Lesson 5 - Nationality

Mistä sie olet pois?

Where are you from?

Certainly this is not the only way to ask people about their origins. Here are some other expressions:

Mistä sie tulet?

Where do you come from?

Mistä sie olet lähtöisin?

Where are you from?

To answer their question, we can say:

Mie olen Ruottista pois?

I am from Sweden.

Tulen Ruottista.

I come from Sweden.

Olen lähtöisin Ruottista.

I am from Sweden.

It is important to note two things here:

1. Kven is a highly inflected language, meaning that different grammatical cases are used to indicate the relationship between a word and the rest of the sentence. These cases are expressed through suffixes, and we will learn how to attach them to different nouns. For now, we will focus on constructing sentences using different model patterns. Consider the following example:

Notice how the ending "-sta" is not added directly to "Suomi", but to Suome-. So it's not "Suomista" but "Suomesta".

2. In Kven, verbs are conjugated according to personal pronouns. In this lesson, we will learn how to conjugate three verbs.

Now let's learn our very first three verbs. All verbs are conjugated according to different personal pronouns. Usually, each conjugation is indicated by a "personal ending" attached to the verb stem. 

For now, memorize these verb conjugations: