Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan.

The flood covers the street completely.

Breakdown of Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan.

• katu: the street
• peittää: to cover
• kokonaan: completely
• tulva: the flood

Questions & Answers about Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan.

Which word is the subject and which is the object in Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan?

• Tulva is the subject – it is in the basic (nominative) form and is the thing doing the action.
• Peittää is the verb – “covers”.
• Kadun is the object – it is the thing being covered.
• Kokonaan is an adverb modifying the verb – “completely, entirely”.

So the structure is:
Subject (Tulva) – Verb (peittää) – Object (kadun) – Adverb (kokonaan).

Why is it kadun and not katu?

Katu is the basic form (nominative: “street”).
Kadun is the genitive form, but here it functions as a total object (often called “genitive object” or “accusative in -n”).

In Finnish:

• A completed / total object of a positive verb is usually in genitive (-n):

  • Näen kadun. = I see the street (all of it).
  • Tulva peittää kadun. = The flood covers the street (fully).

• The plain nominative katu would not be used as an object in this kind of sentence; nominative objects mostly appear in special structures (like some passive forms, imperatives, or with certain pronouns).

So kadun here marks that the street is treated as a whole, completely affected object of peittää.

Why isn’t it katua? What’s the difference between kadun and katua here?

Katua is the partitive form of katu. The choice between genitive (kadun) and partitive (katua) is one of the trickiest parts of Finnish.

Very roughly:

• Genitive object (kadun) → total, completed, whole object affected:

  • Tulva peittää kadun.
    = The flood covers the street (as a whole).

• Partitive object (katua) → partial, ongoing, or unbounded action:

  • Tulva peittää katua.
    = The flood is (in the process of) covering the street,
    or it covers part of the street,
    or the situation is viewed as ongoing, not as a completed result.

So:

• Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan. strongly suggests the street ends up fully covered.
• Tulva peittää katua. focuses more on the ongoing process or partial coverage.

If kadun already suggests totality, what does kokonaan add? Is it redundant?

Kadun (genitive object) already leans toward a total reading: the street is treated as a complete whole.

Kokonaan is an adverb meaning “completely, entirely, altogether.”

Together:

• Tulva peittää kadun.
  → The flood covers the street (typically understood as fully, but not strongly emphasized).

• Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan.
  → The flood covers the street completely / entirely (strong emphasis).

So kokonaan is not grammatically necessary, but it reinforces or highlights that nothing is left uncovered. It’s similar to adding “completely” in English even when context already implies it.

What’s the difference between kokonaan and koko (as in koko kadun)?

Both relate to “whole / complete”, but they work differently:

• Koko is an adjective that directly modifies a noun:

  • katu = street
  • koko katu = the whole street
  • koko kadun = the whole street (in genitive form)

• Kokonaan is an adverb that modifies a verb (the action):

  • peittää kokonaan = covers completely

Compare:

1. Tulva peittää koko kadun.

   • Literally: The flood covers the whole street.
   • koko says that the entire street is included.

2. Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan.

   • Literally: The flood covers the street completely.
   • kokonaan emphasizes the completeness of the covering action.

In practice, the meaning is very close, and both are natural. The nuance is grammatical (adjective vs adverb) and very slight in everyday use.

What kind of verb is peittää? How is it used, and how is it different from peittyä?

Peittää is a transitive verb: it takes a direct object – something that gets covered.

• peittää + object (accusative/partitive)
  
  • Tulva peittää kadun. = The flood covers the street.
  • Lumi peittää maan. = Snow covers the ground.

Peittyä is the related intransitive (reflexive / “become covered”) verb:

• X peittyy (johonkin / jollakin) = X gets covered (in/with something)
  
  • Katu peittyy lumeen. = The street gets covered in snow.
  • Katu peittyy veteen. = The street gets covered in water.

So:

• peittää = to cover something (you say what is doing the covering, and what is covered)
• peittyä = to become covered (you focus on what ends up covered)

In your sentence, tulva peittää kadun, we need the transitive verb because the flood is actively covering something.

The form peittää looks like the dictionary form “to cover”. How do I know it means “covers” here and not “to cover”?

In Finnish, for many verbs the basic dictionary form (1st infinitive) and the 3rd person singular present look identical:

• infinitive: peittää = to cover
• 3rd sg present: hän peittää = he/she covers

In a real sentence without an auxiliary verb, peittää on its own is almost always understood as the finite 3rd person singular, not the infinitive.

Why?

• The infinitive usually:

  • appears after another verb:
    
    • Haluan peittää kadun. = I want to cover the street.
  • or is used as a dictionary citation or a heading, not in a normal clause.

• In Tulva peittää kadun, its position (directly after the subject tulva and followed by an object kadun) is exactly where the main finite verb normally goes. There is no other verb for it to depend on.

So here peittää is grammatically:
3rd person singular present → “(it) covers”.

What time reference does peittää have? Is it “covers”, “is covering”, or “will cover”?

Finnish has only one present tense, and it covers several English uses:

• Present simple:

  • Tulva peittää kadun.
    → The flood covers the street (as a general or repeated fact).

• Present continuous / progressive:

  • Same Finnish form for “The flood is covering the street.”

• Near future (when context indicates a future event):

  • In the right context, Tulva peittää kadun could be understood as “The flood will cover the street.”

So peittää here is present tense; English translation depends on context:

• covers, is covering, or even will cover.

Why is there no word for “the” or “a” in Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan? How do you know if it’s “a street” or “the street”?

Finnish does not use articles like “a/an” or “the” at all. Nouns appear without them:

• tulva = a flood or the flood (depending on context)
• katu / kadun = a street or the street

Which English article you choose depends on context and meaning, not on a specific Finnish word. For example:

• In a news report about a particular known street, Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan will naturally be translated:
  → The flood covers *the street completely.*

• In a more generic description, it might be:
  → A flood covers *a street completely.*

So Finnish leaves that distinction to context, while English forces you to pick “a” or “the”.

Is the word order Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan fixed, or can I move the words around?

The normal neutral word order is:

Subject – Verb – Object – (Adverbials)
Tulva – peittää – kadun – kokonaan

However, Finnish word order is fairly flexible. You can move elements to emphasize them or to focus on new/known information.

Some variants:

• Tulva peittää kokonaan kadun.
  – Also natural; kokonaan is moved before the object.
• Kadun tulva peittää kokonaan.
  – Emphasizes kadun (“the street”) as the topic.
• Kokonaan tulva peittää kadun.
  – Strongly emphasizes kokonaan (“completely”) – stylistic, more marked.

All of these are grammatically possible, but their information structure and emphasis differ.
For a learner, Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan is the best neutral model.

How would the sentence change if we talked about more than one street?

If multiple streets are covered, you change katu to the plural:

• Nominative plural: kadut = streets
• Genitive plural (total object): katujen or katujen / katuja?
  Careful: with a total plural object of an affirmative verb, the form is usually nominative plural for nouns:
  
  • Tulva peittää kadut kokonaan.
    = The flood covers the streets completely.

So:

• Tulva peittää kadun kokonaan.
  → The flood covers the street completely. (one street)

• Tulva peittää kadut kokonaan.
  → The flood covers the streets completely. (several streets)

If you wanted a partial / ongoing idea in the plural, you would use the partitive plural:

• Tulva peittää katuja.
  → The flood (is) covering (some) streets / is covering streets (not specified if all).