Question Words: 'mikä' and 'mitä' — Finnish Grammar

is the question word for "what" and "which", and like a noun it takes case endings for the job it does in the sentence. Two of its forms come up constantly, and , and they are one word.

mikä: Which Thing It Is

The plain form asks the identity of something — what it is, what it is called, which one is meant. It stands as the subject.

Mikä tuo on?
What is that?
Mikä sinun nimesi on?
What is your name?
Mikä päivä tänään on?
What day is it today?

mitä: What the Verb Acts On

is the same word with the ending that marks an open, unbounded quantity, and it appears where the question word is the thing the verb acts on — which, since you rarely ask about a completed whole, is most of the time.

Mitä sinä teet?
What are you doing?
Mitä kuuntelet?
What are you listening to?
Mitä suosittelet?
What do you recommend?

The greeting carries the same form, and so does , "what happened".

The Other Endings

The other cases follow the pattern: asks "of what", "from what", "into what", "what like".

Minkä väriset kengät haluatte?
What colour shoes would you like?

In the course

Sentences from Lingora’s Finnish course

31 of the course's 500 sentences use this, the first in lesson 1. A few of them, with the words “Question Words: 'mikä' and 'mitä'” is about in bold:

Miltä sinusta tuntuu? Hyvältä vai huonolta?
How are you feeling? Good or bad?
Lesson 61

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