Learn Hardcore Finnish: Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo. - Basketball feels more fun to her than football.

Hänestä is the elative case (the -sta/stä ending), and with the verb tuntua it marks the experiencer – the person from whose point of view something feels a certain way.

So:

hän = he / she (basic form, nominative)
hänestä = from him / her, to him/her, in his/her opinion

With tuntua, you normally say:

Minusta tuntuu, että… = I feel / It seems to me that…
Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta… = To him/her, basketball feels more fun…

So hänestä here means roughly “in his/her opinion / to him/her”. Using plain hän would be ungrammatical in this position with tuntua.

What exactly does tuntuu mean here – “feels” or “seems”? How is it used?

Tuntuu is the 3rd person singular of tuntua. Its core meaning is “to feel, to seem (to someone)”.

There are two very common patterns:

X tuntuu Y-lta
- Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta.
  → Basketball feels / seems more fun to him/her.
Here:
- X = the thing causing the feeling (koripallo)
- Y-lta = an adjective in the ablative (hauskemmalta) describing how it feels
- hänestä = the experiencer: to him/her
Minusta tuntuu, että…
- Minusta tuntuu, että koripallo on hauskempaa.
  → I feel / I have a feeling that basketball is more fun.

In your sentence, English can translate tuntuu as either “feels” or “seems”, depending on style:

Basketball feels more fun to him/her than football.
To him/her, basketball seems more fun than football.

Both are good translations of tuntuu here.

Why is hauskemmalta in that form, and what case is it?

Hauskemmalta is:

The comparative of hauska (fun),
plus the ablative case ending -lta.

Breakdown:

Positive: hauska = fun
Comparative base: hauskempi = more fun
Ablative: hauskemmalta = from / as (something) more fun → “more fun” in this tuntua-structure

With tuntua, adjectives usually appear in the ablative (-lta/-ltä):

Tuntuu hyvältä. = It feels good.
Tuntuu oudolta. = It feels strange.
Tuntuu hauskemmalta. = It feels more fun.

So in your sentence:

hauskemmalta = more fun (in feeling / from his/her perspective)
The ablative is required by the verb tuntua in this pattern: tuntua + adjective in -lta.

Could I say this with on instead of tuntuu, like “Basketball is more fun than football in his opinion”? How would that look?

Yes. A very natural alternative is to use on (the verb “to be”) with minusta / hänen mielestään (“in my / his opinion”).

Possible versions:

Using hänen mielestään (literally “in his/her mind/opinion”):

Hänen mielestään koripallo on hauskempaa kuin jalkapallo.
→ In his/her opinion, basketball is more fun than football.

Using hänestä with on is also possible but a bit more colloquial / opinion-like:

Hänestä koripallo on hauskempaa kuin jalkapallo.
→ He/She thinks basketball is more fun than football.

Note two differences from the original:

Verb: on instead of tuntuu (more neutral statement, less “felt”/subjective nuance).
Adjective form: hauskempaa (partitive) instead of hauskemmalta (ablative), because with plain on you do X on hauskempaa.

Original:

Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo.
→ structure: tuntuu + hauskemmalta (-lta)

Alternative with on:

Koripallo on hänen mielestään hauskempaa kuin jalkapallo.
→ structure: on + hauskempaa (partitive)

Can I change the word order to Hänestä koripallo tuntuu hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo? Does the meaning change?

Yes, that word order is perfectly correct:

Hänestä koripallo tuntuu hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo.

The basic meaning is the same.

The difference is emphasis / topic:

Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta…
→ Starts with koripallo, so it foregrounds basketball as the topic.
Hänestä koripallo tuntuu hauskemmalta…
→ Starts with hänestä, so it foregrounds his/her opinion or feeling.

In English terms, it’s a bit like the difference between:

Basketball feels more fun to him/her than football.
To him/her, basketball feels more fun than football.

Nuance shifts slightly, but the basic content is the same.

Why are koripallo and jalkapallo in the basic form (nominative) and not in some other case?

In this sentence, koripallo is the subject, and jalkapallo is the thing it’s being compared to.

Koripallo (subject)
- With verbs like tuntua, the thing that feels a certain way is in the nominative:
  - Koripallo tuntuu hauskemmalta.
    Basketball feels more fun.
Jalkapallo (after kuin)
- When you say “X is more Y than Z”, in Finnish the Z after kuin is usually also in the nominative:
  - Koripallo tuntuu hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo.
    Basketball feels more fun than football.

You’d see other cases (like partitive) with different structures, for example with verbs like pitää:

Hän pitää enemmän koripallosta kuin jalkapallosta.
(Here koripallosta / jalkapallosta are in the elative because pitää jostakin = to like something.)

But in your tuntua + comparative + kuin sentence, nominative is the normal form for both koripallo and jalkapallo.

Is kuin always used in comparisons like this? Could it be left out?

In a direct comparison like “more fun than football”, kuin is needed:

hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo
= more fun than football

You cannot simply say:

✗ Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta jalkapallo. (ungrammatical)

However, you can sometimes omit what comes after kuin if it’s obvious from context:

Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo, ja minusta se tuntuu tylsemmältä (kuin jalkapallo).
→ You can drop the repeated “kuin jalkapallo” at the end, but the first kuin must stay.

So for this sentence as given, kuin is necessary to express “than”.

Can I leave out hänestä and just say Koripallo tuntuu hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo?

Yes, you can:

Koripallo tuntuu hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo.

Without hänestä, the sentence becomes more general:

With hänestä:
→ To him/her, basketball feels more fun than football.
(It is clearly one person’s opinion/feeling.)
Without hänestä:
→ Basketball feels more fun than football.
(Sounds more like a general statement, or like the speaker is stating it as a fact or a broadly shared impression.)

In many contexts, Finnish speakers omit the experiencer when it’s obvious (for example when I am speaking and it’s clearly my feeling), but including hänestä / minusta makes the subjectivity explicit.

How is this different from saying “He/She likes basketball more than football” with pitää?

The meaning is similar, but the verb and cases change:

Your sentence (with tuntua):

Koripallo tuntuu hänestä hauskemmalta kuin jalkapallo.
→ Literally: Basketball feels more fun to him/her than football.

“Like more” with pitää:

Hän pitää enemmän koripallosta kuin jalkapallosta.
→ He/She likes basketball more than football.

Key differences:

Verb:
- tuntua = to feel / seem (describes a quality as experienced)
- pitää (jostakin) = to like (expresses liking directly)
Case of the sports:
- With tuntua: subject is nominative
  - koripallo (NOM), jalkapallo (NOM)
- With pitää: object of liking is in the elative -sta/stä
  - koripallosta, jalkapallosta
Nuance:
- tuntuu hauskemmalta focuses on how something feels / seems fun.
- pitää enemmän focuses on preference / liking.

In English, both can come out as something like “He/She prefers basketball to football”, but in Finnish the underlying structure is different.