Learn Hardcore Finnish: Haluan tehdä puutarhasta pienen äänityksen, jossa kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli. - I want to make a small recording of the garden in which you can hear birdsong and the wind.

puutarhassa (inessive, in the garden):
- Haluan tehdä puutarhassa pienen äänityksen = I want to make a small recording *in the garden (that’s the place where I do the recording).*
puutarhan (genitive, the garden’s):
- puutarhan äänitys would be understood literally as the garden’s recording (= the garden owns the recording), which is odd or at least a different idea.

So puutarhasta fits because the garden is the source of what is recorded.

Why is it pienen äänityksen and not pieni äänitys or pientä äänitystä?

Pienen äänityksen is the object of tehdä (“to make”). In Finnish, objects often appear either in:

Genitive (here: äänityksen) → “total object”
Partitive (äänitystä) → “partial/ongoing/indefinite object”

Here äänityksen (genitive) is used because:

You want to make one complete recording.
The action is seen as having a natural end-point (telic).

The adjective pieni must agree in case and number with its noun:

nominative: pieni äänitys
genitive: pienen äänityksen
partitive: pientä äänitystä

So:

Haluan tehdä pienen äänityksen ≈ I want to make a small recording (a whole, finished thing).
Haluan tehdä pientä äänitystä would sound like you only want to do some recording activity, without focusing on a complete result. It’s much less natural in this context.

Using pieni äänitys (nominative) as the object here would be grammatically wrong.

Why is it Haluan tehdä, not something like Haluan teen?

In Finnish, when you want to say “I want to do X”, the pattern is:

haluta + (1st infinitive) of the verb

So:

Haluan tehdä = I want to do / make
Haluan syödä = I want to eat
Haluan nähdä = I want to see

You do not conjugate the second verb:

Haluan teen ❌ (ungrammatical)
Haluan tehdä ✅

The meaning “I want a recording” would be a different structure:

Haluan pienen äänityksen = I want a small recording. (here, haluan directly takes a noun as its object, no tehdä)

In the given sentence, the focus is on the action of making a recording, so Haluan tehdä is correct.

Why is it puutarhasta pienen äänityksen and not pienen äänityksen puutarhasta?

Both are grammatically possible, but the word order highlights different things.

Haluan tehdä puutarhasta pienen äänityksen.
- Starts with puutarhasta → emphasizes the source (from the garden) first.
- Also matches a common pattern tehdä jostakin jotakin (to make something from/of something), where jostakin (here: puutarhasta) often comes before the object.
Haluan tehdä pienen äänityksen puutarhasta.
- Starts with pienen äänityksen → emphasizes the resulting recording first, and puutarhasta just adds extra information (from where).

In everyday speech both orders are very natural. Finnish word order is relatively flexible: you move elements mainly to change focus or emphasis, not basic grammar.

What exactly does jossa refer to: the garden or the recording?

Formally, jossa is a relative pronoun (from joka) in the inessive case (meaning “in which”). It normally refers back to the closest suitable noun, which here is:

pienen äänityksen (the small recording)

So the most straightforward reading is:

…pienen äänityksen, jossa kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli.
→ …a small recording *in which birdsong and wind can be heard.*

However, in real-life interpretation, some listeners might feel it describes the garden conceptually (because sounds “are in the garden”). If you wanted to be crystal clear:

To refer clearly to the recording:
- …pienen äänityksen, josta kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli.
  (a recording *from which birdsong and wind can be heard*)
To refer clearly to the garden:
- …puutarhasta, jossa kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli.
  (from the garden, where birdsong and wind can be heard)

But in the original wording, grammar-wise jossa most naturally points to äänitys.

Why is it jossa and not missä, siinä, or josta?

All of these are related but used differently:

jossa
- relative pronoun (from joka) = in which
- used in relative clauses to refer back to a noun:
  - äänityksen, jossa kuuluu… = a recording *in which … is heard*
missä
- question/indefinite word = where
- Missä kuuluu lintujen laulu? = Where can birdsong be heard?
- Not used to link to a specific noun in the same way as jossa.
siinä
- demonstrative pronoun = in that / in it
- would typically refer to something already known from context, not a just-mentioned noun in the same clause.
josta
- another form of joka, elative case = from which
- focuses on something coming out of / from the noun.
- äänityksen, josta kuuluu… = a recording *from which (out of which) … is heard*

In the original sentence, jossa treats the recording as a kind of space or medium “inside” which sounds are heard, which is natural in Finnish. Josta would also be possible but would shift the nuance slightly to “coming from the recording”.

Why is the verb kuuluu, not something with kuulla, like voi kuulla or kuulee?

Finnish distinguishes between:

kuulla = to hear (actively, with a listener)
kuulua = to be heard, to be audible / to be heard coming from somewhere

In this sentence:

jossa kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli
= in which the birds’ song and the wind *are heard / can be heard.*

Here, kuuluu describes the sounds themselves as being audible. There is no explicit listener (no “I/we/you hear”), so kuulua is the natural choice.

You could say:

…jossa voi kuulla lintujen laulun ja tuulen.
= …where you can hear birdsong and the wind.

That is grammatically fine, but stylistically more explicit about a person’s ability to hear. The original version with kuuluu sounds more neutral and descriptive.

Why is it kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli and not kuuluvat lintujen laulu ja tuuli?

In principle:

lintujen laulu ja tuuli = two subjects (birds’ song + wind)
Plural verb would be kuuluvat

So kuuluvat lintujen laulu ja tuuli is grammatically possible, and some speakers might prefer it.

However, Finnish very often uses singular 3rd person with such combinations, especially when:

the subjects form a kind of conceptual unit, or
the emphasis is not on counting them as separate items but on “there is this kind of sound”.

So:

Kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli.
feels like describing one combined soundscape, and singular kuuluu is natural.

If you wanted to highlight them more as separate items, kuuluvat would be acceptable and understandable, but it’s less idiomatic in this type of descriptive sentence.

Why is it lintujen laulu and not lintujen laulua or lintujen laulun?

Breakdown:

lintujen = genitive plural of lintu (“bird”) → of the birds
laulu = nominative singular of “song”

So lintujen laulu = the song of the birds / the birds’ song.

Here, laulu is the actual subject of kuuluu:

(Jossa) kuuluu lintujen laulu…
= The birds’ song is heard…

Other forms would change the meaning:

lintujen laulua (partitive)
- would typically be used if laulua is an object or a partitive-style subject (indefinite quantity), e.g.:
  - Kuuluu lintujen laulua. = There is some birdsong audible.
- That’s also fine Finnish, but a bit more like “some amount of birdsong”.
lintujen laulun (genitive)
- would not fit as the subject of kuuluu; it would need a different structure, like:
  - Kuulen lintujen laulun. = I hear the birds’ song.
- Here laulun is a total object of kuulen.

In the given sentence, the nominative laulu fits because it’s treated as a definite, whole thing that is heard.

Why is tuuli in the nominative, not tuulta?

With kuulua, both nominative and partitive subjects are possible, depending on how you see the sound:

Nominative (tuuli) → a more definite, whole entity
Partitive (tuulta) → a more indefinite, ongoing amount of something

Compare:

Kuuluu tuuli.
= The wind (as a distinct thing) is heard.
Kuuluu tuulta.
= There is (some) wind to be heard. (more about there being some amount of wind noise)

In lintujen laulu ja tuuli, both items (laulu, tuuli) are in the nominative, so they are treated as specific, whole phenomena that form the soundscape.

Could I also say Haluan äänittää puutarhaa or Haluan tehdä äänityksen puutarhasta? What’s the difference?

Yes, there are several natural alternatives with slightly different nuances.

Haluan tehdä puutarhasta pienen äänityksen.
- Focus on making a finished recording of the garden.
- Uses verb tehdä
  - noun äänitys.
Haluan tehdä pienen äänityksen puutarhasta.
- Same meaning as (1), just different word order, with more focus on the recording as a product.
Haluan tehdä äänityksen puutarhasta.
- Similar to (2) but no pienen; just “I want to make a recording of the garden.”
Haluan äänittää puutarhaa.
- Uses the verb äänittää (“to record”).
- The object puutarhaa is in the partitive, which can sound more like the activity of recording the garden (not necessarily a neatly bounded, single product).
- Roughly: “I want to be recording the garden.”
Haluan äänittää puutarhan.
- Genitive puutarhan would present the garden more as a complete object of the recording. It can sound slightly odd literally (you aren’t capturing the garden itself), but in some contexts could just mean a full/complete recording about the garden.

The original sentence is very natural if you want to highlight making a specific small recording as a product.

What does the structure jossa kuuluu X ja Y really correspond to in English?

The word-for-word idea is:

jossa = in which
kuuluu = is heard / can be heard
lintujen laulu ja tuuli = birds’ song and wind

So:

…jossa kuuluu lintujen laulu ja tuuli.
≈ …in which the birds’ song and the wind are heard / in which you can hear birdsong and the wind.

In natural English, you’d typically render this as:

“…with birdsong and the sound of the wind.”
“…where you can hear birds singing and the wind.”

The Finnish structure “jossa kuuluu …” is a compact way to describe what can be heard in that place/medium, without mentioning any listener explicitly.