Questions & Answers about Makkara on kypsä nyt.
- makkara = sausage (the subject, in the nominative case)
- on = the verb is (3rd person singular form of olla, to be)
- kypsä = cooked / done / ripe (a describing word, predicate adjective, nominative)
- nyt = now (an adverb of time)
So the structure is: Subject – Verb – Adjective – Adverb.
Finnish has no separate articles like a/an or the.
- makkara can mean a sausage, the sausage, or sausage in general.
- Which one you choose in English depends on context, not on anything visible in the Finnish form.
If you are talking about a specific sausage everyone already knows about, makkara naturally feels like the sausage. If you are talking about some sausage, not specified which, it feels like a sausage.
Here kypsä is a predicate adjective describing the subject makkara. In Finnish:
- With olla (to be), an adjective describing the subject usually appears in the nominative singular, matching the subject.
- The subject makkara is nominative singular, so the predicate adjective is also nominative singular: kypsä.
Other forms (like kypsän, kypsää) belong to different cases or uses, not to this simple X is Y structure.
- olla is the dictionary (infinitive) form: to be.
- on is 3rd person singular present tense of olla: he/she/it is.
Conjugation of olla in the present tense is:
- olen – I am
- olet – you (sg) are
- on – he/she/it is
- olemme – we are
- olette – you (pl) are
- ovat – they are
So Makkara on kypsä nyt literally has makkara = it, so we use on.
Yes, Makkara on nyt kypsä is perfectly correct. Both:
- Makkara on kypsä nyt
- Makkara on nyt kypsä
mean essentially the same: the sausage is (now) in a cooked/done state.
Subtle nuance:
- Makkara on nyt kypsä often slightly emphasizes the change in time: now, as opposed to before.
- Makkara on kypsä nyt can sound a bit more neutral or like you’re just attaching a time adverb at the end.
In everyday speech, they’re both natural and interchangeable.
You can vary the word order in Finnish more than in English. These are all grammatical:
- Makkara on kypsä nyt.
- Makkara on nyt kypsä.
- Nyt makkara on kypsä.
Differences are mostly about emphasis or what you introduce first:
- Nyt makkara on kypsä can emphasize now (= Now the sausage is cooked), e.g., as an announcement.
The basic neutral order (subject–verb–complement) is Makkara on kypsä (nyt), but moving adverbs like nyt is very common.
Both are possible Finnish, but they mean slightly different things.
Makkara on kypsä.
- kypsä = nominative singular.
- Treats makkara as a whole, individual sausage.
- Meaning: The sausage (as a unit) is cooked/done.
Makkara on kypsää.
- kypsää = partitive singular.
- This kind of structure is used more for substances, mass, or “some amount of”.
- It can sound like you are judging sausage as a type or material: Sausage is (in general) cooked, or there is cooked sausage (available).
In the context of checking if one sausage on the grill is ready, Makkara on kypsä (nyt) is the natural choice.
You can say Makkara on valmis nyt, but there is a nuance:
- kypsä focuses on being cooked / thermally done / ripe.
- For food: correctly cooked through and edible.
- valmis focuses on being ready / finished (task or preparation completed).
For food specifically, both can be heard, but:
- Makkara on kypsä nyt = the sausage has reached the correct cooking point.
- Makkara on valmis nyt = it is ready (may emphasize ready to eat / ready for serving, less about the exact cooking process).
In many grilling contexts, kypsä is the more precise word.
Yes, you can omit nyt.
- Makkara on kypsä. = The sausage is cooked. (No explicit mention of time.)
- Makkara on kypsä nyt. = The sausage is cooked now, often implying that earlier it was not.
So nyt adds a timing contrast: It’s (finally / already) cooked now.
By form alone, makkara is just sausage in the basic nominative singular. Context decides the English article:
- Talking about a particular piece on the grill: the sausage.
- Talking more generically: a sausage or even sausage (as a type of food).
Finnish does not mark the difference between a and the, so you infer it from the situation and what has already been mentioned.
In simple X is Y sentences, the normal order is:
Subject – olla – Complement (adjective or noun)
So:
- Makkara on kypsä.
- Auto on punainen. – The car is red.
- Hän on väsynyt. – He/She is tired.
You usually don’t put the adjective before the verb in this structure. Variations mostly involve moving adverbs (like nyt, tänään, jo), not the core subject–verb–adjective order.
In the plural, both the noun and the verb change, and the adjective usually appears in the plural partitive:
- Makkarat ovat kypsiä nyt.
- makkarat = sausages (nominative plural)
- ovat = are (3rd person plural of olla)
- kypsiä = cooked (partitive plural)
So:
- Singular: Makkara on kypsä nyt. – The sausage is cooked now.
- Plural: Makkarat ovat kypsiä nyt. – The sausages are cooked now.
The sentence Makkara on kypsä nyt is fully natural in both standard written and spoken Finnish.
In informal speech you might hear small variations in intonation or extra particles, for example:
- Makkara on nyt kypsä.
- Nyt se makkara on kypsä.
- Makkara on ny kypsä. (dialectal shortening of nyt to ny)
But the basic grammar and words are the same, and Makkara on kypsä nyt is a perfectly normal, neutral version.