Helppo nachot airfryerissa tortillaletuista
A2 Finnish listening practice · Finnish · Curated for beginners
Why do Finnish recipes say “tehdään” instead of “do”?
Finnish home recipes and cooking videos lean on a special verb form known as the impersonal passive: tehdään (“one does / let’s do”), tarvitaan (“one needs”), leikataan (“one cuts”), heitetään (“one throws”). It avoids the direct command style of English (“chop the onion”) in favor of something gentler: “the onion gets chopped.” The form is one of Finnish’s signature features and shows up in cookbooks, news headlines, and group plans.
In this clip, a Finnish home cook walks through making air-fryer nachos from old tortillas. “Tehdään natcoja” (“let’s make nachos”), “leikataan ne neljään osaan” (“cut them into four pieces”), “heitetään kulhoon” (“throw into a bowl”). The whole recipe stays in this neutral group voice.
Vocabulary frequency
How common is the vocabulary in this A2 Finnish listening practice listening practice?
General Finnish frequency
Spoken Finnish frequency
Words above this video’s level
Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A2 level.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.
- ▸In Finnish cookbooks (Helsingin Sanomat recipe section, Sara La Fountain)
- ▸In Finnish food YouTube and TikTok (Aimo Kakko, Kerttu Saari)
- ▸In Finnish news headlines (Yle, Helsingin Sanomat)
- ▸In Finnish school instructions and shared classroom plans
- ▸In Finnish public-service announcements and IKEA-style assembly guides