Breakdown of Koululla on vapaaehtoinen kielikerho, jossa puhumme suomea vapaasti.
Questions & Answers about Koululla on vapaaehtoinen kielikerho, jossa puhumme suomea vapaasti.
Finnish uses different location cases that all translate roughly as at / in / on in English, but they’re not interchangeable.
- koulussa = in the school (inside the building; inessive case -ssa/-ssä)
- koululla = at the school, on the school premises (adessive case -lla/-llä)
In existential sentences of the type “There is X at Y”, Finnish very often uses the adessive to express “at (a place) has …”:
- Koululla on vapaaehtoinen kielikerho.
Literally: At the school there is a voluntary language club.
So:
- koululla on X is the normal pattern for “the school has X / there is X at the school”.
- koulussa on X is possible too, but it more strongly suggests inside the school building, physically located there.
In this sentence, koululla is natural because we’re talking about something the school offers / has, not about the physical location of an object in a room.
Both are grammatically correct, but they don’t have the same information structure.
Koululla on vapaaehtoinen kielikerho.
This is an existential sentence. It introduces new information:
“There is a voluntary language club at the school.”
The focus is on the existence of the club.Vapaaehtoinen kielikerho on koululla.
This sounds more like you are already talking about a particular voluntary language club, and now you’re specifying where it is:
“The voluntary language club is at the school (not somewhere else).”
So when you’re introducing the fact that the school has such a club, “Koululla on …” is the natural choice.
vapaaehtoinen means “voluntary” or “optional”.
- In this sentence:
vapaaehtoinen kielikerho = a voluntary (optional) language club
→ You can choose whether to attend; it’s not compulsory.
The word can have two related meanings:
Voluntary / optional (not compulsory)
- Kurssi on vapaaehtoinen. = The course is optional.
Voluntary (unpaid, done by volunteers)
- Hän tekee vapaaehtoista työtä. = He/She does volunteer work.
Context usually makes it clear. In a school context, vapaaehtoinen most often means not mandatory.
kielikerho is a compound noun:
- kieli = language
- kerho = club
Together: kielikerho = language club.
In Finnish, when two nouns form one concept (like “language club”, “school bus”, “coffee cup”), they are normally written as a single word:
- kielikerho – language club
- koulubussi – school bus
- kahvikuppi – coffee cup
So you do not write kieli kerho as two words; that would sound like “a language, a club” rather than one coordinated idea.
jossa is a relative pronoun meaning “in which / where” when it refers back to a specific noun.
- It refers to kielikerho (language club).
- vapaaehtoinen kielikerho, jossa puhumme suomea vapaasti
= a voluntary language club *in which we speak Finnish freely.*
Breakdown:
- jossa = in which / where (relative, linking back to kielikerho)
- missä = where? (question word, not relative)
- siellä = there (demonstrative adverb, not linking word)
You could say, as two separate sentences:
- Koululla on vapaaehtoinen kielikerho. Siellä puhumme suomea vapaasti.
There is a voluntary language club at the school. There we speak Finnish freely.
But when you want one sentence with a relative clause, you use jossa:
- … kielikerho, jossa puhumme suomea vapaasti.
… a language club where we speak Finnish freely.
The -ssa/-ssä ending is the inessive case, meaning roughly “in”.
- kielikerho = language club
- kielikerhossa = in the language club
- jossa = in which → same case, but as a relative word
In a relative clause, the case on jossa is determined by its function. Here, we are talking about what happens in the club, so we need the inessive (in):
- kielikerhossa puhumme suomea → in the language club we speak Finnish
- kielikerho, jossa puhumme suomea → the language club in which we speak Finnish
In Finnish, the verb puhua (to speak) takes the partitive case when you talk about languages:
- puhua suomea = to speak Finnish
- puhua ruotsia = to speak Swedish
- puhua englantia = to speak English
So:
- suomi = the Finnish language (nominative form, dictionary form)
- suomea = partitive form, used after puhua when meaning to speak (a language)
Saying *puhua suomi is ungrammatical in this meaning. You must use suomea.
The rule (simplified):
- puhua + [language name in partitive]
→ puhua suomea, puhua venäjää, puhua saksaa, etc.
puhumme is the present tense, 1st person plural form of puhua (to speak).
Conjugation in the present:
- minä puhun – I speak
- sinä puhut – you (sing.) speak
- hän puhuu – he/she speaks
- me puhumme – we speak
- te puhutte – you (pl.) speak
- he puhuvat – they speak
So puhumme = we speak / we are speaking.
Finnish doesn’t distinguish simple present and present continuous like English does; puhumme can mean both we speak and we are speaking, depending on context.
vapaasti is an adverb meaning “freely”.
vapaa = free (adjective)
- vapaa aika = free time
- vapaa paikka = free seat
vapaasti = freely (adverb)
- puhua vapaasti = to speak freely
- liikkua vapaasti = to move freely
The ending -sti is a common way to form an adverb from an adjective:
- nopea → nopeasti (fast → quickly)
- hiljainen → hiljaa (irregular adverb form: silent → quietly)
- selvä → selvästi (clear → clearly)
So here, puhumme suomea vapaasti = we speak Finnish freely.
Yes, you can change the word order a bit, and it’s still grammatical, but the neutral order here is:
- puhumme suomea vapaasti – we speak Finnish freely.
If you say:
- puhumme vapaasti suomea,
it’s still understandable, but it may sound slightly marked or emphatic, as if you are highlighting how you speak (freely) before mentioning the language. In everyday speech, people strongly prefer:
- puhumme suomea vapaasti.
Finnish word order is fairly flexible, but small changes can subtly shift what is emphasized. In this sentence, the original order is the most natural and neutral.