Breakdown of Minä pidän lukemisesta enemmän kuin television katsomisesta.
Questions & Answers about Minä pidän lukemisesta enemmän kuin television katsomisesta.
The verb pitää in the meaning “to like” always takes its object in the elative case (the “from” case), which ends in -sta / -stä.
- pitää + elative = to like something
- Pidän kahvista. – I like coffee.
- Pidän sinusta. – I like you.
- Pidän lukemisesta. – I like reading.
So:
- lukeminen = reading (basic “dictionary” noun form, nominative)
- lukemisesta = from reading (elative) → used after pidän
The same with television katsominen:
- television katsominen = the watching of television
- television katsomisesta = from (the) watching (of television)
You use the elative because that’s the fixed pattern with pitää in the “like” sense: pitää jostakin (to like something).
Both are verbal nouns made with the suffix -minen:
Verb: lukea (to read)
- Verbal noun: lukeminen (reading)
- Elative: lukemisesta (from reading)
Verb: katsoa (to watch)
- Verbal noun: katsominen (watching)
- Elative: katsomisesta (from watching)
Formation pattern (simplified):
- Take the verb stem:
- luke- from lukea
- katso- from katsoa
- Add -minen → lukeminen, katsominen
- Decline this noun like any other noun:
- elative -sta/-stä → lukeminen → lukemisesta, katsominen → katsomisesta
So in the sentence you literally have:
“I like from reading more than from watching of television.”
which corresponds to natural English: “I like reading more than (I like) watching television.”
In Finnish, when you turn a verb into a -minen noun, its object is usually put in the genitive case in front of it:
- Verb phrase: katsoa televisiota – to watch TV (TV in partitive)
- Noun phrase: television katsominen – watching television (TV in genitive)
So:
- television = genitive of televisio
- katsominen = watching
- Together: television katsominen = the watching of television
- In elative: television katsomisesta = from the watching of television
katsomisesta televisiota would not be a natural way to build this noun phrase.
With -minen, you normally put the object as genitive before the -minen word: kirjan lukeminen, ruoan laittaminen, koiran ulkoiluttaminen, etc.
No, not with pitää in the “like” meaning.
pitää (to like) does not take an infinitive; it takes a -sta/-stä object:
- ✅ Pidän lukemisesta. – I like reading.
- ❌ Pidän lukea.
If you want to use verb infinitives (lukea, katsoa), you should switch to the verb tykätä:
- ✅ Minä tykkään lukea enemmän kuin katsoa televisiota.
– I like reading more than watching TV.
So:
- pitää + -sta → Pidän lukemisesta.
- tykätä + infinitive → Tykkään lukea.
Yes, and that’s actually more natural in everyday Finnish.
The verb ending -n in pidän already shows the subject is I:
- pidän = I like
- pidät = you like
- pitää = he/she likes
So both are correct:
- Minä pidän lukemisesta… (a bit more explicit, sometimes used for emphasis)
- Pidän lukemisesta… (very normal and natural)
In neutral statements, Finnish usually omits subject pronouns unless you want to stress them.
Yes, that word order is also correct and quite natural:
- Pidän enemmän lukemisesta kuin television katsomisesta.
Word order in Finnish is fairly flexible for adverbs like enemmän (“more”):
- Pidän lukemisesta enemmän kuin television katsomisesta.
- Pidän enemmän lukemisesta kuin television katsomisesta.
Both mean the same.
Putting enemmän before lukemisesta can make the “more” slightly more prominent, but the difference is small in this sentence.
enemmän kuin literally means “more than” and is used for quantities/degree:
- Pidän lukemisesta enemmän kuin television katsomisesta.
I like reading more than (I like) watching TV. - Syön enemmän kuin sinä.
I eat more than you.
For adjectives, you usually use their comparative forms, often with kuin as well:
- vanha → vanhempi – old → older
- Hän on vanhempi kuin minä. – He is older than me.
- hyvä → parempi – good → better
- Tämä kirja on parempi kuin tuo. – This book is better than that.
So:
- enemmän kuin is the comparative of paljon (much/many): more than (in amount/degree)
- Adjectives use their own comparative forms + kuin.
They are different words with different uses:
kuin = than / as (used in comparisons)
- enemmän kuin – more than
- parempi kuin – better than
- Niin hyvä kuin mahdollista. – As good as possible.
kun = mainly when (time conjunction) or because in some contexts
- Kun tulin kotiin, söin. – When I came home, I ate.
- Olen iloinen, kun olet täällä. – I’m happy because you are here / when you are here.
In your sentence it must be kuin because it is part of the comparison enemmän kuin (“more than”), never kun.
You’re right that the partitive (-a / -ä, like kahvia, sinua) is very common in Finnish, but with pitää in the “like” sense, the pattern is special:
- pitää + elative (-sta/-stä) → to like something
- Pidän kahvista.
- Pidän sinusta.
- Pidän lukemisesta.
So the case is not partitive, but elative.
lukemista would be the partitive of lukeminen, but pitää doesn’t use that form for “like”; it uses -sta/-stä.
You do get partitive objects with other verbs (e.g. juon kahvia, haluan kahvia), but pitää for “like” is a fixed pattern: pitää jostakin.
television is the genitive singular of televisio.
- televisio (nominative) – a TV
- television (genitive) – of the TV
In the phrase television katsominen:
- television = the object in genitive
- katsominen = watching
This is the standard pattern when you have a -minen verbal noun with an object:
- kirjaa lukea (to read a book) → kirjan lukeminen (reading a book)
- kahvia juoda (to drink coffee) → kahvin juominen (drinking coffee)
- televisiota katsoa (to watch TV) → television katsominen (watching TV)
Then the whole phrase television katsominen is put into the elative:
television katsomisesta (from watching television) because of pidän … -sta.
Yes. The original sentence is correct and clear, but everyday speech often prefers infinitives with tykätä:
- Tykkään lukea enemmän kuin katsoa televisiota.
I like reading more than watching TV.
You can also shorten or vary a bit with pitää:
- Pidän enemmän lukemisesta kuin television katselusta.
(katselu = watching, also a noun) - Pidän enemmän lukemisesta kuin tv:n katsomisesta.
(using tv in writing is very common)
All of these express essentially the same idea as:
Minä pidän lukemisesta enemmän kuin television katsomisesta.