Learn Hardcore Finnish: Tämä tomaatti on tuore.

Tämä tomaatti on tuore.
can be understood as
- “This tomato is fresh.” (most natural)
  and in another context it might be understood more like “This (particular) tomato is fresh.”

The demonstrative tämä (“this”) already gives the noun a very definite, specific feeling, so you don’t need a separate word like “the.”

Why is it “Tämä tomaatti on tuore” and not “Tämä on tomaatti tuore”?

Finnish likes a fairly clear structure in simple sentences:

Subject – verb – complement
Tämä tomaatti – on – tuore

Here:

Tämä tomaatti = “this tomato” (subject)
on = “is” (verb)
tuore = “fresh” (predicative adjective, describing the subject)

“Tämä on tomaatti tuore” is not normal Finnish word order. If you want to put tuore in front of tomaatti as an adjective before a noun, you say:

Tämä on tuore tomaatti. = “This is a fresh tomato.”

That sentence answers “What is this?”

Your original sentence “Tämä tomaatti on tuore.” answers “What is this tomato like?” or “Is this tomato fresh?”

So both are correct but they mean slightly different things:

Tämä on tuore tomaatti. → identifying the thing
Tämä tomaatti on tuore. → giving a quality of that tomato

What grammatical case is tomaatti in here?

In Tämä tomaatti on tuore, the word tomaatti is in the nominative singular:

Basic dictionary form: tomaatti (nominative singular)
No extra ending is visible; nominative is “bare form” for most nouns.

The nominative is used here because:

tämä tomaatti is the subject of the sentence.
Predicative sentences with olla (“to be”) normally keep the subject in nominative.

If you made it plural:

Nämä tomaatit ovat tuoreita.
- Nämä = these
- tomaatit = tomatoes (nominative plural: -t)
- ovat = are (3rd person plural of olla)
- tuoreita = fresh (partitive plural, used here for plural predicative; more on that below)

Why is tuore in this simple base form? Why not something like tuorea or tuoretta?

Tuore is an adjective. In Tämä tomaatti on tuore, it appears as a predicative adjective (after on, describing the subject).

In this sentence, the pattern is:

[singular countable subject in nominative] + on + [adjective in nominative singular]
Tämä tomaatti (nominative) + on
- tuore (nominative)

So we keep tuore in nominative singular to match a singular, countable subject (tomaatti).

Forms like tuoretta (partitive) appear in specific situations, for example:

With mass nouns:
- Maito on tuoretta. = “The milk is fresh.”
  Here maito (“milk”) is treated as a substance, so the predicative adjective often appears in the partitive singular (tuoretta).
With some verbs or when emphasizing an ongoing/partial state, the partitive can also be used, but with a sentence like Tämä tomaatti on X, the normal, natural form is tuore, not tuoretta.

Could I say “Tämä tomaatti on tuoretta”?

On its own, “Tämä tomaatti on tuoretta” sounds wrong or at least very odd. A single tomato is a countable thing, not a mass or substance.

The partitive form tuoretta is natural with mass nouns like:

Maito on tuoretta. – “The milk is fresh.”
Liha on tuoretta. – “The meat is fresh.”

Because tomaatti is used here as a countable object (one whole tomato), you treat it like a discrete item, and you use nominative for the adjective:

✅ Tämä tomaatti on tuore.

You might see tuoretta if the predicative refers to some mass noun like tavaraa (“stuff, goods”), for example:

Tämä tomaatti on tuoretta tavaraa.
Literally: “This tomato is fresh goods.”
Here tuoretta agrees with tavaraa (partitive), not with tomaatti.

Why do we need on? Can Finnish drop “is” like some other languages?

In standard Finnish, you generally must include the verb olla (“to be”) in sentences like this.

So:

✅ Tämä tomaatti on tuore. – correct
❌ Tämä tomaatti tuore. – incorrect in standard Finnish

Finnish does have some special patterns where olla can be left out (for example, in some headlines or very colloquial speech), but for a basic sentence stating a quality, you should include on.

On is the 3rd person singular form of olla and it agrees with a singular subject like tämä tomaatti (“this tomato”). So it functions very similarly to English “is” here.

Could I change the word order, like “Tuore on tämä tomaatti” or “Tämä on tuore tomaatti”? Does that change the meaning?

There are a few possibilities, and they are all grammatical but slightly different in feel.

Tämä tomaatti on tuore.
Neutral, default statement: “This tomato is fresh.”
Tämä on tuore tomaatti.
Also common. Roughly: “This is a fresh tomato.”
- Answers “What is this?” → “It is a fresh tomato.”
- The focus is more on identifying what this is.
Tuore on tämä tomaatti.
Grammatically correct but sounds poetic, emphatic, or stylized.
It puts strong emphasis on tuore:
- “Fresh is this tomato” (like stressing “fresh, that’s what this tomato is”).

For everyday, neutral speech, you’ll most often use:

Tämä tomaatti on tuore. (property of that specific tomato)
Tämä on tuore tomaatti. (identifying what the thing is)

What’s the difference between tämä, tuo, and se?

All three are demonstrative pronouns/determiners, roughly similar to “this/that/it,” but they’re used differently.

tämä = “this” (near the speaker)
- Tämä tomaatti on tuore. – “This tomato is fresh.”
tuo = “that” (farther away, visible)
- Tuo tomaatti on tuore. – “That tomato (over there) is fresh.”
se = “it/that”, more abstract or already known, or just the default “it/that”:
- Se tomaatti on tuore. – “That/the tomato is fresh.”
  (referring to a specific tomato you both know about, not necessarily pointing at it)

In speech, se is extremely common and often replaces hän for people, and tämä/tuo in some colloquial situations, but for clear, textbook Finnish:

Use tämä for “this (near me)”.
Use tuo for “that (over there)”.
Use se when the thing is already known from context or not being physically pointed at.

How do I pronounce tämä tomaatti? What should I watch out for?

Key points:

Stress
- In Finnish, the main stress is always on the first syllable of a word.
- TÄ-mä TO-maa-tti
Vowel length
- Double vowels are held longer than single vowels.
- In tomaatti, the aa is long: TO-maa-tti, with a noticeably lengthened a.
- Don’t pronounce it like English “tomati”; make the aa clearly longer.
Double consonant
- tt is a long consonant; you hold the closure a bit longer: tomaa-tti, as if there is a tiny pause before the t is released.
ä sound
- ä is a front vowel (similar to the vowel in British English “cat”, but often a bit more front and pure).
- tämä is not “tama” but tä-mä with that front ä sound.

Full pronunciation (approximate in English-based notation):

tämä ≈ “TAE-mae”
tomaatti ≈ “TOH-maah-ttee” (with long aa and double t)

What’s the nuance of tuore compared to words like uusi or raikas?

These are all positive-sounding adjectives but used in different contexts:

tuore
- Literally “fresh,” especially for food and other perishable things:
  - tuore tomaatti – a fresh tomato
  - tuore leipä – fresh bread
  - tuore liha – fresh meat
- Also used metaphorically for “recent” (e.g., tuore uutinen – a recent/fresh piece of news).
uusi
- Means “new”, in the sense of not old, recently made/bought:
  - uusi auto – a new car
  - uusi paita – a new shirt
- With food, uusi can mean “new (season’s)”:
  - uusi peruna – literally “new potato” (fresh young potatoes of the new harvest).
raikas
- Means fresh more in the sense of “refreshing,” “cool,” “clean”:
  - raikas ilma – fresh air
  - raikas juoma – a refreshing drink
  - raikas tuoksu – a fresh/clean smell

For your sentence about a tomato as food, tuore is the natural choice: Tämä tomaatti on tuore.

If I want to talk about more than one tomato, how does the sentence change?

You need to change:

The demonstrative (tämä → nämä)
The noun (tomaatti → tomaatit in the nominative plural)
The verb (on → ovat for plural)
Often the adjective form as well.

A very natural plural sentence is:

Nämä tomaatit ovat tuoreita.
- Nämä = these (plural)
- tomaatit = tomatoes (nominative plural)
- ovat = are (3rd person plural of olla)
- tuoreita = fresh (partitive plural form, commonly used for plural predicatives)

You may also see Nämä tomaatit ovat tuoret in some dialectal/older usage, but tuoreita is the standard modern form here.

By contrast, singular:

Tämä tomaatti on tuore.

Can I leave out tämä and just say “Tomaatti on tuore”?

You can grammatically, but the meaning changes.

Tämä tomaatti on tuore.
- Talks about this specific tomato that you’re pointing at or referring to.
Tomaatti on tuore.
- Sounds more like a generic statement: “The tomato is fresh.”
  As a general truth, that’s a bit strange, because tomatoes are not always fresh by definition.
- Structures like “Tomaatti on punainen.” (“The tomato is red.”) or
  “Tomaatti on vihannes.” (“The tomato is a vegetable.”) make more sense as general statements.

So if you want to emphasize this one particular tomato, keep tämä:

✅ Tämä tomaatti on tuore.