Learn Hardcore Finnish: Minusta tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen. - In my opinion this café is tidy and peaceful.

Minusta tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen.
= “From me, this café is tidy and peaceful.” → Natural English: “I think this café is tidy and peaceful.”

So instead of using a verb like “to think” with a subject “I”, Finnish can put the “experiencer” in a case form (here, minusta) and then state what something is. It’s a very common pattern:

Minusta se on hyvä. – “I think it’s good.”
Minusta tämä on tylsää. – “I find this boring.”

Why is it minusta and not minä or minun?

Minusta is the elative case of minä. The elative usually means “out of / from (inside) something”, but with people it often marks whose opinion, feeling, or perspective something is.

Contrast:

minä – nominative (dictionary form)
minun – genitive (often used for possession: “my”)
minusta – elative (“from me”, used here for opinion)

For opinions, Finnish typically uses either:

minusta (elative)
or minun mielestäni (“in my opinion”, literally “according to my mind”)

You would not say:

✗ Minä tämä kahvila on siisti.
✗ Minun tämä kahvila on siisti.

Those are ungrammatical. For “I think…”, you need the specific opinion structures, like minusta or minun mielestäni.

Is minusta the subject of the sentence?

No. The subject is tämä kahvila (“this café”).

Breakdown:

Minusta – “from me” → adverbial expressing whose opinion it is
tämä kahvila – “this café” → subject
on – “is” → verb
siisti ja rauhallinen – “tidy and peaceful” → predicative adjectives describing tämä kahvila

So the core statement is:

Tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen. – “This café is tidy and peaceful.”

Adding minusta just says that this is my opinion.

Can I say Tämä kahvila on minusta siisti ja rauhallinen instead? Does word order matter?

Yes, that is also correct:

Minusta tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen.
Tämä kahvila on minusta siisti ja rauhallinen.

Both mean essentially “I think this café is tidy and peaceful.”

Word order in Finnish is quite flexible and is mostly used to show emphasis and information structure:

Minusta tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen.
– Slight emphasis on “as for me / in my opinion”.
Tämä kahvila on minusta siisti ja rauhallinen.
– Slightly more neutral; the topic “this café” comes first, then you add “as I see it”.

In everyday speech, both orders are natural. Context and intonation carry most of the nuance.

How does minusta compare to minun mielestäni? Can I say Minun mielestäni tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen?

Yes, you can:

Minusta tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen.
Minun mielestäni tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen.

Both mean “In my opinion, this café is tidy and peaceful” / “I think this café is tidy and peaceful.”

Differences:

minusta
- Short, very common in speech and writing.
- Slightly more colloquial and compact.
minun mielestäni
- Literally: “in my mind’s opinion”.
- A bit more explicit and can sound slightly more formal or careful, but also very normal in everyday use.

You can use them interchangeably in most contexts.

Could I leave out minusta and just say Tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen?

Yes. That sentence is perfectly correct:

Tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen. – “This café is tidy and peaceful.”

Without minusta, it sounds a bit more like a plain statement of fact. In real life, it will still usually be understood as your opinion, because you’re the one saying it. Adding minusta just makes it explicit that you’re presenting it as your personal view.

Why are siisti and rauhallinen in that form? Why not siistiä or rauhallista?

Siisti and rauhallinen are in the nominative singular form, agreeing with the subject tämä kahvila (also nominative singular).

In Finnish, when you say “X is Y” and you’re making a complete, normal classification, the adjective is usually in nominative:

Tämä kahvila on siisti. – “This café is tidy.”
Kahvila on rauhallinen. – “The café is peaceful.”

You would normally use the partitive forms (siistiä, rauhallista) when the state is:

partial, incomplete, or somewhat vague
or when the sentence is about “some of it”, not the whole (or with certain verbs)

Example with partitive predicative:

Kahvila on vähän siistiä. – “The café is somewhat tidy.” (sounds a bit odd/colloquial, but illustrates the nuance: it’s not fully/clearly tidy)
On rauhallista. – “It is peaceful (here).” (impersonal, referring to the atmosphere)

In Minusta tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen, you are describing the café as a whole in a straightforward way, so nominative (siisti, rauhallinen) is used.

What exactly does siisti mean here? I’ve seen it used like “cool” as well.

Siisti has two main common meanings:

“tidy / neat / clean” – more literal, about cleanliness or order
- Huone on siisti. – “The room is tidy/clean.”
“cool / nice / awesome” – colloquial, about something being good or appealing
- Se elokuva oli tosi siisti. – “That movie was really cool.”

In Minusta tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen, both readings are possible depending on context:

Literal: the café is clean and peaceful.
Slightly colloquial: the café is nice/cool and peaceful.

Because rauhallinen is more about atmosphere, many learners will understand siisti here as “tidy / neat” or “nice” in a general positive sense.

What does rauhallinen mean exactly? Is it just “quiet”?

Rauhallinen comes from rauha (“peace”), so it means:

peaceful, calm, tranquil, and often also quiet (in the sense of not noisy)

Examples:

Rauhallinen kahvila – “a peaceful / quiet café”
Rauhallinen musiikki – “calm / relaxing music”
Hän on rauhallinen ihminen. – “He/She is a calm person.”

It’s slightly broader than just “quiet”; it includes the idea of calm, not hectic.

Why isn’t there any word for “the” or “a” before kahvila or the adjectives? How do I know if it’s “this café” or “this a café”?

Finnish has no articles (“a/an” or “the”). The word tämä already makes the noun specific:

tämä kahvila – “this café”

So:

Tämä kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen.
could be translated as:
- “This café is tidy and peaceful.”
- “This café is nice and quiet.”

Whether English uses “the” or nothing (“this café”) is just a matter of English grammar; Finnish simply uses tämä kahvila with no article.

The adjectives (siisti, rauhallinen) also don’t take articles. They just agree in form with kahvila (singular, nominative).

Can I leave out tämä and just say Minusta kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen?

Yes, grammatically that’s fine:

Minusta kahvila on siisti ja rauhallinen.

This would usually be understood as:

“I think the café is tidy and peaceful.”

Now kahvila is more general or contextual. It could mean:

some specific café you’ve been talking about (“the café we’re in / the café we mentioned”), or
cafés in general, depending on context.

Adding tämä (“this”) points clearly to the particular café you are in or directly referring to. Without tämä, you rely more on context to know which café is meant.