English makes you choose between a house and the house. Finnish has no articles at all — and no grammatical gender:

Finnish	English
talo	a house / the house
kirja	a book / the book
koira	a dog / the dog
ystävä	a friend / the friend — man or woman
opettaja	a teacher / the teacher — man or woman

So you learn just the word: no a/the, no masculine/feminine label. Context tells a Finn whether you mean a or the, just as hän tells them nothing about whether you mean he or she.

The catch? Finnish words change their endings to show their job in the sentence — you've already seen Helsinki → Helsingissä. That's what most of this course is about.