I know this is supposed to mean “Are you hot?”.

by licer71

7 comments
  1. I have no absolute certainty but “the correct form” refers to a person’s feeling at that moment. In this case you could roughly translate it as “are you feeling hot”.
    If you used “oletteko te”, that would sound like you’d be asking “are you a hot person “.

  2. In Finnish you “have” hotness or coldness. Like in English you have a headache, you have pain. Same idea, just something to memorise.

  3. Onko teillä kuuma? ― Are you hot (uncomfortably warm)
    Oletteko te kuumat? ― Are you hot (good looking etc.)

  4. It’s because english is a very silly language.

    “Are you hot?” in english has two meanings, both of which you just translated to finnish.

    “Are you hot” as in “are you _having_ a discomfortable sensation due to tempretural circumstances”, is “onko teillä”.

    “Are you hot” as in “yes, I’m smokin’ hot, 10/10, just look at my tight gluteus maximus”, that’s the other one.

    Being vs. Having, it makes a difference.

  5. lamguages just are different. the same way is Spanish it’s not ”I am XYZ years old” it’s ”I have XYZ years”

    Now ”oletko kuuma” is a legitimate question in Finnish, but it would mean ”hot” as in sexy.

  6. First is type of “are you feeling something (which is hot in here) type of question, while the other is “are you being something.”

  7. I struggled with that at first, because I have been speaking English for so long.

    Then I remembered that in my native language, French, it’s the same: j’ai chaud, “i have hot”, minulla on kuuma.

    It’s just what it is, you can’t learn Finnish (or any other languages) by looking for English equivalents. It works sometimes, but not always.

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