Learn Hardcore Finnish: Tämä keitto on liian suolainen minulle, mutta puolisoni pitää siitä. - This soup is too salty for me, but my spouse likes it.

Liian comes before the adjective it modifies, just like too in English:
liian suolainen, liian kallis (too expensive), liian kuuma (too hot).

Why is it minulle and not minua or minun?

All three forms exist, but they have different functions:

minä = I (basic form)
minun = my (genitive, used before a noun: minun kirjani = my book)
minua = me (partitive; used e.g. with some verbs, feelings: minua väsyttää = I’m tired)
minulle = to/for me (allative case)

In this sentence, liian suolainen minulle literally means too salty for me, so Finnish uses the allative case:

Tämä keitto on liian suolainen minulle.
= This soup is too salty for me.

So minulle corresponds to for me / to me in English.

Why is it Tämä keitto on... and not Tämä on keitto...?

Both are grammatically correct but mean slightly different things:

Tämä keitto on liian suolainen minulle.
= This soup is too salty for me.
You are talking about a particular soup (e.g. the one on the table).
Tämä on keitto.
= This is a soup.
You’re identifying what kind of thing “this” is.

In the given sentence, you are not identifying what it is; you already know it’s soup. You are describing a property of this specific soup, so Tämä keitto (this soup) is natural.

Why is keitto in the basic form (nominative)? Could it be keittoa?

Here we have an equative sentence: X is Y.

Tämä keitto (subject)
on (verb “to be”)
liian suolainen (predicate adjective)

In standard usage, both tämä keitto and liian suolainen appear in the basic (nominative) form:

Tämä keitto on (liian) suolainen.

Keitto stays in the nominative because it’s the subject of the sentence.

You might also hear:

Tämä keitto on liian suolaista.

Here suolaista is partitive; it treats the soup more like an indefinite mass (“this soup tastes too salty (as a substance)”).
Both versions are possible, with a nuance difference:

suolainen = describes a stable property of the whole soup as an object
suolaista = describes the quality of the soup as a mass/taste

But keitto itself remains nominative as the subject.

What exactly does puolisoni mean, and how is it different from vaimoni or mieheni?

Puoliso means spouse / partner in a gender‑neutral way.

puoliso = spouse, partner
puolisoni = my spouse (spouse + possessive suffix -ni = my)

By contrast:

vaimo = wife → vaimoni = my wife
mies = man / husband → mieheni = my husband

So puolisoni doesn’t say whether the spouse is male or female; it’s neutral like my spouse or my partner in English.

Why is minun not written before puolisoni? Could I say minun puolisoni?

You can say minun puolisoni, but it’s usually unnecessary.

Finnish has possessive suffixes that already express “my”:

puoliso = spouse
puolisoni = my spouse (the -ni suffix = my)

Using minun plus the possessive suffix is often redundant in neutral speech:

puolisoni = my spouse
minun puolisoni = literally my my spouse (grammatical, but usually more emphatic)

You might use minun puolisoni if you want to stress my in contrast to someone else’s:

Minun puolisoni pitää siitä, mutta sinun puolisosi ei.
My spouse likes it, but your spouse doesn’t.

How does pitää work here, and why is it followed by siitä?

The verb pitää is tricky because it has several meanings:

pitää jostakin = to like something
pitää (kiinni) = to hold
pitää = must / have to (in some constructions)
pitää = to keep

In this sentence, we have meaning (1): to like.

When pitää means to like, it always takes its object in the elative case (the “out of” case), formed with -sta/-stä:

pitää jostakin = like something (literally “like from something”)
Tykkään kahvista. / Pidän kahvista. = I like coffee.
Puolisoni pitää siitä. = My spouse likes it.

So siitä is se (it) in the elative:

se (it) → siitä (from it)
structure: pitää + elative = to like

That’s why it must be siitä, not plain se or sitä, after pitää in the “like” meaning.

Why is it siitä and not sitä or se?

All three are forms of se (“it / this / that”), but in different cases:

se = nominative (subject: Se on hyvää. = It is good.)
sitä = partitive (object in many contexts: Näen sitä. = I see it.)
siitä = elative (from it: Puhun siitä. = I talk about it.)

The verb pitää in the meaning “to like” requires the elative case:

pitää + jostakin (from something) = to like something

So:

Tämä keitto on liian suolainen minulle, mutta puolisoni pitää siitä. = This soup is too salty for me, but my spouse likes it.
(literally “… but my spouse likes from it.”)

Therefore siitä (elative) is correct here, not sitä.

Could you explain the forms on and pitää? Why doesn’t pitää change its form?

On is the 3rd person singular form of olla (“to be”):

minä olen
sinä olet
hän / se on
me olemme
te olette
he / ne ovat

So keitto on = the soup is.

Pitää is already in the 3rd person singular present tense here:

minä pidän
sinä pidät
hän / se pitää
me pidämme
te pidätte
he pitävät

The 3rd person singular form of pitää happens to look the same as the dictionary form (infinitive), but in context it’s clearly the finite verb “(he/she/it) likes”.

So in puolisoni pitää siitä, it means my spouse likes it, not “my spouse to like it”.

What does puolisoni pitää siitä literally look like in English word order?

A very literal breakdown:

puoliso = spouse
-ni = my
pitää = likes
siitä = from it (elative of “it”)

So you could map it to:

puolisoni → my spouse
pitää → likes
siitä → it (but grammatically “from it”)

Literal-ish order: my-spouse likes from-it.
Natural English: My spouse likes it.

Why is there a comma before mutta?

Mutta is a coordinating conjunction meaning but.

Finnish uses a comma before mutta when it connects two independent clauses, just like English does:

Tämä keitto on liian suolainen minulle, mutta puolisoni pitää siitä.
This soup is too salty for me, but my spouse likes it.

Both sides can stand as separate sentences:

Tämä keitto on liian suolainen minulle.
Puolisoni pitää siitä.

Because they are full clauses, they are separated by a comma before mutta.

Can I change the word order, for example: Minulle tämä keitto on liian suolainen? Does it change the meaning?

You can change the word order in Finnish quite freely, mainly to shift emphasis. All of these are grammatically correct:

Tämä keitto on liian suolainen minulle.
(neutral: “This soup is too salty for me.”)
Minulle tämä keitto on liian suolainen.
Puts focus on minulle (“for me”):
For me, this soup is too salty (maybe for others it’s fine).
Tämä keitto on minulle liian suolainen.
Slight emphasis on how it affects me; often sounds quite natural in speech.

The basic meaning stays the same; the change is in which part you highlight.