Breakdown of Kirjoitan joskus lautapelien tuloksetkin harjoituspäiväkirjaan, koska se tuntuu hauskalta.
Questions & Answers about Kirjoitan joskus lautapelien tuloksetkin harjoituspäiväkirjaan, koska se tuntuu hauskalta.
In Finnish the personal pronoun (minä, I) is usually dropped, because the verb ending already shows the person.
- Kirjoitan already means I write / I am writing.
- Adding minä kirjoitan is possible, but it adds emphasis to I (as opposed to someone else).
Both Kirjoitan joskus… and Joskus kirjoitan… are grammatically correct. The difference is in emphasis:
- Kirjoitan joskus…: neutral, focusing first on the action kirjoitan.
- Joskus kirjoitan…: slightly more focus on sometimes; for contrast you might continue with something else you do at other times.
lautapelien tuloksetkin breaks down as:
- lautapelien = of board games (plural genitive of lautapeli)
- tulokset = results (nominative/accusative plural of tulos)
- -kin attached to tulokset ⇒ tuloksetkin
So literally: also/even the results of board games.
The structure is:
- owner in genitive plural (lautapelien)
- thing owned in plural (tulokset)
- clitic -kin for also / even attached to the main word (tulokset)
You are talking about:
- several different board games
- and their results
So Finnish uses the plural genitive to show possession:
- lautapeli = a board game
- lautapelit = board games (plural nominative)
- lautapelin = of a board game (singular genitive)
- lautapelien = of board games (plural genitive)
Since the results belong to multiple games, lautapelien tulokset = the results of (the) board games.
The clitic -kin most often means also / too, but in many contexts it can feel like even in English, especially when it shows something a bit unexpected.
Here:
- tulokset = the results
- tuloksetkin = also/even the results
The nuance here is something like:
- I write the usual training things in the diary, and on top of that I sometimes write the board game results as well (maybe a bit surprisingly).
Where you attach -kin changes the emphasis. For example (all grammatically possible, different focus):
- Kirjoitan joskuskin… – I also sometimes write… (contrast with at other times I don’t)
- Kirjoitan joskus lautapelien tuloksetkin… – I sometimes write even the board game results…
- Kirjoitan joskus lautapelienkin tulokset… – also the results of board games (as opposed to some other type of games)
tulokset is the total object here: the speaker writes the whole set of results.
Rough rule:
- Accusative-like form (tulokset) ⇒ complete, bounded event, whole thing affected.
- Partitive (tuloksia) ⇒ incomplete, unbounded, or only part of something.
In this sentence, the idea is:
- lautapelien tuloksetkin = (all) the results of the board games as a whole
If you said kirjoitan lautapelien tuloksia, it would sound like you only write some results, or you are describing an ongoing, incomplete process rather than clearly recording the full results each time.
harjoituspäiväkirjaan consists of:
- harjoitus = practice, training
- päiväkirja = diary
- together: harjoituspäiväkirja = training diary (a compound noun)
- harjoituspäiväkirjaan = into the training diary (illative singular)
The ending -an here is part of the illative case (meaning into something). The illative usually shows movement into a place or target:
- kirja → kirjaan = into the book
- päiväkirja → päiväkirjaan = into the diary
- harjoituspäiväkirja → harjoituspäiväkirjaan = into the training diary
So kirjoitan … harjoituspäiväkirjaan literally: I write … into the training diary.
Yes, both forms exist, but the meaning differs:
harjoituspäiväkirjaan (illative, into)
- Focus on putting something into the diary (writing, entering, recording).
- Fits well with kirjoitan (I write into).
harjoituspäiväkirjassa (inessive, in / inside)
- Focus on being in the diary (already there).
- Would be used more for something like tulokset ovat harjoituspäiväkirjassa = the results are in the training diary.
With the verb kirjoittaa, -an (harjoituspäiväkirjaan) is the natural choice.
In Finnish, a subordinate clause is usually separated by a comma from the main clause.
- Main clause: Kirjoitan joskus lautapelien tuloksetkin harjoituspäiväkirjaan
- Subordinate clause starting with koska: koska se tuntuu hauskalta
Rule: When you have a clause introduced by conjunctions like koska (because), että (that), jos (if), you normally put a comma before it:
- Teen näin, koska se tuntuu hauskalta.
- Tiedän, että se on totta.
se here refers to the whole activity just mentioned:
- Kirjoitan joskus lautapelien tuloksetkin harjoituspäiväkirjaan
⇒ that activity (writing the game results into the training diary)
So koska se tuntuu hauskalta means:
- because doing that feels fun
- literally: because it feels fun
In Finnish it is common to just use se for a previously mentioned activity, instead of repeating the activity as a noun phrase.
Both are possible in Finnish, but they are not identical in nuance.
- se on hauskaa = it is fun (a more direct statement about what it is like in general)
- se tuntuu hauskalta = it feels fun (more subjective, how it feels to the speaker)
Using tuntua emphasizes the personal experience or impression:
- koska se tuntuu hauskalta ⇒ because it feels fun (to me)
If you said koska se on hauskaa, it would sound more like a general or objective comment: because it is fun (as a characteristic).
The form hauskalta is hauska (fun) in the ablative case (-lta / -ltä).
With the verb tuntua in the sense of to feel / to seem (like something), the complement is typically in -lta/-ltä:
- Se tuntuu hauskalta. = It feels fun.
- Se tuntuu vaikealta. = It feels difficult.
- Se tuntuu oudolta. = It feels strange.
So you can remember a simple pattern:
- tuntua
- adjective in -lta / -ltä ⇒ to feel [adjective]
Both are correct:
- Kirjoitan joskus lautapelien tuloksetkin…
- Joskus kirjoitan lautapelien tuloksetkin…
The basic meaning is the same: I sometimes write …
Subtle emphasis:
- Kirjoitan joskus…: more neutral; focus starts from the act of writing.
- Joskus kirjoitan…: foregrounds the sometimes part; sounds a bit more contrastive (for example: Sometimes I write them down, sometimes I don’t).
Finnish word order is fairly flexible for adverbs like joskus, and these kinds of shifts mostly affect emphasis and rhythm, not grammar.
Yes. Finnish present tense is used both for:
- Actions happening right now, and
- Habitual or repeated actions (like English I sometimes write…).
In this sentence, joskus (sometimes) makes it clear that this is a repeated habit, not a single event:
- Kirjoitan joskus… = I sometimes write… / I occasionally write…
Finnish does not have a separate tense like English I am writing; context and adverbs such as nyt (now) or joskus (sometimes) normally show whether it’s current, habitual, or general.