Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä.

I drink both coffee and tea.

Breakdown of Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä.

• minä: I
• kahvi: the coffee
• juoda: to drink
• tee: the tea
• sekä että: both ... and

Questions & Answers about Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä.

Why do we use sekä … että here instead of just ja for “and”?

Sekä … että roughly means “both … and”. It links two elements and emphasizes that both of them are included.

• Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä.
  = I drink both coffee and tea.

You could also say:

• Minä juon kahvia ja teetä.

That is grammatically correct and very common in spoken Finnish. The difference is subtle:

• sekä … että sounds a bit more formal or emphatic,
• ja is neutral everyday “and”.

So the sentence with sekä … että just highlights the “both-ness” a bit more clearly.

Why are kahvia and teetä in those forms and not kahvi and tee?

Kahvia and teetä are in the partitive case. Finnish often uses the partitive for:

• uncountable things (liquids, substances),
• an unspecified amount of something,
• actions that are incomplete, ongoing, or habitual.

Here, you are saying you drink some coffee and some tea in general, not a specific, clearly bounded portion.

Compare:

• Minä juon kahvia. = I (habitually / generally) drink coffee.
• Minä juon kahvin. = I drink the coffee / I will drink up the (whole) coffee.

So kahvia and teetä show that we are talking about coffee and tea as substances in an open amount, not a single identified drink.

Does the verb juon always take the partitive, like kahvia, as its object?

Not always, but very often when the object is a drink (a liquid) in an unspecified amount.

• Minä juon vettä. = I drink (some) water. → partitive
• Minä juon veden. = I drink the water (all of it). → total object (here in genitive form)

So with juoda (to drink):

• If you mean some amount, in general, you typically use the partitive:
  juon kahvia, juon teetä, juon maitoa.
• If you mean a specific, completed whole (like one particular drink, a whole glass, etc.), you can use the total object:
  juon kahvin, juon teen, juon maidon.

In the sentence Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä, the idea is general habit: you (habitually) drink coffee and tea, so partitive is natural.

Can I drop minä and just say Juon sekä kahvia että teetä?

Yes, and that’s actually more typical in Finnish.

The subject pronoun (minä, sinä, etc.) is often omitted because the verb ending already shows the person:

• juon = I drink
• juot = you (sing.) drink
• juo = he/she/it drinks

So:

• Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä.
• Juon sekä kahvia että teetä.

Both are correct. Including minä adds a bit of emphasis to I (as opposed to someone else), or is used when you want to be very clear or contrast yourself with others.

How is juon formed, and what is the basic form of this verb?

The basic (dictionary) form is juoda = to drink.

Juon is the 1st person singular present tense:

• minä juon = I drink / I am drinking
• sinä juot = you drink
• hän juo = he/she drinks
• me juomme = we drink
• te juotte = you (pl.) drink
• he juovat = they drink

So the pattern is: remove -da from juoda, and then attach the personal endings (with a small stem change in some forms):

• juo-n, juo-t, juo, juo-mme, juo-tte, juo-vat.

In this sentence, juon expresses either habitual action (I drink) or a present, ongoing situation (I am drinking), depending on context, because Finnish has no separate progressive tense.

Why is it teetä and not teea or something like that?

The noun is tee (“tea”) and it is in the partitive singular.

To form the partitive singular of tee, Finnish adds the ending -tä:

• tee
  • tä → teetä

Why -tä and not -ta? Because of vowel harmony:

• ä is used when the word has front vowels (ä, ö, y) or only neutral vowels (e, i).
• a is used when the word has back vowels (a, o, u) (possibly with e, i).

Tee has only e, a neutral vowel, so it takes -tä: teetä.

Similarly:

• kivi → kiveä (stone, partitive sg.)
• vesi → vettä (water, partitive sg.)

How is kahvia formed from kahvi?

The basic form is kahvi (“coffee”). Its partitive singular is kahvia.

For many nouns ending in -i, you form the partitive by adding -a / -ä:

• kahvi
  • a → kahvia

Because kahvi has the back vowel a, it chooses -a (not -ä) to obey vowel harmony.

Other examples of the same pattern:

• paperi → paperia (paper)
• banaani → banaania (banana, as a substance or indefinite amount)
• suklaa → suklaata (here the pattern is different, but it’s also partitive of a food substance)

So kahvia simply shows “coffee” in partitive: some coffee / coffee in general.

Can sekä … että be used only with nouns, or can it also connect verbs and adjectives?

Sekä … että can connect many kinds of parallel elements, not just nouns.

Examples with verbs:

• Hän sekä juo että syö.
  = He/she both drinks and eats.

Examples with adjectives:

• Kahvi on sekä kuumaa että vahvaa.
  = The coffee is both hot and strong.

Examples with longer phrases:

• Pidän sekä kahvista että teestä.
  = I like both coffee and tea.

The key idea is that the two things being linked should be grammatically similar: noun + noun, verb + verb, adjective + adjective, etc.

Could I say Minä sekä juon kahvia että teetä?

That structure is not natural Finnish.

With sekä … että, the normal pattern is:

• sekä X että Y

where X and Y are the parallel items. In your original sentence, X = kahvia, Y = teetä:

• Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä.

If you want to connect verbs, you’d do:

• Minä sekä juon että syön.
  = I both drink and eat.

But mixing it as “Minä sekä juon kahvia että teetä” leaves the structure unbalanced (verb+object on one side, only object on the other), so it sounds wrong to native speakers.

Does Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä mean “I drink” in general, or “I am drinking” right now, or “I will drink” in the future?

The Finnish present tense can cover all of these, depending on context:

• Habit / general truth:
  Minä juon sekä kahvia että teetä.
  = I (generally) drink both coffee and tea.

• Right now / ongoing:
  Said while you actually have both coffee and tea in front of you:
  = I am (currently) drinking both coffee and tea.

• Near future / planned:
  In the right context (e.g. talking about what you’ll have at a café):
  = I will drink both coffee and tea.

There is no separate future tense in Finnish; you use the present and let the situation clarify the time.

Is there a more colloquial way to say this in spoken Finnish?

Yes. In everyday spoken Finnish, minä is usually mä, and sekä … että is less common than plain ja.

Common spoken variants:

• Mä juon kahvia ja teetä.
  = I drink coffee and tea.

You can say Mä juon sekä kahvia että teetä, but it sounds a bit more formal or “bookish” than people usually are in casual conversation.