Lintu lentää puuhun.

The bird flies to the tree.

Breakdown of Lintu lentää puuhun.

• lentää: to fly
• lintu: the bird
• puu: the tree
• -hun: to

Questions & Answers about Lintu lentää puuhun.

Why is it puuhun and not just puu?

Puu is the basic (dictionary) form meaning tree.

Puuhun is puu in the illative case, which is one of the Finnish “local” cases. The illative roughly means “into” or “to (inside)”.

So:

• puu = tree
• puuhun = into the tree

In this sentence, the bird is moving into the tree, not just being in or at the tree, so Finnish marks that idea of movement into directly on the noun with the ending -hun.

What exactly does the ending -hun in puuhun mean?

The -hun part is an illative case ending. Illative expresses movement into something.

The general idea:

• puu (tree)
• puu
  • illative → puuhun = into the tree

With many words, illative is formed with -Vn (a repeated vowel + n), e.g.:

• talo (house) → taloon (into the house)

But for short words like puu, Finnish inserts an h for easier pronunciation:

• puu → puuhun (not puuun)

So -hun here is just h + u (the vowel) + n, functioning as the illative ending.

What is the difference between puuhun and puussa?

Both are local cases, but they express different things:

• puussa is inessive: in the tree (location, static)
• puuhun is illative: into the tree (movement towards the inside)

Compare:

• Lintu on puussa. = The bird is in the tree. (no movement)
• Lintu lentää puuhun. = The bird flies into the tree. (movement into)

English uses prepositions (in, into) to show this difference; Finnish uses case endings (-ssa/-ssä vs -Vn/-hVn).

Why is there an h in puuhun? The stem is puu, right?

Yes, the stem is puu.

Finnish often adds an h when forming the illative of short words ending in a long vowel (like uu, aa, ää) to avoid an awkward triple vowel.

Without the h, the pattern would be:

• puu → puuun (difficult to pronounce and read)

So Finnish inserts h:

• puu → puu
  • hun → puuhun

This is a regular pattern:

• työ (work) → työhön (into work)
• kuu (moon) → kuuhun (to the moon)

What tense is lentää here? Present or future?

Lentää in this sentence is present tense third person singular.

Finnish does not have a separate future tense. The present tense can refer to:

• present time: Lintu lentää puuhun. = The bird flies / is flying into the tree.
• future time (if context makes it clear): Huomenna lintu lentää puuhun. = Tomorrow the bird will fly into the tree.

So context decides whether you translate it with flies, is flying, or will fly in English.

Why does lentää look the same as the dictionary form?

The basic dictionary form of Finnish verbs is the 1st infinitive. For this verb, it’s also spelled lentää.

The present-tense conjugation is:

• minä lennän – I fly
• sinä lennät – you fly
• hän lentää – he/she flies
• me lennämme – we fly
• te lennätte – you (pl.) fly
• he lentävät – they fly

So the 3rd person singular form (hän lentää) is identical in spelling to the infinitive. You have to tell from context whether lentää is:

• an infinitive (“to fly”)
• or a finite verb form (“he/she flies” / “it flies”)

In Lintu lentää puuhun, lentää is clearly a finite verb (present, 3rd person singular) because Lintu is the subject.

How does lentää change in the plural? What if there are many birds?

To say The birds fly into the tree, you need both a plural subject and a plural verb:

• Linnut lentävät puuhun.

Changes:

• lintu (one bird) → linnut (birds, nominative plural)
• lentää (3rd sg.) → lentävät (3rd plural)

So:

• Lintu lentää puuhun. = The bird flies into the tree.
• Linnut lentävät puuhun. = The birds fly into the tree.

Why is lintu in the basic form? Why not some other case?

Lintu is in the nominative case, which is the normal form used for the subject of a simple sentence.

In a sentence like this:

• Lintu (subject, nominative)
• lentää (verb)
• puuhun (destination, illative)

The subject is doing the action, so it appears in the nominative.

You would see a different form (e.g. linnun) if lintu were:

• in some other grammatical role (like a possessor: linnun pesä = the bird’s nest)
• or in a sentence type that uses partitive subjects (existential sentences etc.), which is not the case here.

Why is there no word for “the” or “a” in the sentence?

Finnish has no articles like English a/an or the.

So lintu by itself can mean:

• a bird
• the bird
• simply bird (when speaking generally)

Context tells you which English article is appropriate. In Lintu lentää puuhun, you can translate it as:

• The bird flies into the tree.
  or, with less specific context:
• A bird flies into the tree.

Can I change the word order, like Puuhun lintu lentää?

Yes, Finnish word order is flexible, and changing it affects emphasis, not basic grammar.

Neutral, most common:

• Lintu lentää puuhun. – straightforward statement.

Emphatic variations:

• Puuhun lintu lentää. – Emphasises into the tree (e.g. “It’s into the tree that the bird flies,” not somewhere else).
• Lintu puuhun lentää. – Slightly poetic or contrastive; often focusing on the verb lentää in that environment.

The key syntactic rule is that the finite verb (lentää) must be in the second position or later, and the sentence must still make sense semantically. All of the above are correct but stylistically different.

How would I say “The bird is in the tree” instead of “flies into the tree”?

You need:

1. A stative verb (usually olla = to be).
2. The inessive case for in a location (-ssa/-ssä), not the illative.

So:

• Lintu on puussa. = The bird is in the tree.

Comparison:

• Lintu lentää puuhun. = The bird flies into the tree. (movement, illative -hun)
• Lintu on puussa. = The bird is in the tree. (location, inessive -ssa)

How would I negate this sentence? For example, “The bird does not fly into the tree.”

Finnish negation uses a special negative verb ei, which is conjugated, and the main verb goes into a short form.

For lentää, the relevant negative form is lennä (short stem).

Third person singular:

• Lintu ei lennä puuhun.
  = The bird does not fly into the tree.
  = The bird is not flying into the tree.

Structure:

• Lintu (subject)
• ei (negative verb, 3rd sg.)
• lennä (connegative form of lentää)
• puuhun (into the tree)