Breakdown of Suljen ikkunan, ettei melu häiritse minua yöllä.
Questions & Answers about Suljen ikkunan, ettei melu häiritse minua yöllä.
Ikkunan is the total object form (often called the accusative in Finnish learning materials). With sulkea (to close) you’re closing the window completely, so Finnish typically uses the total object:
- Suljen ikkunan. = I close the window (all the way).
If you were talking about an incomplete/ongoing action or an indefinite amount, you’d often see the partitive instead:
- Suljen ikkunaa. = I’m closing the window / I close the window (not necessarily fully; context-dependent).
Yes. Finnish present tense commonly covers what English expresses with both present and near future:
- Suljen ikkunan. can mean I close the window or I’ll close the window (often “I’m going to close…” in context).
If you want to be explicit about future intention, you might add a time word or context, but the verb form often stays the same.
Ettei introduces a clause meaning so that … not / in order that … not (a negative purpose/result idea). It’s basically että + negation built in.
So:
- …, ettei melu häiritse … = …, so that the noise doesn’t disturb …
You could also express it more “piece by piece” with jotta + ei:
- Suljen ikkunan, jotta melu ei häiritse minua yöllä.
Both are common; ettei is a compact, very natural choice.
Because the clause is negative. In Finnish, when you negate a verb, the verb doesn’t carry the normal person ending; instead, the negative verb (ei / et / en / emme / ette / eivät) carries the person, and the main verb is in the connegative form.
Here, the negation is already inside ettei (= että ei), so you get:
- (että) ei häiritse → ettei häiritse
That’s why it’s häiritse (connegative), not häiritsee.
Melu is the subject of the subordinate clause: it’s the thing doing the “disturbing.” In Finnish, the subject of an ordinary active clause is typically nominative:
- melu häiritsee = the noise disturbs
So in the negative clause it stays nominative:
- ettei melu häiritse …
Because häiritä (to disturb/bother) typically takes its object in the partitive: it describes an effect on someone/something without implying a completed, bounded result.
So:
- häiritsee minua = disturbs me (partitive is the normal choice)
Using minut (total object) would sound unusual here and would suggest a more “completed/result” reading that doesn’t fit well with disturb in this kind of sentence.
Yöllä is adessive case (-lla/-llä), and with time expressions it often means at (a time):
- yöllä = at night / during the night
Other examples:
- aamulla = in the morning
- iltapäivällä = in the afternoon
Yes in standard writing: you normally put a comma before a subordinate clause introduced by words like että/ettei/jotta.
- Suljen ikkunan, ettei …
In casual texting, commas may be omitted, but in correct written Finnish it’s expected.
You can change word order, but it changes structure and/or emphasis.
- ettei melu häiritse minua is neutral: so that the noise doesn’t disturb me.
- ettei melu häiritse minua yöllä (original) keeps yöllä as a time adverb at the end, also very neutral.
You can front minua for emphasis:
- …, ettei minua melu häiritse yöllä. = emphasizes me (sounds a bit marked/stylistic)
But etten häiritse melua would mean so that I don’t disturb the noise, which is a different meaning.
suljen comes from sulkea = to close
- sulje-n = 1st person singular present (I close)
häiritse comes from häiritä = to disturb / to bother
- häiritse is the connegative form used after negation (here, negation is included in ettei)
Recognizing the dictionary form often involves learning common patterns (like -en endings in 1st person present and how -tä/-tä verbs behave under negation).