Eilen sääennuste oli väärässä, eikä ilta ollutkaan niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin.

Yesterday the weather forecast was wrong, and the evening was not as windy as was promised.

Breakdown of Eilen sääennuste oli väärässä, eikä ilta ollutkaan niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin.

• olla: to be
• ilta: the evening
• eilen: yesterday
• väärä: wrong
• eikä: and not
• niin: so
• luvata: to promise
• kuin: as
• sääennuste: the weather forecast
• tuulinen: windy
• -kaan: even

Questions & Answers about Eilen sääennuste oli väärässä, eikä ilta ollutkaan niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin.

What is the role of eilen in this sentence, and where can it appear in the word order?

Eilen means yesterday and functions as a time adverbial. It tells you when something happened.

In this sentence it is at the beginning:

• Eilen sääennuste oli väärässä…

This is very typical in Finnish: putting the time word first sets the scene.

Other possible placements:

• Sääennuste oli eilen väärässä…
• Sääennuste oli väärässä eilen… (possible but less natural in neutral speech)

All of them are grammatically correct. Starting with eilen is simply a natural way to structure the information: first when, then what happened.

Why is sääennuste written as one word and not sää ennuste?

Sääennuste is a compound noun:

• sää = weather
• ennuste = forecast, prediction

Together: sääennuste = weather forecast.

In Finnish, when two nouns combine to form a fixed concept, they are usually written as one word:

• sääennuste (weather forecast)
• sääasema (weather station)
• sääpalvelu (weather service)

Writing sää ennuste as two separate words would look wrong to a native speaker in this meaning; it would feel like you are just saying weather + forecast as two unrelated nouns, not the established concept weather forecast.

Why do we say sääennuste oli väärässä instead of sääennuste oli väärä?

This is an idiomatic pattern in Finnish.

• olla oikeassa = to be right / to be correct
• olla väärässä = to be wrong / to be incorrect

Literally they look like to be in right / to be in wrong, because oikeassa and väärässä are in the inessive case (-ssa).

So:

• Sääennuste oli väärässä ≈ The weather forecast was wrong.
• Olin oikeassa. ≈ I was right.

Sääennuste oli väärä would more literally mean the forecast was a wrong one / a wrong kind of forecast as a quality, and is not how you normally express that it just turned out incorrect. For correctness/in-correctness of a statement or prediction, Finns use olla oikeassa / olla väärässä.

What does eikä mean here, and why is it used instead of ja ei?

Eikä is a conjunction that combines:

• ja (and)
• ei (not)

So eikä means and … not, or more naturally and nor / and neither.

In the sentence:

• …, eikä ilta ollutkaan niin tuulinen…
  ≈ “…, and the evening was not (after all) as windy…”

You could theoretically say:

• …, ja ilta ei ollutkaan niin tuulinen…

This is grammatically possible, but native speakers strongly prefer eikä when joining two negative clauses or a positive plus a contrastive negative. Eikä sounds smoother and more natural and is the normal choice here.

Why is the subject ilta (evening) and not something like illalla (in the evening)?

Here ilta is the subject of the clause:

• ilta oli … tuulinen
  = the evening was … windy

So ilta is in the nominative case, as subjects usually are.

Illalla (adessive case) would mean in the evening / during the evening and works as a time expression, not as a subject:

• Illalla oli tuulista. = It was windy in the evening.
• Eilen illalla oli tuulista. = It was windy yesterday evening.

In the original sentence, we are speaking about that specific evening as an entity, so ilta as a subject is appropriate:

• … eikä ilta ollutkaan niin tuulinen…
  = “… and the evening was not (after all) that windy…”

What does the clitic -kaan in ollutkaan do? How is this different from ei ollut niin tuulinen?

The clitic -kaan / -kään adds a nuance of “after all / actually / either / even” depending on context. After a negative verb it often adds a contrast to some expectation.

Compare:

• ilta ei ollut niin tuulinen
  = the evening was not that windy (fairly neutral)

• ilta ei ollutkaan niin tuulinen
  = the evening was not actually / after all that windy
  (contradicts an expectation that it would be very windy)

In the sentence, the expectation comes from the weather forecast. So ollutkaan suggests:

• It was supposed to be very windy,
• but in reality it was not, contrary to what was thought.

So -kaan is important pragmatically: it signals that reality turned out differently from what was expected or stated before.

Why is the verb form ollut used here: eikä ilta ollutkaan niin tuulinen?

Ollut is the past participle of olla (to be). In Finnish past tense, the negative form is built with:

• negative verb (ei)
• plus past participle (ollut, tehnyt, mennyt, etc.)

So:

• Ilta oli tuulinen. = affirmative past (was windy)
• Ilta ei ollut tuulinen. = negative past (was not windy)

With the clitic added:

• Ilta ei ollutkaan niin tuulinen.

So ollut is required by the negative past tense; you cannot say ei oli.

What is the role of niin in niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin?

Niin … kuin … is a common Finnish structure for comparisons of degree, roughly as … as … in English.

• niin tuulinen = so / that / as windy
• kuin luvattiin = as (it) was promised

Together:

• ei ollutkaan niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin
  ≈ was not as windy as (it) was promised / as they said it would be

So niin sets up the degree that will be specified in the kuin clause. You cannot drop niin here if you want this “as … as …” comparison.

Why is kuin used here instead of kuten?

Both kuin and kuten can be translated as as in English, but they are used differently.

• kuin is used in comparisons:

  • niin X kuin Y = as X as Y
  • parempi kuin = better than / better than what

• kuten is more like as / the way that / like, especially to introduce examples or manner:

  • Teen sen kuten sanoit. = I’ll do it as you said.
  • Kuten näette… = As you can see…

In niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin, we have exactly this comparison pattern niin … kuin …, so kuin is the correct choice. Kuten luvattiin here would sound odd and not idiomatic.

What does luvattiin mean, and why is it in that form?

Luvattiin is the past passive form of luvata (to promise).

• luvata = to promise
• luvattiin = it was promised / they promised

In Finnish, the passive is used very often when the agent (the person/thing doing the action) is either:

• unknown,
• unimportant, or
• obvious from context.

Here, luvattiin refers to what someone (the weather service / they) promised in the forecast, but we do not need to say exactly who. So Finnish uses the passive.

So:

• … niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin
  ≈ as windy as was promised / as windy as they promised

Why is there no explicit object after luvattiin? Promised what?

In Finnish, objects and other elements that are obvious from context are often left out.

The implicit thing promised is the windiness / windy weather in the evening. That is clear from the earlier part of the sentence, so it does not need to be repeated.

You could make it more explicit:

• … niin tuulinen kuin sääennusteessa luvattiin.
  = … as windy as was promised in the weather forecast.

But that is not necessary. Luvattiin here is understood as promised (this kind of windiness), and Finnish allows such omission very naturally.

Could the sentence be written as Eilen sääennuste oli väärässä, ja ilta ei ollutkaan niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin.? Would that change the meaning?

Yes, you can say:

• Eilen sääennuste oli väärässä, ja ilta ei ollutkaan niin tuulinen kuin luvattiin.

This is grammatically correct and has essentially the same basic meaning.

However, using eikä is stylistically more compact and is the usual way to join such a clause:

• …, eikä ilta ollutkaan niin tuulinen…

The nuance:

• ja ilta ei… = more neutral, just and the evening was not…
• eikä ilta… = stays within a single, smooth “and not” construction, often feels a bit tighter and more idiomatic.

Most native speakers would naturally choose eikä in this context.