Learn Hardcore Finnish: Kerään lelut lattialta. - I pick up the toys from the floor.

The verb kerään is conjugated in 1st person singular (I), present tense. The ending -n on kerää-n tells you the subject is “I”, so you don’t need to say minä.

Kerään lelut lattialta. = I pick up / am picking up the toys from the floor.
If you really want to emphasize I, you can say:
- Minä kerään lelut lattialta. (contrastive: I am picking them up, not someone else.)

So the idea of “I” is built into the form kerään.

What tense or time does kerään express? Is it “I pick up”, “I am picking up”, or “I will pick up”?

The Finnish present tense covers several English uses:

Current action (present progressive):
- Kerään lelut lattialta.
  ≈ I am picking up the toys from the floor (right now).
Habitual / repeated action (simple present):
- Kerään lelut lattialta joka ilta.
  ≈ I pick up the toys from the floor every evening.
Future meaning, when a time word is added:
- Kerään lelut lattialta myöhemmin.
  ≈ I’ll pick up the toys from the floor later.

So kerään can mean I pick up / I am picking up / I will pick up, depending on context. Finnish does not have a separate future tense form.

How is kerään related to the dictionary form kerätä?

The basic (dictionary) form is kerätä (to collect, gather, pick up). This verb is in a group where the -tä is removed and the vowel gets lengthened in the present tense.

For kerätä in the present tense:

minä kerään – I collect / pick up
sinä keräät – you collect
hän kerää – he/she collects
me keräämme – we collect
te keräätte – you (pl.) collect
he keräävät – they collect

So, to get kerään:

Start from kerätä.
Remove -tä → kerä-.
Add the 1st person ending -n, and lengthen the vowel: kerä + än → kerään.

The long ää in kerään is important: kerän (short a) would be a different form of a different word.

Why is it lelut and not leluja? What’s the difference?

Both come from lelu (toy), but they express different kinds of objects:

lelut = plural nominative → a total set of toys (all / the whole group)
leluja = plural partitive → some toys, an unspecified amount, or an incomplete action

In Kerään lelut lattialta, the idea is that you are picking up all the toys that are on the floor (or at least a known, complete group).

Compare:

Kerään lelut lattialta.
≈ I pick up the toys from the floor (all of them).
Kerään leluja lattialta.
≈ I pick up toys from the floor (some toys / toys in general, not necessarily all).

Finnish chooses nominative vs partitive for objects largely based on the idea of total vs partial object and whether the action is seen as completed or not.

If I only pick up some of the toys, how would I say that?

You would normally use the partitive plural leluja to show that you’re dealing with only some toys, not the full set:

Kerään leluja lattialta.
≈ I pick up some toys from the floor. / I’m picking up toys from the floor (not necessarily all).

You can make it even more explicit:

Kerään vain osan leluista lattialta.
I pick up only some of the toys from the floor.

So:

lelu*t → a specific, complete group
leluja → an indefinite or partial amount

What case is lattialta, and what does the ending -lta / -ltä mean?

Lattialta is in the ablative case. The ending -lta / -ltä usually means:

“from (off) the surface of” something
or more abstractly, “from” with locations that use -lla / -llä for “on”

With lattia (floor):

lattialla – on the floor
lattialta – from the floor (off the floor)
lattialle – onto the floor

So in Kerään lelut lattialta, lattialta literally means from (off) the floor.

Why is it lattialta and not lattiasta if it means “from the floor”?

Finnish has two different “from” cases that can both sometimes be translated as from in English:

Ablative: -lta / -ltä
→ from a surface / place where something is ON
- lattialta – from the floor (from the surface)
- pöydältä – from the table
- pihalta – from the yard
Elative: -sta / -stä
→ from the inside of something
- lattiasta – from inside the floor (e.g. sound coming from the floor)
- kaapista – from the cupboard
- talosta – from the house (from inside the building)

Toys are lying on the floor, not inside it, so lattialta (ablative) is the natural choice.

Can I change the word order, like “Kerään lattialta lelut” or “Lelut kerään lattialta”? Does it change the meaning?

Yes, Finnish word order is flexible, and all of these are grammatical. The basic factual meaning stays the same, but the focus changes.

Neutral/default order here:

Kerään lelut lattialta.
→ Slightly neutral focus; what you do (kerään) and what you act on (lelut) is foregrounded.

Other possibilities:

Kerään lattialta lelut.
→ Puts a bit more emphasis on where from you are collecting; sounds fine, just a different information flow.
Lelut kerään lattialta.
→ Emphasizes lelut (the toys): It’s the toys that I’m picking up from the floor (as opposed to something else).
Lattialta kerään lelut.
→ Strong focus on lattialta: From the floor is where I pick up the toys (maybe not from elsewhere).

So you can move elements for emphasis, but as a learner, “Kerään lelut lattialta” is a very good neutral pattern to start from.

How would I turn this into a yes–no question: “Am I picking up the toys from the floor?”

Finnish yes–no questions usually add the -ko / -kö question particle to the verb (or sometimes to another word).

From Kerään lelut lattialta.:

Keräänkö lelut lattialta?
≈ Am I picking up the toys from the floor? / Do I pick up the toys from the floor?

You can also move the question particle to another word to put focus there, but the most straightforward version is:

Keräänkö lelut lattialta?

How do I say the negative: “I am not picking up the toys from the floor”?

Finnish uses a special negative verb plus the main verb in a short form, and the object usually becomes partitive in the negative.

Start with the affirmative:

Kerään lelut lattialta.
I (will) pick up the toys from the floor.

In the negative:

Use the 1st person negative verb en.
Use the base form of the main verb without personal ending: kerää.
Put the object in partitive plural (leluja) to reflect that the action does not actually happen.

Result:

En kerää leluja lattialta.
≈ I am not picking up (any) toys from the floor.

If you really wanted to refer to specific toys (already identified in the context), you could use a pronoun:

En kerää niitä leluja lattialta.
I am not picking up those toys from the floor.

But as a general negative of the original sentence, En kerää leluja lattialta is the natural form.