Learn Hardcore Finnish: Koulussa järjestetään pieni äänestys siitä, minne retki tehdään. - At school a small vote is organized about where the trip will be made.

Finnish almost always marks location with a case ending, not with a separate preposition like at or in. That’s why you don’t just use koulu by itself here; you need koulussa to show the location.

For comparison:

kouluun (illative) = into the school
koululla (adessive) = at the school (more like “at the school premises / by the school”)

What form is järjestetään, and why is there no subject like “we” or “they”?

Järjestetään is the present tense passive of the verb järjestää (to arrange, to organize).

järjestää (dictionary form)
järjestetään = is organized / is being organized / will be organized (depending on context)

Finnish passive (often called the “impersonal” form) is used when:

the subject is unknown, unimportant, or general (people, we, they)
you want to sound neutral, official, or impersonal

So Koulussa järjestetään pieni äänestys… literally is something like:

“At school, a small vote is being organized …”
implying “they/we/people at school are organizing a small vote”.

You could make the subject explicit:

Koulussa me järjestämme pienen äänestyksen… = “At school, we organize a small vote…”

But the passive järjestetään is more neutral and typical in announcements.

Why is it pieni äänestys and not äänestys pieni?

In Finnish, as in English, adjectives normally come before the noun they modify:

pieni äänestys = a small vote
pitkä retki = a long trip
tärkeä kysymys = an important question

Putting the adjective after the noun (äänestys pieni) is not normal in this kind of sentence. Post‑positioned adjectives usually appear only in special structures (e.g., äänestys oli pieni = “the vote was small”, where pieni is part of the predicate, not an attribute before the noun).

What does äänestys mean exactly, and how is it different from vaali?

Both involve voting, but they’re used a bit differently:

äänestys
- general word for a vote / a voting process
- can be informal or formal
- e.g. pidetään äänestys = “let’s have a vote”
vaali
- usually means an election, especially official political elections
- e.g. presidentinvaalit = presidential elections

In the school context, choosing a trip destination is just pieni äänestys, not a formal vaali.

Why do we need siitä in pieni äänestys siitä, minne retki tehdään?

Siitä is:

se (that) + -stä (elative case, “from / about”)
so siitä ≈ about that / about it

Many Finnish nouns and verbs require particular cases after them. Äänestys (a vote) often takes mistä / siitä to express “a vote about something”:

äänestys jostakin = a vote about something
äänestys siitä, kuka voittaa = a vote about who will win

Here:

pieni äänestys siitä, minne retki tehdään
= a small vote about where the trip will be made/go

Siitä points forward to the whole clause minne retki tehdään. Grammatically, that whole clause is the “thing” the vote is about.

Why is there a comma before minne?

The part minne retki tehdään is a subordinate clause (a “that/where”-type clause) explaining what siitä refers to:

siitä, minne retki tehdään
= about where the trip is made/goes

In Finnish, a subordinate clause introduced by a word like että, joka, jossa, minne, etc. is normally separated from the main clause (or from the pronoun like se/siitä) with a comma.

So the comma marks the boundary between:

main part: pieni äänestys siitä
subordinate clause explaining siitä: minne retki tehdään

What is minne, and how is it different from missä and mihin?

These are all question/relative words about place, but with different directions:

missä = where (in/at) – location, no movement
- Missä olet? = Where are you?
mihin = to where / into what – movement towards
- Mihin menet? = Where are you going (to)?
minne = also to where – movement towards
- Minne menet? ≈ Mihin menet?

So here:

minne retki tehdään = to where the trip will be made / where the trip will go

In modern standard Finnish, mihin and minne here both sound fine; minne is slightly more colloquial-sounding but very common.

What exactly does retki tehdään mean? Why use tehdään (“is done”) with retki?

The phrase tehdä retki is an idiomatic expression in Finnish:

tehdä retki = to make a trip / to go on an excursion

So:

Teemme retken Helsinkiin. = We go on a trip to Helsinki.
Retki tehdään Helsinkiin. = The trip will be made to Helsinki. (passive/impersonal form)

In your sentence, retki tehdään is the passive form:

tehdään = passive of tehdä (to do, to make)
retki tehdään = the trip is (going to be) made

The idea is: “Where will they make the trip (go on the trip)?”

Why is it retki tehdään (passive) instead of something like me teemme retken?

It’s the same passive/impersonal pattern as järjestetään:

Me teemme retken = We make a trip.
Retki tehdään = The trip is (going to be) made. / They will make the trip.

Using the passive:

avoids saying exactly who is organizing or going (teachers? the class? the school?)
sounds neutral, informational, a bit official
fits announcements, notices, and general statements well

So the whole sentence is in a consistent neutral “announcement style”: no explicit I/we/they, only passive forms.

Is retki the subject or the object in retki tehdään?

In the active form:

Teemme retken.
- me = subject
- retken = object (accusative/genitive form of retki)

In the passive form:

Retki tehdään.

Formally, retki here behaves like a subject:

it is in the nominative form (retki, not retken)
it agrees with the verb positionally (it’s in “subject position” before the verb)

So retki in retki tehdään is best thought of as the subject of a passive sentence: “The trip is made.”

Why is the verb tense present (järjestetään, tehdään) if the vote and the trip are in the future?

Finnish often uses the present tense where English would use the future:

Huomenna mennään uimaan.
literally: Tomorrow we go swimming.
meaning: We will go swimming tomorrow.

In your sentence:

Koulussa järjestetään pieni äänestys
… minne retki tehdään.

Both are formally present tense, but in context they refer to an upcoming event:

A small vote will be held at school
about where the trip will be made/go.

Finnish doesn’t have a separate future tense; the present + context covers both present and future.

Could the sentence be expressed in a more explicitly “personal” way (with me)?

Yes. One more personal, explicit version could be:

Koulussa me järjestämme pienen äänestyksen siitä, minne teemme retken.

Changes:

me järjestämme = we organize
teemme retken = we make a trip

Meaning is essentially the same, but:

the original with järjestetään / retki tehdään sounds more neutral, like an announcement
the version with me and teemme is more direct and personal (“we will do this”)

Can the word order inside the clause minne retki tehdään be changed?

The usual, natural order here is:

minne retki tehdään
= where the trip is made / where the trip will go

You could, in theory, say other orders like retki minne tehdään, but they would sound very odd or incorrect in standard Finnish in this context.

In subordinate clauses with question words (like minne, missä, mitä, kuka), the question word normally comes first:

en tiedä, minne hän menee = I don’t know where he is going
äänestetään siitä, minne retki tehdään = (we) vote about where the trip will go

So minne needs to stay at the front of that clause.