Please break down these sentences for me........

[cssc]

'nainen on harjaamassa hampaitaan'
The woman si brushing her teeth/ in the middle of brushing her teeth. she's not done yet.
So did harjaa become a verbal noun or something? So 'on harjaamassa' means 'in the brushing'? & I don't know why 'hampai' has -taan at the end.
So pls break down 'harjaamassa' & 'hampaitaan'

‘tyttö pesee kasvojaan'
How the heck do you get 'kasvojaan'? it wasn't in wiktionary in the declension.
I was told this also means she's in the middle of washing her face.

Thanks.

[ajdias]

How about hampaita and kasvoja, can you find those in wikisanakirja?

-an is a possessive suffix meaning hers (or his). Have a look at this fascinating page on possessive suffixes.

-ma is another suffix, similar to -ing in english, that is then combined with a case ending, here-ssa. You write harjaa-massa, for brush-ing. More fun

[cssc]

I thought -minen was -ing
and -nsa was his or her.
Is what was written spoken Finnish then???
Kasvoja- Yeah, OK. I'm an idiooti. But to be fair, the people who made that 'beginner' video used 'kasvot' for 'face'. Hence my confusion. And yes I am terrible at remembering the names of body parts in other languages. Aargh.

[Rekkari]

cssc wrote:

I thought ... -nsa was his or her.
Is what was written spoken Finnish then???

You are correct: -nsa/nsä is the possessive suffix for his/her (and also their). However, there is a parallel ending for the 3rd person possessive that can be used with some of the cases and is preferred in modern Finnish (so I've been told). It's just a prolongation of the final vowel + n:

pödällä + nsä = pöydällänsä, or the more preferred pöydällä + ä + n = pöydällään
kasvoja + nsa = kasvojansa, or the more preferred kasvoja + a + n = kasvojaan

I think either form is understandable, however.

[ajdias]

Kasvot is face. It is often used in the plural. I though you used wiki more: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kasvo

Is what was written spoken Finnish then???

If you follow the link you'll get a nice explanation for this:

• When the third-person suffix -nsa/-nsä is appended to nouns that are in singular and plural inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, essive and abessive, plural partitive and comitative and singular partitive that ends in -tä or -tä, the S and A/Ä are very often omitted from the suffix and the last As/Äs or Es of the case suffixes preceding the remaining N are doubled — resulting in -an/-än and -en. In standard Finnish, both the "full" form and the shortened form are acceptable (cf. -nsä).

I thought -minen was -ing

You're right -minen is -ing, my bad. Though here the verb translates as "washing" and I believe it often does with -ssa and -lla endings.

[AldenG]

There are a variety of -ings.

You can't really translate the individual -ing words by themselves in a way that properly distinguishes them. Rather you need to learn model phrases/paradigms in which they occur. The paradigms more than the words are your building blocks, and the colors and shades of meaning reside in the way the words are combined.

A single word-form can need to be translated different ways when it occurs in different phrases.

If you're on a good learning path, it is quite common to recognize and "understand" a sentence while not knowing a verb or subject-noun or object-npun or adjective or adverb that appears in it. You understand how the sentence is working because you know the working pieces of the sentence.

That's also how you understand your own language and learn new words, phrases, and constructs in it.

On/oli xxxxmassa
Käy/kävi xxxxmassa
Menee/meni xxxxmaan
Tulee/tuli xxxxmasta

...with many other verbs are all part of one very central paradigm about "doing" things.

They are probably the statistically most common way to talk about most activities.

[cssc]

How about hampaita and kasvoja, can you find those in wikisanakirja?

-an is a possessive suffix meaning hers (or his). Have a look at this fascinating page on possessive suffixes.

-ma is another suffix, similar to -ing in english, that is then combined with a case ending, here-ssa. You write harjaa-massa, for brush-ing. More fun

Thank you for the links. I will definitely be printing them out.
It doesn't say on wiktionary that kasvo is often used in the plural. I've never heard that before.
Thanks for all the replies & for being specific. The people who wrote those sentences did not give me a detailed enough answer. And I will hold fast my belief that those types of sentence formations shouldn't be sprung on beginners!!
Of course y'all are free to disagree.

[Jukka Aho]

It doesn't say on wiktionary that kasvo is often used in the plural. I've never heard that before.

The word kasvot works a bit like housut or sakset — always in the plural when referring to an actual, concrete face. Maybe it’s because a face has this symmetry — two (mostly similar) halves, just like pants or scissors.

It can be used figuratively, though, in which case it may appear in the singular, unless you’re actually referring to a multitude of faces.

Täällä on muutamia uusia kasvoja. = There are some new faces here.
Hän oli uusi kasvo firmassa. = She was a new face in the company.