We use -llä here because the team is on the playing field, not inside it. If you used -ssa / -ssä (kentässä), it would literally mean “in the field,” which doesn’t fit the typical image of practising football.

Why is possession marked twice in meidän talomme (with both meidän and -mme)? Is that necessary?

Finnish can show possession in two ways at the same time:

• meidän = “our” (pronoun in genitive form)
• talo
  • mme → talomme = “our house” (noun + possessive suffix)

So meidän talomme literally means “our our‑house”, but to Finnish ears that is completely normal and often slightly emphatic (“our house, not someone else’s”).

It is not grammatically required to use both. Alternatives are:

• talomme takana = behind our house (no pronoun, just the suffix)
• meidän talon takana = behind our house (pronoun + genitive talon, no suffix)

All three are possible; the version in the sentence is simply more explicit/emphatic.

Could we also say talon takana instead of talomme takana? What would be the difference?

Yes, you can say talon takana, but the meaning changes:

• talon takana = behind the house / behind a house (no owner expressed)
• talomme takana = behind our house (ownership expressed by -mme)

If you want to keep the idea of “our house” without the suffix, you say meidän talon takana. So the choice is mainly about whether you mark the owner and how explicitly you want to do it.

Why does takana come after talomme, instead of before it like English “behind our house”?

Takana is a postposition, not a preposition. Postpositions come after the noun they relate to. The usual pattern is:

• [noun in genitive OR noun with possessive suffix] + postposition

Examples:

• talon takana = behind the house
• taloni takana = behind my house
• meidän talomme takana = behind our house

So putting takana after the noun (talomme takana) is the normal Finnish structure.

There is no word for “the” or “a/an” in this sentence. How does Finnish show definiteness here?

Finnish does not have articles like a, an, the. Nouns appear without them, and definiteness is understood from context, word order, and other words (like possessive markers).

In this sentence, we know things are definite because of:

• ystäväni = my friend
• meidän talomme = our house

Those possessive forms already tell us we’re talking about specific, known people and places, so Finnish does not need separate words corresponding to “the” or “a/an.”