Learn Hardcore Finnish: Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti, kun ystävä kannustaa minua yrittämään uudestaan. - My mood improves quickly when a friend encourages me to try again.

With a possessive suffix on the noun:
- mielialani = my mood (mieliala + -ni “my”)
With a genitive pronoun before the noun:
- minun mielialani = literally my mood-my (possessive pronoun minun
  - noun + suffix -ni)

In standard written Finnish, you normally have at least the suffix. The pronoun minun can be:

Omitted, neutral style:
- Mielialani paranee nopeasti. – My mood improves quickly.
Included, a bit more emphatic or explicit:
- Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti. – My mood (in particular) improves quickly.

What you generally don’t write in standard Finnish is:

✗ Minun mieliala paranee (pronoun but no suffix)

That kind of structure (e.g. mun mieliala) is very common in spoken/colloquial Finnish, but in careful written Finnish you’d use either:

Mielialani paranee…
Minun mielialani paranee…

Both are correct; the version with minun just highlights whose mood it is a bit more.

Could we say Mieleni paranee instead of Minun mielialani paranee? What’s the difference between mieli and mieliala?

You could say Mieleni paranee, but it shifts the nuance slightly.

mieliala = mood, frame of mind at a given time
- Mielialani paranee nopeasti. – My mood improves quickly.
mieli = mind, thoughts, feeling, inclination (more general, abstract)
- Mieleni paranee is understandable, but sounds more like my mind gets better or I feel mentally better, not specifically “my mood lifts.”

In everyday Finnish, for “mood improves,” mieliala is the natural choice:

Mielialani paranee nopeasti… = my mood gets better quickly
Mieleni paranee… = my mind/mental state gets better (broader, and a bit unusual in this exact context)

What is the dictionary form of paranee, and why does it look like that?

The dictionary (infinitive) form is parantua – to get better, to heal, to improve (intransitive).

Its present tense conjugation (3rd person) is:

(minä) paranen – I get better
(sinä) paranet – you get better
(hän) paranee – he/she/it gets better
(me) paranemme
(te) paranette
(he) paranevat

So:

mielialani paranee = my mood gets better / improves

Learners often expect something like parantuu, but in this verb the stem is parane-, so 3rd person is paranee, not parantuu.

Why is it just ystävä and not ystäväni or minun ystäväni? Does ystävä here mean “a friend”, “my friend”, or “friends in general”?

Bare ystävä is:

singular, nominative
without any article (Finnish has no “a” / “the”)

In this sentence it is best read as:

“a friend” / “a (any) friend” in a general sense – when a friend encourages me, my mood improves.

You could also say:

Kun ystäväni kannustaa minua… – When my friend encourages me…
Kun ystävä kannustaa, mielialani paranee. – When a friend encourages (me), my mood improves. (object omitted but understood)

So:

ystävä = “a friend” (or “any friend”)
ystäväni / minun ystäväni = “my friend (specific)”

The original sentence talks about the effect any friend’s encouragement has on your mood, not one particular friend.

Why is it minua and not minut after kannustaa?

Minua is the partitive form of minä; minut is the total object (accusative/genitive-type).

Many verbs, especially those about feelings, influencing, helping, encouraging, etc., take their human object in the partitive:

kannustaa jotakuta – to encourage someone
auttaa jotakuta – to help someone
rakastaa jotakuta – to love someone

So the typical pattern is:

ystävä kannustaa minua – a friend encourages me (ongoing/abstract influence → partitive)

You might see kannustaa minut johonkin in some contexts, but that tends to focus on a more concrete resulting state (e.g. “encouraged me into X”), and is much less common.

For ordinary “encourage someone (to do something)”, Finnish uses:

kannustaa jotakuta tekemään jotakin
→ ystävä kannustaa minua yrittämään uudestaan

What exactly is the form yrittämään, and why not just yrittää?

Yrittämään is the 3rd infinitive in the illative case (often called the -maan/-mään form).

Verb: yrittää – to try
3rd infinitive (illative): yrittämään

This form is used after certain verbs to mean “to do something” in the sense of into the action of doing, very often after verbs of:

movement: mennä nukkumaan – go to sleep
asking, telling, forcing, helping, encouraging:
- auttaa minua oppimaan – help me (to) learn
- pyytää minua tekemään – ask me to do
- kannustaa minua yrittämään – encourage me to try

So the pattern here is:

kannustaa minua yrittämään = encourage me to try

Using plain yrittää (kannustaa minua yrittää) would be ungrammatical in standard Finnish in this construction. The verb kannustaa “selects” the -maan/-mään form.

What about uudestaan – how is it different from uudelleen or taas?

All three can often be translated as “again”, but they’re not always identical:

uudestaan – again, once more (from the beginning)
uudelleen – very close to uudestaan, often interchangeable, maybe a bit more neutral/formal
taas – again but also (once) more / yet again / on the other hand

In your sentence, all of these would be understandable:

…kannustaa minua yrittämään uudestaan.
…kannustaa minua yrittämään uudelleen.
…kannustaa minua yrittämään taas.

Nuance:

uudestaan / uudelleen focus on repeating the whole attempt.
taas is more colloquial and can also suggest “yet again (as usual)” depending on context.

Here uudestaan is a very natural choice.

Does kun here mean “when” or “because”? How is it different from koska and jos?

In this sentence, kun is temporal: it means “when”, in the sense of whenever:

…paranee nopeasti, kun ystävä kannustaa minua…
→ …improves quickly when a friend encourages me…

Basic contrasts:

kun
- time: when, whenever, as
- sometimes also used colloquially as “because”, but here it’s clearly temporal.
koska
- reason: because
- Mielialani paranee, koska ystävä kannustaa minua. – My mood improves because a friend encourages me.
jos
- condition: if
- Mielialani paranee, jos ystävä kannustaa minua. – My mood improves if a friend encourages me.

So in your sentence, kun = when / whenever, not “because” or “if”.

Why is there a comma before kun in Finnish? In English we wouldn’t always put one there.

Finnish comma rules are stricter than English in this respect.

General rule: you put a comma between the main clause and a subordinate clause, and clauses with kun, jos, että, koska, vaikka, etc. are subordinate clauses.

So:

Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti, kun ystävä kannustaa minua yrittämään uudestaan.
- main clause: Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti
- subordinate clause: kun ystävä kannustaa minua yrittämään uudestaan

Even if English might write:

“My mood improves quickly when a friend encourages me to try again.”

Finnish still requires the comma. The same applies if you reverse the order:

Kun ystävä kannustaa minua yrittämään uudestaan, mielialani paranee nopeasti. (comma stays)

Can I put the kun‑clause first, or change the word order in the main clause?

Yes, Finnish word order is fairly flexible, especially with clauses.

Swapping the order of the clauses:

Kun ystävä kannustaa minua yrittämään uudestaan, minun mielialani paranee nopeasti.
– perfectly correct; now the condition/time (“when a friend encourages me…”) is emphasised.

Moving nopeasti:

Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti. – neutral
Minun mielialani nopeasti paranee. – possible, but now nopeasti is strongly highlighted (something like “it’s quickly that my mood improves”), and the rhythm feels more poetic/emphatic.

The original order:

Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti, kun…

is the most neutral way to express this idea.

Is Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti the only correct way to start, or can I say just Mielialani paranee nopeasti?

Both are correct in standard Finnish:

Mielialani paranee nopeasti, kun… – fully natural, slightly more compact
Minun mielialani paranee nopeasti, kun… – equally correct, a bit more explicit/emphatic about “my”.

In spoken language, people often drop the suffix instead:

Mun mieliala paranee nopeasti, kun… (colloquial)

But in written standard Finnish, you usually choose one of these:

Mielialani paranee…
Minun mielialani paranee…

The version given in the sentence is fine and slightly more emphatic than the suffix-only version.