Breakdown of Eilen riitelimme ystävän kanssa pienestä asiasta, ja olin siitä turhautunut.
Questions & Answers about Eilen riitelimme ystävän kanssa pienestä asiasta, ja olin siitä turhautunut.
In Finnish, the personal ending on the verb usually makes a separate subject pronoun unnecessary.
- riitelimme = riidel- (verb stem) + -i- (past tense marker) + -mme (1st person plural ending “we”)
- So riitelimme literally encodes “we argued”.
You can add the pronoun me (“we”) — Eilen me riitelimme… — but that usually adds emphasis to we, for example contrasting with someone else. The neutral, most common way is to drop me and let the verb ending show the subject.
The dictionary (infinitive) form is riidellä = “to argue, quarrel”.
riitelimme is:
- Tense: past tense (imperfect)
- Person/number: 1st person plural (“we”)
- Stem change: riidellä → riitel- in the past tense (vowel changes are common in Finnish)
Structure: riidel- (underlying stem) → riitel- (past stem) + -i- (past marker) + -mme (we)
Meaning: “we argued / we were arguing” (context decides whether it’s more like “argued” or “were arguing”; Finnish imperfect covers both).
The postposition kanssa (“with”) requires the genitive case:
- ystävä (nominative) = “(a) friend”
- ystävän (genitive) = “of (a) friend” → used before kanssa
So:
- ystävän kanssa = “with (a) friend”
This pattern is general:
- äidin kanssa – with (my/the) mother
- opettajan kanssa – with (the) teacher
- koiran kanssa – with (the) dog
Using nominative ystävä kanssa would be ungrammatical in standard Finnish.
Finnish does not have articles (a / the), and possession is not always explicitly marked if it’s obvious from context.
- ystävän kanssa literally = “with (a) friend”
- In a context like this, it is usually understood as “with a (close / my) friend”, because we naturally assume you are talking about your own friend if you say we argued with a friend.
If you want to be explicit:
- ystäväni kanssa – “with my friend”
- ystäväni = ystävä (friend) + -ni (my)
So:
- Eilen riitelimme ystäväni kanssa… = “Yesterday I/we argued with my friend…” (very clear that it’s my friend).
pienestä asiasta is in the elative case (ending -sta / -stä), singular:
- pieni asia – “a small thing”
- pienestä asiasta – “from/about a small thing”
The verb riidellä (“to argue”) typically uses this pattern:
riidellä jonkun kanssa jostakin
= “to argue with someone about something”Here:
- ystävän kanssa = with (a) friend
- pienestä asiasta = about a small thing
So the elative -sta/-stä is required by the verb riidellä when expressing the topic of the argument.
olin siitä turhautunut literally:
- olin – “I was” (past tense of olla, 1st person singular)
- siitä – “from it / about it” (elative of se = “it/that”)
- turhautunut – “frustrated”
In Finnish, adjectives like turhautunut (from the verb turhautua, “to get frustrated”) are often used with an object or cause in the elative:
- olla jostakin turhautunut – “to be frustrated about something”
So:
- siitä is standing in for the whole situation “that we argued about a small thing”.
- olin siitä turhautunut = “I was frustrated about that.”
We use siitä instead of repeating pienestä asiasta or the whole clause. It refers back to the previous event as a whole.
In Finnish, many adjectives describing psychological states are formed from verbs as participles. turhautunut is:
- the past active participle of turhautua (“to become frustrated, to get frustrated”)
- used as an adjective: turhautunut = “frustrated”
Combining olla (to be) + participle is common:
- olin väsynyt – I was tired
- olin yllättynyt – I was surprised
- olin turhautunut – I was frustrated
So olin turhautunut is structurally “I was (one who had become) frustrated”.
Adding siitä gives “I was frustrated about it”, matching normal Finnish patterns.
Finnish allows the subject to change between clauses connected by ja (“and”), as long as the new subject is clear from the verb form.
- riitelimme – “we argued”
- olin – “I was”
So the sentence means:
- “Yesterday we argued with a friend about a small thing, and I was frustrated about it.”
This is natural in both Finnish and English: the first clause talks about what “we” did, the second about the speaker’s personal feeling.
If you wanted to keep we as the subject in both parts, you would say:
- … ja olimme siitä turhautuneita. – “…and we were frustrated about it.”
Both are correct, but the word order changes the focus:
Eilen riitelimme ystävän kanssa…
- Literally: “Yesterday we argued with a friend…”
- Puts a light emphasis on yesterday (when it happened).
Riitelimme eilen ystävän kanssa…
- Literally: “We argued yesterday with a friend…”
- A bit more neutral, focusing first on the action riitelimme.
Finnish word order is flexible; moving adverbs like eilen to the front often signals what is being highlighted (time, place, etc.), but both versions are grammatically fine and mean essentially the same thing.
In Finnish, when ja (“and”) connects two main clauses (each with its own finite verb), there is usually a comma before ja:
- Clause 1: (Eilen) riitelimme ystävän kanssa pienestä asiasta
– main clause, verb riitelimme - Clause 2: olin siitä turhautunut
– main clause, verb olin
Because they are two separate clauses, we write:
- …pienestä asiasta, ja olin siitä turhautunut.
If ja only connects words or phrases (not full clauses with verbs), then you don’t put a comma:
- pieni ja turha asia – a small and pointless thing (no comma)
- ystävän kanssa ja perheen kanssa – with a friend and with (my) family (no comma)
So here, the comma is standard because two full clauses are being joined.