Learn Hardcore Finnish: Onni on tärkeä asia. - Happiness is an important thing.

The word is capitalized only because it begins the sentence, not because it must be a name.
Context would tell you if it were a person:
- As a name: Onni on suomalainen nimi. = Onni is a Finnish name.
- As a noun: Onni on tärkeä asia. = Happiness is an important thing.

So here, Onni = “happiness” (or “good fortune”) as a general concept.

Why is there no word for “a” in tärkeä asia (“an important thing”)?

Finnish has no articles at all: no “a / an” and no “the”.

tärkeä asia literally just means important thing.
Depending on context, it can correspond to English:
- an important thing
- the important thing
- sometimes just something important

The listener has to infer whether it is specific or general from context, not from a separate article word.

Why say Onni on tärkeä asia instead of just Onni on tärkeää?

Both are correct, but they sound slightly different.

Onni on tärkeää.
- Literally: Happiness is important.
- tärkeää is the partitive form of the adjective tärkeä.
- This is the most straightforward way to state the general property “Happiness is important.”
Onni on tärkeä asia.
- Literally: Happiness is an important thing.
- Here tärkeä is an adjective describing the noun asia (thing, matter).
- This makes the idea a bit more concrete, as if you’re listing “important things in life”, and happiness is one of them.

So the version with asia adds a nuance: it treats happiness as one important thing among other things, instead of just directly saying it is important.

What exactly does asia mean here? Is it a physical “thing”?

asia most often means:

matter, issue, topic, affair, thing (in an abstract sense)

In Onni on tärkeä asia, it is not a physical object; it is more like:

Happiness is an important *matter / aspect / thing in life.*

If you wanted a more physical object, you might use words like:

esine = physical object, item
juttu (informal) = thing, matter, story

But asia is the standard neutral word for “thing” in the sense of “topic” or “matter to consider”.

Why are both Onni and asia in the basic form (nominative), not in some other case?

The basic form (dictionary form) of nouns is called nominative.

In typical “X is Y” sentences in Finnish (with the verb olla = to be):

The subject is in the nominative: Onni
A countable noun used as a predicate is also usually in the nominative: asia

So we get:

Onni (nom.) on tärkeä asia (nom.).

If the sentence were more about an unbounded quantity or something ongoing, you might see the partitive, but for a simple statement “X is a Y (thing)” both sides in the nominative is normal.

Why is it tärkeä asia and not tärkeää asiaa?

Because tärkeä is here an adjective that must agree with the noun asia in case and number.

asia is singular nominative.
Therefore the adjective is also singular nominative: tärkeä asia.

You see tärkeää (partitive) in a different structure, when the adjective itself is the complement of olla and there is no noun like asia:

Onni on tärkeää. (Happiness is important.)
- Onni is a kind of mass/abstract subject.
- The predicate adjective tärkeä appears in the partitive: tärkeää.

But once you insert a concrete, countable noun (asia), the adjective agrees with that noun in nominative: tärkeä asia.

Can I change the word order, like Tärkeä asia on onni or put on at the end?

You can change the word order, but not arbitrarily.

Onni on tärkeä asia.
- Neutral, most common: Happiness is an important thing.
Tärkeä asia on onni.
- Also possible.
- This puts focus on tärkeä asia (“The important thing is happiness.”).
- This could answer a question like: Mikä on tärkeä asia elämässä? – Tärkeä asia on onni.

What you generally cannot do in neutral Finnish is move on (the verb) to the very end, like:

*Onni tärkeä asia on. (This sounds wrong/ungrammatical in standard Finnish.)

In simple statements, the finite verb (on) does not normally go to the end. A safe basic pattern is:

Subject – on – complement
Onni – on – tärkeä asia.

Is on always “is”? Doesn’t Finnish have a different word for “are”?

on is the 3rd person singular form of the verb olla (to be). Finnish uses on for both “is” and “are” in many cases:

Hän on opettaja. = He/She is a teacher.
He ovat opettajia. = They are teachers.

Here:

Onni on tärkeä asia.
- The subject Onni is third person singular.
- So we use on = is.

Other forms of olla include:

olen (I am)
olet (you are, singular)
olemme (we are)
olette (you are, plural / formal)
ovat (they are)

But you never use a separate “are” word; you always conjugate olla.

How do you pronounce Onni on tärkeä asia?

Rough pronunciation guide (with English approximations):

Onni: ON-ni
- Stress on the first syllable.
- Double nn means a clearly long /n/ sound (hold it slightly).
on: like English on but shorter and more closed, almost like ohn.
tärkeä: TÄR-ke-a
- ä = like a in cat or bad.
- Three syllables: TÄR-ke-ä.
- Stress on TÄR.
asia: A-si-a
- a similar to a in father (short).
- Three syllables: A-si-a, stress on the first syllable.

Putting it together, with main stresses in caps:

ON-ni on TÄR-ke-ä A-si-a

Finnish always stresses the first syllable of each word, and consonant length (like the nn in Onni) really matters.

What are the dictionary forms and basic inflections of onni and asia?

onni (happiness, luck) – noun

Dictionary (nominative sg.): onni
Genitive sg.: onnen
Partitive sg.: onnea
Nominative pl.: onnet (rare, usually you don’t pluralize abstract onni)

asia (matter, issue, “thing”) – noun

Dictionary (nominative sg.): asia
Genitive sg.: asian
Partitive sg.: asiaa
Nominative pl.: asiat
Partitive pl.: asioita

In Onni on tärkeä asia, both onni and asia are in their nominative singular (dictionary) form.