Learn Hardcore Finnish: Me kävelemme kohti metsää.

It’s optional in neutral sentences.
You add it for emphasis or clarity, especially:
- when contrasting: Me kävelemme, mutta he ajavat. – We walk, but they drive.
- when the subject might otherwise be unclear from context
- in spoken language, people often include personal pronouns more than in very formal writing.

So:

Kävelemme kohti metsää. – perfectly correct and natural.
Me kävelemme kohti metsää. – we is more explicitly emphasized.

How is the verb kävelemme formed? What is the infinitive form?

The infinitive (dictionary) form is kävellä – to walk.

Formation of kävelemme (we walk):

Infinitive: kävellä
Stem for present tense: kävele-
(Type 3 verb: ends in -lla/-llä, -nna/-nnä, -rra/-rrä, -sta/-stä; you typically remove -la/-lä etc. and add endings.)
Add personal ending for we: -mme

So:

kävellä → kävele-
- -mme → kävelemme

This is present tense, 1st person plural.

Why isn’t there a separate word for “are”, like in English “We are walking”?

Finnish doesn’t have a separate auxiliary verb for the present progressive (am/are/is … -ing). The present tense alone covers:

English simple present: We walk towards the forest.
English present progressive: We are walking towards the forest.

So:

Me kävelemme kohti metsää. can mean either:
- We walk towards the forest (in general / regularly).
- We are walking towards the forest (right now).

Context tells you which one is meant.

There is a verb olla (to be), but it’s not used to build a standard continuous tense like in English.

Can I leave out me and just say Kävelemme kohti metsää?

Yes, and that’s very natural Finnish.

Kävelemme kohti metsää. – Completely correct, neutral sentence.
Me kävelemme kohti metsää. – Same meaning, but we is more explicit or emphasized.

In everyday Finnish, leaving out the pronoun when it’s clear from the verb ending is extremely common.

What does kohti mean exactly, and is it a preposition or postposition?

Kohti means towards (in the sense of direction, not “towards” as in “in relation to”).

kävellä kohti metsää – to walk towards the forest

Grammatically, kohti is usually described as a postposition-like adposition that:

Comes before the noun phrase, like an English preposition:
- kohti metsää
Requires the noun to be in the partitive case.

So you can think of it as a special word meaning towards that:

goes before the noun
forces that noun into the partitive.

What case is metsää, and why isn’t it just metsä?

Metsää is the partitive singular of metsä (forest).

Nominative (basic form): metsä
Partitive singular: metsää

The reason you see metsää is that kohti requires the following noun to be in the partitive. This is just how kohti works:

kohti + partitive → kohti metsää, kohti kaupunkia, etc.

So it’s not metsä (nominative) because the grammar of kohti demands partitive: metsää.

How is metsää formed from metsä?

Base (nominative) form: metsä – forest

Partitive singular ending is often -a/-ä. With words ending in -ä, you typically get a double ä in the partitive:

metsä → metsä
- ä → metsää

So:

metsä (forest)
metsää (partitive singular: “(towards) the forest”, “some forest”, “of (a) forest” depending on context)

The double ää also reflects in pronunciation: a longer ä sound.

Why use kohti metsää instead of just metsään? Don’t both mean “towards the forest”?

They are similar but not identical:

kohti metsää
- Literally “towards the forest”
- Focuses on direction, not necessarily on arriving inside the forest.
- Neutral: we are moving in the direction of the forest.
metsään
- This is the illative case of metsä → “into the forest”.
- Implies movement into the forest, entering it.

So:

Me kävelemme kohti metsää.
→ We are just heading in the direction of the forest.
Me kävelemme metsään.
→ We are going into the forest (our destination is inside it).

In many contexts the difference is subtle, but metsään is more about the end point, kohti metsää more about the direction.

Is metsää singular or plural? Could it mean “forests”?

In this sentence, metsää is singular: towards the (a) forest.

Forms:

metsä – forest (nominative singular)
metsää – forest (partitive singular)
metsiä – forests (partitive plural)

The ä vs iä contrast is important:

metsää – partitive singular
metsiä – partitive plural

So kohti metsää here clearly means “towards the forest” (one forest in the general sense).

How do I pronounce kävelemme kohti metsää? Where is the stress?

General rule: Finnish stress is always on the first syllable of a word.

Word by word:

kävelemme → KÄ-ve-lem-me
- ä like in cat but longer/clearer
- double mm means a slightly longer m sound
kohti → KOH-ti
- oh as in British cot (short)
metsää → MET-sää
- ts pronounced like in cats
- ää = a long ä, held a bit longer than a single ä

Overall rhythm (each word stressed on the first syllable):

KÄ-ve-lem-me KOH-ti MET-sää.

Finnish vowels are “pure” and mostly short vs. long contrasts (like ä vs. ää); consonant length also matters (single vs. double letters).

Does Me kävelemme kohti metsää mean “We walk” or “We are walking”? How would you say “We will walk”?

The Finnish present tense covers both English meanings:

Me kävelemme kohti metsää.
- We walk towards the forest. (habitual/generic)
- We are walking towards the forest. (right now)

Context decides which one is intended.

For future (“we will walk”), Finnish typically still uses the present tense plus context:

Huomenna me kävelemme kohti metsää.
→ Tomorrow we will walk towards the forest.

There is no separate future tense form; you signal future with time expressions (tomorrow, later, soon, etc.).

How would I say “We walk in the forest” instead of “towards the forest”?

To express being inside the forest rather than heading towards it, you change the adposition/case:

Me kävelemme metsässä.
- metsässä = in the forest (inessive case: “in, inside”)
- Meaning: We walk in the forest / We are walking in the forest.

Compare:

Me kävelemme kohti metsää. – We walk towards the forest (direction).
Me kävelemme metsässä. – We walk in the forest (location).

Different cases/adpositions give different spatial meanings:

metsään – into the forest (illative)
metsästä – out of the forest (elative)
metsän läpi – through the forest
metsän ohi – past the forest

Can I change the word order, like Kohti metsää me kävelemme? Does it change the meaning?

Finnish word order is flexible. All of these are grammatically possible:

Me kävelemme kohti metsää.
Kävelemme kohti metsää.
Kohti metsää kävelemme.
Kohti metsää me kävelemme.

The basic, most neutral version is:

(Me) kävelemme kohti metsää.

Moving kohti metsää to the front puts more emphasis on the direction/destination:

Kohti metsää kävelemme.
→ “It is towards the forest that we walk” (poetic, contrastive, or stylistically marked).

So the propositional meaning (what is happening) stays the same, but information structure and emphasis can change.

What’s the difference in tone between Me kävelemme kohti metsää and Kävelemme kohti metsää?

Purely in terms of grammar, both mean the same: We walk / We are walking towards the forest.

Tone and nuance:

Kävelemme kohti metsää.
- Neutral, efficient.
- Very typical in written Finnish and in straightforward narration.
Me kävelemme kohti metsää.
- Slightly more emphasis on me = we.
- Useful if you’re:
  - contrasting with others: Me kävelemme, he ajavat. – We walk, they drive.
  - introducing a new subject explicitly.
- In casual spoken Finnish, it’s common to include me just because it feels natural to many speakers.

So the second version can sound a little more “personal” or contrastive depending on context.

How do I make the sentence negative: “We are not walking towards the forest”?

Negation in Finnish uses a special negative verb ei, which then carries the personal ending, while the main verb goes to a basic form (connegative):

Me emme kävele kohti metsää.
- me – we
- emme – we do not (negative verb, 1st person plural)
- kävele – base form used with negation
- kohti metsää – towards the forest

Structure:

Subject (optional): Me
Negative verb with personal ending: emme
Main verb in connegative form: kävele
Rest of the sentence: kohti metsää

So:

Me kävelemme kohti metsää. – We (do) walk towards the forest.
Me emme kävele kohti metsää. – We do not walk / are not walking towards the forest.

You can also drop me if it’s clear:

Emme kävele kohti metsää. – (We) are not walking towards the forest.

Why is there no word for “the” in metsää? How do you know if it’s “a forest” or “the forest”?

Finnish has no articles like English a/an or the.

metsä / metsää can correspond to both “a forest” and “the forest”.
The choice between “a” and “the” in English depends on context, not on a separate Finnish word.

So:

Me kävelemme kohti metsää.
- could be translated as:
  - We are walking towards a forest.
  - We are walking towards the forest.

You decide which article to use in English based on what makes sense contextually:

If this is the first time you mention it → often “a forest”.
If it’s a specific, known forest → often “the forest”.

Finnish doesn’t mark this difference explicitly. Context and sometimes word order or other expressions give the nuance, but there is no direct equivalent of “a/the”.