Learn Hardcore Finnish: Puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia, mikä ahdistaa minua. - The phone constantly shows new notifications, which makes me anxious.

Puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia can easily be understood as my phone in a context where you are talking about your own phone.
If you want to make it explicit, you can say:
- Minun puhelimeni näyttää... (grammatically careful, neutral)
- Mun puhelin näyttää... (very common spoken style)

All three are possible; the sentence without an explicit my is simply more neutral and less heavy, and that’s very typical in Finnish.

Why is it uusia ilmoituksia and not something like uudet ilmoitukset?

Uusia ilmoituksia is in the partitive plural, and it’s doing several things at once:

Plural because there are multiple notifications.
Partitive because:
- The notifications are not a specific, known set; they are just “some new notifications”.
- The action is ongoing/repeated (the phone keeps showing them over time), which often triggers the partitive.
Rough guideline:
Uudet ilmoitukset = the new notifications (a specific, bounded group).
Uusia ilmoituksia = new notifications in general, some amount of them, not a clearly delimited set.

So Puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia suggests an indefinite stream of new notifications popping up.

What exactly does jatkuvasti mean? Is it the same as koko ajan or aina?

Jatkuvasti literally comes from jatkuva (continuous) + -sti (adverb ending), so it means continually, constantly.

Close alternatives:

koko ajan = all the time
aina = always

All three can work here, but there are nuances:

jatkuvasti – emphasizes continuous, repeated nature, often with a slightly negative nuance (like constantly in English).
koko ajan – stronger feeling of non-stop, all the time.
aina – more neutral always (not necessarily as annoying-sounding).

Examples:

Puhelin soi jatkuvasti. – The phone keeps ringing (all the time, annoyingly).
Puhelin soi koko ajan. – The phone is ringing all the time (very often, almost non-stop).
Puhelin soi aina iltaisin. – The phone always rings in the evenings (habitually).

How does the verb näyttää work here? I’ve also seen it mean to seem.

Näyttää has two main uses:

Transitive: to show (something)
Pattern: joku näyttää jotain (someone shows something)
- Puhelin näyttää uusia ilmoituksia. – The phone shows new notifications.
- Näytän sinulle kuvan. – I’ll show you a picture.
Link-verb: to seem, to look (like)
Pattern: joku/jokin näyttää + adjective / nominal sentence
- Tilanne näyttää pahalta. – The situation looks bad.
- Hän näyttää väsyneeltä. – He/She looks tired.

In your sentence it’s clearly the show meaning, because uusia ilmoituksia is its object: the phone is displaying them.

Why is there a comma before mikä, and what exactly is mikä doing here?

The comma and mikä introduce a non-restrictive relative clause that comments on the entire previous statement.

Puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia, mikä ahdistaa minua.
= The phone constantly shows new notifications, which makes me anxious.

Key points:

In Finnish, you must put a comma before such a relative clause.
Mikä here refers not to a single noun but to the whole preceding idea (“the phone constantly shows new notifications”).
The clause mikä ahdistaa minua explains or comments on that situation.

So the structure is very similar to English “, which …”, but Finnish is strict about the comma.

Why is it mikä and not joka in ..., mikä ahdistaa minua?

Finnish distinguishes mikä and joka in relative clauses:

joka refers to a specific noun (person or thing) directly before it.
mikä refers to:
- the whole previous clause or situation, or
- a pronoun like se (that), kaikki (everything), etc.

Here, the clause:

Puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia
is the thing being referred to.

You’re not saying “the phone, which makes me anxious”.
You’re saying: “The fact that the phone constantly shows notifications, which makes me anxious.”
That “fact / situation” is what mikä refers to.

If you tried to use joka here:

Puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia, joka ahdistaa minua.
would be wrong in standard Finnish, because joka doesn’t naturally refer to the whole clause; it wants a direct noun antecedent.

What does ahdistaa minua literally mean, and how is it different from olen ahdistunut?

Ahdistaa minua comes from the verb ahdistaa, which is an impersonal-feeling verb:

Pattern: jotain ahdistaa joku
literally: something oppresses / makes anxious someone

So:

(Se) ahdistaa minua.
= It makes me anxious. / It causes me anxiety.

In your sentence:

..., mikä ahdistaa minua.
= ..., which makes me anxious.

Difference from olen ahdistunut:

Minua ahdistaa. – I feel anxious (literally: [something] is making me anxious; more about the feeling right now, often used in conversation).
Olen ahdistunut. – I am anxious / I am distressed (adjectival, often a bit stronger or more “state/condition”-like).

In everyday speech, Minua ahdistaa is very common for “I feel anxious / suffocated / overwhelmed (right now)”.

Why is it minua (partitive) and not minä or minut in ahdistaa minua?

Verbs of feeling, emotion, physical sensation in Finnish often take the experiencer as a partitive object, not as a subject.

Pattern:

Jotain (3rd person singular verb) partitive person

→ “It X-es me.”

Examples:

Minua väsyttää. – I’m tired. (Something tires me.)
Minua oksettaa. – I feel sick / nauseous.
Minua pelottaa. – I’m scared.
Minua ahdistaa. – I feel anxious / It makes me anxious.

So:

minä = nominative (I) → not used here.
minut = total object / accusative (me as a whole thing, fully affected)
minua = partitive (me as an experiencer of an ongoing/undefined feeling)

For these emotion/sensation verbs, minua is simply the standard, fixed pattern.

What exactly does ahdistaa mean, and how strong is it emotionally?

Ahdistaa is somewhat broader than just to make anxious. It can cover:

psychological anxiety
feeling mentally suffocated or crushed
being heavily stressed or pressured

So depending on context, Minua ahdistaa might mean:

I feel anxious / panicky.
I feel suffocated by this situation.
This weighs on me / stresses me a lot.

In your sentence, it’s natural to translate it as makes me anxious or really stresses me out, depending on how strong you want it to sound.

Could the sentence be said in a more “plain” way without mikä?

Yes. You can express the same idea with a simple clause plus se:

Puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia, ja se ahdistaa minua.
– The phone constantly shows new notifications, and that makes me anxious.

Differences:

The mikä-clause is a bit more compact and clearly ties the anxiety to the whole previous situation.
The ja se version is more literal and a bit more beginner-friendly.

Both are perfectly natural.

How would people say this in everyday spoken Finnish?

Spoken Finnish often simplifies pronouns and verb endings. A very natural colloquial version:

Mun puhelin näyttää koko ajan uusia ilmoituksia, ja se ahdistaa mua.

Changes:

Minun → mun (spoken my)
minua → mua (spoken object form of minä)
jatkuvasti → koko ajan (very common in speech, though jatkuvasti is also fine)
Structure is otherwise the same.

So you might hear:

Mun puhelin näyttää jatkuvasti uusia ilmoituksia, mikä ahdistaa mua.
Mun puhelin näyttää koko ajan uusia ilmoituksia, ja se ahdistaa mua.

Both are very natural in casual conversation.

What is the form ilmoituksia, and how is it built from ilmoitus?

Ilmoituksia is the partitive plural of ilmoitus (notification, announcement).

Declension:

singular nominative: ilmoitus – one notification
plural nominative: ilmoitukset – notifications (as a definite set)
singular partitive: ilmoitusta
plural partitive: ilmoituksia

Formation:

stem: ilmoitus → remove -s to get ilmoitu-
plural marker: -i-
partitive ending: -a
→ ilmoituksia

So uusia ilmoituksia = some new notifications in partitive plural, matching the ongoing, indefinite stream that the phone is showing.