Talking About Prices

In Finnish, expressing how much something costs involves a few key grammatical steps:

1. The Verb Maksaa: This verb means both 'to cost' and 'to pay'. In formal Finnish, the verb agrees with the subject if it is a definite plural: Nämä kengät maksavat... (These shoes cost...). An ordinary indefinite numeral subject normally has singular agreement: Kaksi omenaa maksaa... (Two apples cost...). In spoken Finnish, the singular maksaa is almost always used for everything. When you pay FOR an item, the item takes the elative case (-sta/-stä). For example: Minä maksan kahvista kaksi euroa. (I pay two euros for the coffee.)

2. Currency and Cases: The price itself takes a specific case depending on the number:
• 1 euro: Use the genitive-accusative alone (euron), the full genitive phrase (yhden euron), or the nominative in informal contexts (yksi euro).
• 2+ euros: kaksi euroa (The number + partitive singular rule). Note that no matter how high the number goes, the currency word remains in the partitive singular (e.g., sata euroa, tuhat euroa).
• 1 cent: sentin, yhden sentin, or yksi sentti.
• 5 cents: viisi senttiä.

3. Combining Euros and Cents: You can state the euros followed by the cents without a conjunction (kaksi euroa viisikymmentä senttiä), but using the conjunction ja (and) is also perfectly correct and natural (kaksi euroa ja viisikymmentä senttiä). In fast, everyday speech, Finns often drop the 'ja' and the currency words entirely when the context is obvious (e.g., kaksi viisikymmentä for 2,50 €).

4. Price per Unit: To say 'per kilo' or 'per piece', the standard and formal way is to use the ablative case (-lta/-ltä) for the unit: kolme euroa kilolta (three euros per kilo) or kaksi euroa kappaleelta (two euros a piece). In everyday speech, you might also hear the nominative form of the unit, but the price must still be inflected: euron kilo (a euro per kilo) or kaksi euroa kappale (two euros a piece).

5. Asking the Price: You can ask Kuinka paljon se maksaa? (How much does it cost?), Paljonko se maksaa? (How much does it cost?) or Mitä se maksaa? (What does it cost?).

6. Vowel Harmony: Remember to apply vowel harmony to the currency endings. Since euro has back vowels, it becomes euroa. Since sentti contains only the neutral vowels e and i, which normally take front-vowel endings in Finnish words, it becomes senttiä.

7. Negative Prices: When expressing that something does not cost a certain amount, the price acts as an object of measure. Negating the verb maksaa forces the entire price phrase into the partitive case (e.g., Se ei maksa euroa, Se ei maksa viittä euroa).

Price Questions and Written Prices
For plural items in standard Finnish, ask Paljonko nämä maksavat? or Kuinka paljon kengät maksavat?. The noun hinta also works: Mikä tämän hinta on?, Hinta on viisi euroa, Hinta on yksi euro. The nominative yksi euro here is standard because it belongs to an olla sentence, not the maksaa price-measure pattern.

Finnish writes a decimal comma: 2,50 €, with a space before the currency symbol. This differs from decimal-point spelling such as 2.50. Spoken kaksi viisikymmentä depends on the price context.