Breakdown of Minä haluan oppia suomea mahdollisimman nopeasti.
Questions & Answers about Minä haluan oppia suomea mahdollisimman nopeasti.
In Finnish you can drop the subject pronoun whenever the verb ending already shows the person.
- Minä haluan oppia suomea…
- Haluan oppia suomea… (equally correct)
The -n ending on haluan already tells us it’s 1st person singular (“I”).
Using Minä often adds a bit of emphasis on the subject: I want to learn Finnish (as opposed to someone else), or it can just sound slightly more “full” or careful.
In everyday speech, Finns often leave it out unless they really want to stress I.
Haluan is the 1st person singular form of the verb haluta (“to want”) in the present tense.
The basic present tense forms of haluta are:
- minä haluan – I want
- sinä haluat – you (sg) want
- hän/se haluaa – he/she/it wants
- me haluamme – we want
- te haluatte – you (pl) want
- he/ne haluavat – they want
So haluaa corresponds to “he/she wants”, not “I want”.
Because the subject is minä (“I”), the correct form is haluan.
Yes, oppia is another verb, meaning “to learn”. Here it is in its basic dictionary form, called the 1st infinitive.
Finnish often uses a structure “verb + verb (infinitive)”:
- haluan oppia – I want to learn
- aion oppia – I am going to learn / intend to learn
- voin oppia – I can learn
So haluan is the conjugated verb, and oppia is the infinitive that depends on it, just like “want to learn” in English.
Both are possible, but they don’t mean exactly the same thing.
- oppia = “to learn, to acquire knowledge/skill (to the point of knowing it)”
- haluan oppia suomea – I want to learn Finnish (become able to use it)
- opiskella = “to study, to engage in studying” (the activity/process)
- haluan opiskella suomea – I want to study Finnish (take lessons/do coursework)
In your sentence, oppia focuses on the result (end up knowing Finnish), whereas opiskella would focus more on the process (doing the studying).
Suomea is the partitive case of suomi (“Finnish [language]”).
With verbs like oppia (“to learn”), the object is often in the partitive when the action is:
- ongoing / incomplete, or
- seen as learning some amount of something, not a clear “finished whole”.
You usually learn some Finnish, gradually, so oppia suomea is natural: the partitive reflects an open‑ended process.
Other forms:
- suomi – nominative (subject form; also used as object in some contexts)
- suomea – partitive
- suomen – genitive (also used as a “total object” in some contexts)
You could sometimes see oppia suomen to imply learning the whole language, but that’s less common and sounds more like “master the entire language”.
Yes, Minä haluan oppia suomen kielen is grammatically correct and idiomatic.
Nuance:
- oppia suomea – neutral, everyday, “learn Finnish” (partitive, process, some amount)
- oppia suomen kielen – “learn the Finnish language”, a bit more explicit/formal, and sounds like learning the whole language as a system.
In ordinary conversation, oppia suomea is simpler and more common.
You’re right: mahdollisimman comes from mahdollinen (“possible”).
The steps are:
- mahdollinen – possible
- superlative: mahdollisin – “the most possible”
- genitive of that superlative: mahdollisimman
The fixed pattern mahdollisimman + adjective/adverb means “as … as possible”:
- mahdollisimman nopeasti – as quickly as possible
- mahdollisimman pian – as soon as possible
- mahdollisimman paljon – as much as possible
So mahdollisimman itself is “of the most possible”, but in practice it’s just the standard way to say “as X as possible” with an adverb/adjective.
Nopeasti is the adverb form of nopea (“quick, fast”).
- nopea – adjective: “quick, fast”
- nopea auto – a fast car
- nopeasti – adverb: “quickly, fast”
- oppia nopeasti – to learn quickly
You need an adverb here because it describes how you want to learn (the manner of learning), not what is quick.
There is no form nopeašti in Finnish; the correct transformation is nopea → nopeasti.
Yes, there are a few common alternatives with roughly the same meaning:
- niin nopeasti kuin mahdollista – literally “as quickly as is possible”
- niin nopeasti kuin suinkin (mahdollista) – “as quickly as at all (possible)” (a bit more emphatic)
Examples:
- Haluan oppia suomea niin nopeasti kuin mahdollista.
- Haluan oppia suomea niin nopeasti kuin suinkin.
All of these are fine. Mahdollisimman nopeasti is short and very natural, especially in spoken and written standard Finnish.
Yes. Finnish word order is more flexible than English, and your example is grammatical:
- Haluan mahdollisimman nopeasti oppia suomea.
Nuance:
- Haluan oppia suomea mahdollisimman nopeasti.
→ more neutral: focus on learning Finnish, with “as quickly as possible” at the end. - Haluan mahdollisimman nopeasti oppia suomea.
→ puts slight emphasis on the speed: “I want, as quickly as possible, to learn Finnish.”
Both are fine; the differences are mostly about emphasis and rhythm, not correctness.
In informal spoken Finnish, many forms are shortened. A very typical colloquial version would be:
- Mä haluun oppii suomee mahdollisimman nopeesti.
Changes compared to standard:
- Minä → Mä
- haluan → haluun
- oppia → oppii
- suomea → suomee
- nopeasti → nopeesti
The meaning is the same; this is just colloquial pronunciation and spelling, common in speech and informal writing (messages, chats).
Haluaisin is the conditional form of haluta.
- Minä haluan oppia suomea…
→ “I want to learn Finnish…” – direct, neutral statement of desire. - Minä haluaisin oppia suomea…
→ “I would like to learn Finnish…” – softer, more polite, often used when being courteous or when the wish is more hypothetical.
So if you’re politely expressing a wish or request (e.g. in a course application, or to a teacher), haluaisin might sound nicer; in simple self-statements, haluan is perfectly fine.