Learn Hardcore Finnish: Kurssilla puhuttiin siitä, miten arkea voitaisiin pitää tasapainossa levon ja työn välillä. - On the course we talked about how everyday life could be kept in balance between rest and work.

Literally, it means “there was talking” or “people talked”.
In context, Kurssilla puhuttiin is most naturally understood as “On the course, we talked” or “On the course, they talked”, depending on the situation.

Finnish often uses this impersonal passive when:

the speaker doesn’t want to specify who did the action, or
the group is obvious (e.g. everyone who was on the course, including the speaker).

So it does not exclude the speaker; it often implicitly includes “we”.

Why is it Kurssilla and not something like kurssissa? What exactly does the -lla case express here?

Kurssilla is the adessive case (ending -lla/-llä). Here it means something like:

“on the course”,
“at the course”, or more loosely
“during the course”.

In this kind of time/place expression, adessive often means “at / during an event”:

kurssilla – at/on a course
kokouksessa vs. kokouksessa/‑ssa “in the meeting” – but juhlissa / juhlilla for certain event types

With kurssi, saying kurssilla is the normal idiomatic way to express that something happened in the context of the course (not physically “inside” it).
Kurssissa (inessive -ssa/-ssä) would sound odd here.

Why is it siitä after puhuttiin? Why not just se or sen?

The verb puhua normally takes the elative case (ending -sta/-stä) for its topic:

puhua jostakin = to talk about something

Here siitä is the elative form of se (“that”):

se (basic form)
siitä (elative) = “about that / from that”

So puhuttiin siitä means “(they) talked about that”.

The “that” is then explained by the following clause:

siitä, miten arkea voitaisiin pitää tasapainossa…
→ “about how everyday life could be kept in balance…”

So siitä is required by the verb puhua and functions as “about that (namely, how…)”.

What is the role of the comma before miten: …siitä, miten arkea…? Is it necessary?

Yes, the comma is standard Finnish punctuation.

Structure:

puhuttiin siitä = “(they) talked about that”
miten arkea voitaisiin pitää… = a subordinate clause (“how everyday life could be kept…”)

When a noun or pronoun (siitä) is followed by a subordinate clause that explains or defines it (introduced here by miten = “how”), Finnish normally puts a comma before the clause:

siitä, miten…
siitä, että…

So the comma marks the start of the explanatory clause (“how…”).

Why is it miten and not että in siitä, miten arkea voitaisiin pitää…?

miten means “how”,
että means “that”.

The sentence is about the manner or way in which something can be done:

miten arkea voitaisiin pitää tasapainossa… = “how everyday life could be kept in balance…”

If you used että, you would get something like “that everyday life could be kept in balance”, which states a fact or proposition, but does not focus on the way or method. That would change the meaning:

puhuttiin siitä, että arkea voitaisiin pitää tasapainossa…
→ “they talked about the fact that everyday life could be kept in balance…” (different nuance).

So miten is correct because the topic is how to keep life in balance, not just that it could be.

Why is arkea in the partitive case instead of arki (nominative) in miten arkea voitaisiin pitää…?

Arkea is the partitive form of arki (“everyday life”).

Reasons here:

Object type: with verbs like pitää (jotakin) jossakin tilassa (“keep something in some state”), the object is often in the partitive when we talk about it in a general, unbounded, or ongoing way.
Abstract, non-countable feel: arki is an abstract, almost “mass-like” concept. Using the partitive arkea suggests “everyday life in general”, not one specific, clearly delimited “unit” of life that you completely control or finish doing something to.

You might also see sentences like On tärkeää pitää arki tasapainossa, where arki is nominative as a total object; in real usage both occur, but arkea here nicely fits the idea of indefinite, ongoing everyday life being kept in balance.

What exactly does voitaisiin mean, and how is it formed?

Voitaisiin is:

the verb voida (“can, to be able to”),
in the conditional tense (adding -isi-),
in the impersonal passive form.

Compare forms of voida:

voidaan – “it is possible / one can” (present passive)
voitiin – “it was possible / one could” (past passive)
voitaisiin – “it could be possible / one could” (conditional passive)

In English, voitaisiin here corresponds to “could” in “could be kept” or “could (people/we) keep”.
It expresses a hypothetical or suggested possibility: how everyday life could be kept in balance, not how it actually is.

Why is only voida in the passive (voitaisiin), while pitää stays in the infinitive (pitää)? Who is doing the “keeping”?

The structure is:

voitaisiin = impersonal “could (one/we)”
pitää = infinitive “keep”

Together: voitaisiin pitää ≈ “one could keep / we could keep / it could be kept”.

In Finnish, only the auxiliary verb voida is inflected (here: passive + conditional). The main verb (pitää) stays in the basic infinitive form.

The doer is left unspecified by the impersonal passive; typically it means:

people in general,
or “we” in the context of the course (how we could keep our lives in balance).

So semantically, it’s like English “we could keep” / “one could keep”, but grammatically it’s an impersonal construction.

Why is it tasapainossa (inessive case) and not something like tasapainoon?

tasapaino = “balance”
tasapainossa (inessive -ssa/-ssä) = “in balance”
tasapainoon (illative -Vn) = “into balance” (movement toward that state)

Here the idea is to keep something in a certain state, not to move it into that state. So:

pitää arkea tasapainossa = “to keep everyday life in balance” (maintain an ongoing state)
saada arki tasapainoon = “to get everyday life into balance” (achieve that state from an unbalanced one)

Thus tasapainossa is correct because the sentence talks about maintaining the balance.

How does levon ja työn välillä work grammatically? Why are levon and työn in the genitive?

The key element is välillä, which is originally a noun (väli = “gap, interval, space between”) used as a postposition.

As a postposition, välillä normally takes its complement(s) in the genitive:

X:n ja Y:n välillä = “between X and Y”

So:

lepo → levon (genitive)
työ → työn (genitive)
levon ja työn välillä = “between rest and work”

The structure is:

tasapainossa levon ja työn välillä = “in balance between rest and work”.

Can the word order inside the clause be changed? For example, could you say miten voitaisiin pitää arkea tasapainossa instead of miten arkea voitaisiin pitää tasapainossa?

Yes, Finnish word order is relatively flexible. Both are grammatical:

miten arkea voitaisiin pitää tasapainossa
miten voitaisiin pitää arkea tasapainossa

The difference is mostly one of emphasis and rhythm, not meaning:

Putting arkea earlier can slightly highlight “everyday life” as the topic.
Putting voitaisiin earlier can sound a bit more neutral or focus more on the possibility (“could”).

In normal speech or writing, both versions would be understood the same way: “how everyday life could be kept in balance…”.

Could this sentence be translated as “On the course, we talked about how to keep everyday life in balance between rest and work”? Does that match the nuance of the Finnish?

Yes, that’s a very natural translation.

Kurssilla puhuttiin → “On the course, we talked” / “On the course, they talked”
siitä, miten… → “about how…”
arkea voitaisiin pitää tasapainossa levon ja työn välillä → “everyday life could be kept in balance between rest and work”

In English, it’s smoother to say “how to keep everyday life in balance…” instead of a literal “how everyday life could be kept in balance”. That slightly hides the conditional “could,” but the idea (discussing methods to maintain balance) is the same and matches the Finnish meaning well.