Breakdown of Kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu, olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi.
Questions & Answers about Kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu, olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi.
In this sentence, kun is a subordinating conjunction meaning when in a temporal sense:
- Kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu
= When all the presents have been wrapped
It introduces a time clause: it tells you at what point something happens (the living room becoming quiet).
Kun can also mean because in other contexts, but here that reading would feel wrong. The sentence is clearly about a sequence in time: first the wrapping is finished, then the room quiets down.
Word by word:
- kun – when (subordinating conjunction)
- kaikki – all
- lahjat – presents, plural nominative of lahja
- on – is/has, 3rd person singular of olla
- paketoitu – past passive participle of paketoida (to wrap [in paper])
Together:
- kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu
literally: when all the presents have-been-wrapped
Key points:
- It’s a subordinate time clause introduced by kun.
- on paketoitu is a passive perfect form: have been wrapped.
- kaikki lahjat is the object that has undergone the wrapping, even though there’s no explicit subject (the “wrapper” is left generic, like English “they / people / someone”).
Because this is not an ordinary “subject + verb” structure. It’s the Finnish passive perfect.
- on paketoitu is a single passive verb form, not on
- a separate adjective that agrees with lahjat.
- In the Finnish passive, the verb is always 3rd person singular, regardless of how many things are involved.
Compare:
Active: He ovat paketoinet lahjat.
They have wrapped the presents.
– ovat agrees with he (they).Passive: Lahjat on paketoitu.
The presents have been wrapped (by someone).
– No expressed subject; on paketoitu is a fixed passive perfect form, so on stays singular.
So: lahjat is not a grammatical subject that would force plural agreement. The “doer” is hidden inside the passive form; lahjat is the patient/object, and the passive verb simply uses on.
Paketoitu is the past passive participle of the verb paketoida:
- paketoida – to wrap (up), to put into a package
- stem: paketoi-
- passive past participle: paketoitu
Forms of the same verb:
- paketoin – I wrap
- paketoidaan – is / are being wrapped (passive present)
- paketoitiin – was / were wrapped (passive past)
- on paketoitu – has / have been wrapped (passive perfect)
In on paketoitu, paketoitu works like English wrapped in have been wrapped; it marks a completed action affecting the object.
All are possible, but there are nuances:
kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu
– focuses on the action of wrapping in gift paper.
– natural in a context of Christmas/birthday gift wrapping.kun kaikki lahjat on pakattu
– from pakata = to pack.
– more general: could be packing into a box, suitcase, car, etc.
– you can use it for gifts, but it does not highlight the “gift wrap” idea as clearly as paketoitu.kun kaikki lahjat ovat paketissa
– literally: when all the presents are in a package / in wrapping.
– describes a state rather than the action. Roughly: when all the presents are (already) wrapped / in their packages.
– grammatically active: ovat agrees with lahjat (subject).
So:
- on paketoitu = have been wrapped (passive, action-focused).
- ovat paketissa = are in wrapping / are wrapped (state-focused).
In everyday speech about wrapping gifts, on paketoitu is the most idiomatic.
Finnish uses a comma between a subordinate clause and the main clause, even when the subordinate clause comes first.
- Kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu, olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi.
– time clause, then main clause → comma in between.
If you reverse the order, there is still a comma:
- Olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi, kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu.
So the rule is about clause boundaries, not about where the clause appears.
Olohuone means living room.
It’s a compound word:
- olo – state, condition, feeling of being (related to olla, to be)
- huone – room
So literally something like “being-room”, i.e. the room where people are / spend time. But in practice it’s just the normal Finnish word for living room, equivalent to English “living room” rather than a technical phrase.
Hiljentyy is the 3rd person singular present of hiljentyä, which means:
- hiljentyä – to become quiet, to fall silent, to quiet down
So:
- olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi
= the living room becomes quiet for a moment / falls quiet for a moment
This is an inchoative verb: it describes a change of state (from noisy → quiet), not a static description.
If you wanted a static description, you might use the adjective hiljainen:
- olohuone on hiljainen – the living room is quiet (state)
- olohuone hiljentyy – the living room is becoming quiet / quiets down (process/change)
The sentence is specifically about what happens after wrapping is finished: the noise stops, the atmosphere calms. That’s why a change-of-state verb (hiljentyy) is used rather than a simple “is quiet” construction.
Base verb: hiljentyä (type 1 verb ending in -yä)
Conjugation (present tense):
- minä hiljennyn – I quiet down
- sinä hiljennyt – you quiet down
- hän hiljentyy – he/she/it quiets down
- me hiljennymme – we quiet down
- te hiljennyttä – you (pl.) quiet down
- he hiljentyvät – they quiet down
In the sentence:
- olohuone is the grammatical subject (3rd person singular).
- The verb must therefore be hiljentyy, 3rd person singular present.
So structurally, it’s just like:
- Olohuone on iso. – The living room is big.
- Olohuone hiljentyy. – The living room becomes quiet.
Hetkeksi comes from:
- hetki – a moment, short while
- case: translative (ending -ksi)
Hetkeksi usually means:
- for a moment / for a short while / briefly
The translative -ksi often indicates a change into a state or a span/limit in time:
- muuttua vedeksi – to turn into water
- mennä lomalle kahdeksi viikoksi – to go on vacation for two weeks
Here:
- olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi
→ the living room becomes quiet for a (short) time.
Contrast:
- hetken (genitive) can also mean for a moment, but hetkeksi is very natural with verbs of becoming or changing state like hiljentyä. It highlights the idea that the room enters the “quiet” state for a limited duration.
Yes, that word order is perfectly correct:
- Kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu, olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi.
- Olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi, kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu.
The basic meaning in time is the same: the room becomes quiet after the wrapping is finished.
Differences are mostly about emphasis and flow:
- Starting with Kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu makes the wrapping event your thematic starting point.
- Starting with Olohuone hiljentyy hetkeksi foregrounds the resulting calm/quiet.
In everyday speech and writing, both versions are natural; the choice is more about style than grammar.
The subject is not expressed because this is the Finnish passive.
- on paketoitu corresponds to English have been wrapped.
- It has an implicit generic agent: someone / they / people.
So:
- Kun kaikki lahjat on paketoitu
→ When all the presents have been wrapped (by someone / by us / by people)
In English you might rephrase the passive as:
- When we’ve wrapped all the presents, the living room goes quiet for a moment.
Finnish just leaves the “we/they/someone” inside the passive form; there’s no pronoun.
From a traditional Finnish grammar point of view:
- The clause is in the passive.
- The “doer” is not expressed.
- Lahjat is still considered the object (the thing affected by the action).
However, in surface form, kaikki lahjat:
- is in the nominative plural (not partitive or accusative),
- appears in the place where you’d expect a subject in many other languages,
- and there’s no other noun acting as subject.
So for an English speaker, it will feel like the subject of have been wrapped. Functionally, that’s fine to think:
- All the presents have been wrapped → “all the presents” behaves like a subject in English.
Just keep in mind:
- Finnish passive does not conjugate its verb according to that noun (on never becomes ovat in this construction).
- That’s why we keep calling the construction passive, even though kaikki lahjat looks very subject-like.