# Finnish future



## User1001

I was doing some reading on verbal tenses, and I noticed that there is no future tense in Finnish, d.h. there isn't a conjugated verb to create it, but it can be created with a time marker. So, while sitting in physics today, I was writing some sentences in Finnish to practice cases and to work on verbs. Listed below is what I want to say and how I worded it myself. Kiitti! 



> No, I will not be in the houses on Friday.





> Ei, minä en ole perjantaina taloissa.


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## Hakro

Hi tspier2,

You are perfectly right about the future tense in Finnish, and also you sentence is impeccable.

If you want to enforce the future aspect, you can say:


> Ei, minä en tule olemaan (perjantaina) taloissa.


This kind of expression you could use for example in a situation where somebody that you don't want to meet is coming of Friday. When using this construction you can omit the time marker.

(By the way, your expression 'in the houses' is strange to me; does it mean 'at home' or 'in the office' or something else? In Finnish 'taloissa' is grammatically correct but sounds somehow peculiar.)


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## pearho

***Moderator note. Thread split from here.***



> _Hän iloitsee voitettuaan palkinnon = _"He will become joyous once he wins the prize"?


I'm not a Finn, but I would say the intuitive interpretation is "He is joyous having won the prize." I think you will have to express the future tense using some lexical means, such as _Hän tulee iloitsemaan voitettuaan palkinnon_, but that makes it a bit unclear whether he has already won the prize or not.

But let's call in the Finns to decide


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## Finland

Hello!



pearho said:


> I'm not a Finn, but I would say the intuitive interpretation is "He is joyous having won the prize." I think you will have to express the future tense using some lexical means, such as _Hän tulee iloitsemaan voitettuaan palkinnon_, but that makes it a bit unclear whether he has already won the prize or not.



To a native ear, "tulee iloitsemaan" sounds incorrect in formal language. Future in Finnish is expressed in other ways, or more often than not needn't be expressed with anything else than simply present tense and context. "Hän iloitsee voitettuaan palkinnon", can therefore mean both "He will rejoice when he will have won the prize" and "He rejoices having won the prize".

HTH
S


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## pearho

Finland said:


> To a native ear, "tulee iloitsemaan" sounds incorrect in formal language.


Interesting! I know that that construct is a bit foreign to the Finnish language, but I hadn't yet seen it being called incorrect.



> Future in Finnish is expressed in other ways, or more often than not needn't be expressed with anything else than simply present tense and context. "Hän iloitsee voitettuaan palkinnon", can therefore mean both "He will rejoice when he will have won the prize" and "He rejoices having won the prize".


So how would you do to make it mean the former? I suppose we can rule out _Hän on iloitseva..._ ;-)


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## Finland

Hello!



pearho said:


> Interesting! I know that that construct is a bit foreign to the Finnish language, but I hadn't yet seen it being called incorrect.
> 
> So how would you do to make it mean the former? I suppose we can rule out _Hän on iloitseva..._ ;-)



As I said, incorrect in *formal* language. In spoken Finnish it is more and more common. "Tulla tekemään" has a different, concrete, meaning in formal Finnish, e.g. "isä tulee iltapäivällä tekemään minulle ruokaa", i.e. father will come and cook for me. The "olla tekevä" future sounds biblical, not even literary anymore.

"Hän iloitsee voitettuaan palkinnon" does not need anything to have a future meaning, just context.

HTH
S


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## Gavril

On the topic of _tulla + -maan_, I just saw the following in a news article about the new Nokia phone:



> Laite *tulee käyttämään* Windows 8.1. RT-käyttöjärjestelmää.



Why do you think the person (a cellphone analyst) used _tulee käyttämään_ and not _käyttää_ here?

Is it it significant that the speaker is an analyst, rather than someone directly involved in making the phone?

Kiitos,
Gavril


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## Hakro

Gavril said:


> Why do you think the person (a cellphone analyst) used _tulee käyttämään_ and not _käyttää_ here?
> 
> Is it it significant that the speaker is an analyst, rather than someone directly involved in making the phone?


I'd say that this speaker, even if he's an analyst, hasn't analyzed his own sentence.


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## Gavril

Hakro said:


> I'd say that this speaker, even if he's an analyst, hasn't analyzed his own sentence.



To be fair to the writer of the sentence, it was originally written in English (as I should have mentioned) and probably translated to Finnish by someone else.

The original sentence says, "... [T]he device will be running Windows 8.1 RT". Is there a reason why "will be running" would be translated "*tulee* käyttä*mään*"?


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## Hakro

I'd guess that the device is not yet on the market. The translator has used the Finnish future to interpret the English future continuous. 

I'd have translated it in present tense because the device is already running Windows 8.1 RT although it's still in the development stage.


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## Finland

Hello!

I agree with Hakro. Actually, the most idiomatic way of conveying the future meaning would be a genuine Finnish construction such as "Laitteeseen tulee käyttöjärjestelmäksi Windows 8.1 RT". Tulla is the future of olla.

HTH
S


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