Breakdown of Automaatti on rikki, joten pyydän apua.
Questions & Answers about Automaatti on rikki, joten pyydän apua.
Automaatti literally means machine / automaton, but in everyday Finnish it very often refers to a specific kind of machine depending on context, especially:
- ATM (cash machine)
- vending machine
- ticket machine
- slot machine / gaming machine (in Finland, also very common)
If you want to be more specific, you can say e.g. pankkiautomaatti (ATM) or lippuautomaatti (ticket machine).
Finnish neutral word order is typically subject + verb + complement:
- Automaatti (subject) + on (is) + rikki (broken)
You can move words for emphasis (Finnish is flexible), but Automaatti on rikki is the default, most natural “plain statement.”
Rikki is a bit special: it behaves like a predicate expression meaning broken / out of order, but it isn’t inflected like normal adjectives (rikki, rikkiä, rikin… doesn’t happen in the same way).
It’s common in set phrases:
- olla rikki = to be broken / out of order
- mennä rikki = to break (become broken)
- saada rikki = to break something (manage to break)
On is the 3rd-person singular present tense of olla (to be).
So Automaatti on rikki means “The machine is broken” (present state).
Finnish often uses the present tense for current situations, just like English.
Because joten (so / therefore) introduces a new clause. In Finnish, it’s standard to put a comma before clause-linking words like joten, similar to “..., so ...” in English:
- Automaatti on rikki, joten pyydän apua.
This is normal written punctuation and also common in careful writing.
Joten means so / therefore / thus, linking cause → result:
- “The machine is broken, so I ask for help.”
Common alternatives include:
- siksi = therefore / for that reason (often with että or different structures)
- niin = so (more conversational, can be looser)
- tämän takia = because of this
But joten is a straightforward, neutral connector.
Pyydän is the 1st-person singular present tense of pyytää (to ask / request):
- (minä) pyydän = I ask / I request
Finnish often omits subject pronouns because the verb ending already shows the person. So pyydän already implies I.
Because apua is in the partitive case (apu → apua). With pyytää (to ask for), the thing requested is very commonly in the partitive:
- pyytää apua = to ask for help
- pyytää neuvoa = to ask for advice
- pyytää rahaa = to ask for money
Conceptually, it’s often treated as an unbounded/indefinite amount (help in general, not “the complete help”).
The given sentence already reads naturally as “I ask for help / I’m asking for help” depending on context (Finnish present tense covers both).
To clearly mark the future, Finnish often uses the present with a time word, or a verb like aikoa (to intend):
- pyydän kohta apua = I’ll ask for help soon
- aion pyytää apua = I’m going to ask for help
To specify who you ask, you typically use -lta/-ltä (ablative, “from”):
- Pyydän apua työntekijältä. = I ask an employee for help.
- Pyydän apua sinulta. = I ask you for help.
You can also add joltakulta (“from someone”):
- Pyydän apua joltakulta. = I ask someone for help.
It’s fairly neutral and works in both spoken and written Finnish.
More casual spoken options might be:
- Automaatti on rikki, niin mä pyydän apua. (adds mä = I, very spoken)
- Automaatti on rikki, joten pyydän vähän apua. (softens with vähän = a bit)
The original is perfectly fine and not overly formal.
A few key points for English speakers:
- pyydän: the y is like the French u in lune or German ü (lips rounded, tongue forward).
- pyy- has a long vowel (yy), held longer: pyy-dän.
- apua: a-pu-a (three syllables), and ua is two vowels in a row, smoothly connected.
Approximate syllable breakdown:
- au-to-maa-tti | on | rik-ki | jo-ten | pyy-dän | a-pu-a