Finnish grammar
Encyclopedia
This article deals with the grammar
of the Finnish language (the article "Finnish language
" discusses the language in general and contains a quick overview of the grammar). For the ways in which the spoken language differs from the written language, see Colloquial Finnish. Unlike the two languages spoken in the other two Scandanavian countries, Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages
, Finnish is an Uralic language, and is structurally considered an agglutinative language
.
s are inflected in the Finnish language much in the same way that their referent nouns are.
s are used to refer to human beings only. The personal pronouns in Finnish in the nominative case are listed in the following table:
Since Finnish verbs are inflected for person, personal pronouns are not required for sense, and the first and second person pronouns are usually omitted in standard Finnish except where used for emphasis. In spoken Finnish
, all pronouns are generally used. In the third person, the pronoun is required: "hän menee" = he goes, "he menevät" = they go. This applies to both colloquial and written language.
In colloquial Finnish, the pronouns se and ne are very commonly used as the singular and plural third person pronouns, respectively. Use of hän and he is mostly restricted to writing and formal or markedly polite speech. Minä and sinä are usually replaced with colloquial forms (the most common variants mä and sä, in some dialects mää and sää, mnää and snää or mie and sie). Me, te and he are too short to have reduced colloquial forms and all their variants are felt dialectal. Some of the most common verbs, such as olla ("to be") and tulla ("to come") exhibit similar reduced colloquial forms:
In common with some other languages, the second person plural can be used as a polite form
when addressing one person. This usage is diminishing in Finnish society.
s are used of non-human animate entities and inanimate objects. However, se and ne are often used to refer to humans in colloquial Finnish. (This usage is quite correct in a demonstrative sense, i.e. when qualified by the relative pronoun joka, and in fact it is hypercorrect to replace a demonstrative se or ne with hän or he just because the antecedent
is human.) Furthermore, the demonstratives are used to refer to group nouns and the number of the pronoun must correlate with the number of its referent.
"Ken" is now archaic, but its inflected forms are used instead of those of "kuka": "ketä" instead of "kuta" ("whom"). "Ketä rakastat?" = "Whom do you love?"
Relative pronoun
Reciprocal pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
Indefinite pronoun
A large group that entails all of the pronouns that do not fall into any of the categories above. Notice that there are no negative pronouns, such as "nobody", but the positive pronoun has to be negated with the negative verb "ei". No double negatives are possible.
Each pronoun declines. However, the endings -kAAn and -kin are clitic
s, and case endings are placed before them, e.g. mikään "any", miltäkään "from any". It should be noted that there are irregular nominatives. As indicated, kukaan is an irregular nominative; the regular root is kene- with -kään, e.g. kukaan "(not) anyone", keneltäkään "from (not) anyone".
English lacks a direct equivalent to the pronoun mones; it would be "that-th", or "which-th" for questions. For examples, Palkkio riippuu siitä monentenako maaliin tulee "The reward depends on as-which-th one comes to the finish", or explicitly "The reward depends on in which position one comes to the finish". It would be difficult to translate the question Monesko?, but, while far from proper English, the question How manyeth may give an English-speaking person an idea of the meaning.
Some indefinite adjectives are often perceived as indefinite pronouns. These include:
s or even in personal pronouns: 'hän' = 'he' or 'she' depending on the referent.
: four grammatical cases, six locative cases, two essive cases (three in some Eastern dialects) and three marginal cases. Notice that the word in a given locative case modifies the verb, not a noun.
Note that a noun in the comitative case is always followed by a possessive suffix, but an adjective is not: "Mies ylellisine taloineen", "A man with his luxurious house(s)". Also, only the pronouns' accusative is different from the nominative and/or genetive: minut, the accusative form of minä, "I".
plural. The suffix is -t; it can only appear in final position.
As a combined example of plurals
An exception is the word ending -i, which is elided under agglutination to produce the stem, e.g. nimi ~ nim-. In singular, an epenthetic -e- is inserted, e.g. nime-. In plural, the plural marker -i- is added, followed by the aforementioned -e-, e.g. nimie-. This is used e.g. in this manner: nimi "name", nimen "of the name", nimien "of the names".
Failure to elide the -i changes meanings. For example, the genitive case
will be mistaken for the instructive case
, e.g. nimen "of the name" → nimin "using names". Another good example is the accidental production of a plural, e.g. nimiä "(at the) names", as contrasted to the nimeä "at the name".
Recent loanwords are an exception to this elision, but the plural is unchanged. (Often the -i is added to nativize a word as Finnish nouns generally don't end in consonants). For example, the singular stem of taksi is taksi-, but the plural stem is taksie-. The usage is as such: taksin "of the taxi", taksien "of the taxies". Likewise, applying the elision rule to the recent loans produces unintended meanings.
, adding 'i' and adding a gemination to the consonant if necessary (e.g. netti < "the Internet"). However, older consonant stems are retained, in all forms if the consonant is alveolar (n, r, l, or s), e.g. sydän "heart", tanner "solid ground", kannel
, mies "man". Former -m-stems have merged with the n-stems in the nominative but not in the other cases, e.g. ydin "core", ytimet "cores". -h and -k stems have been abbreviated, but they still behave like consonant stems. In some dialects, the -h stems have shifted to -s instead, e.g. standard vene, in Pohjanmaa venes ← veneh. By analogy, in standard Finnish all words ending in 'e' behave as former -h stems. The illative case
also changes form with a consonant stem, where the ending -hen is assibilated to -seen, as -hen is the genitive.
Vocalization or lenition is found in addition to any possible consonant gradation
, e.g. kuningas (nominative) ~ kuninkaan (genitive), or mies ~ miehen. The illatives are marked thus: kuninkaaseen, mieheen.
This is a very large class of words which includes common nouns (for example 'nainen' = 'woman'), many proper names, and many common adjectives. Adding -nen to a noun is a very productive mechanism for creating adjectives ('muovi' = 'plastic' -> 'muovinen' = 'made of plastic'/'plastic-like' ). It can also function as a diminutive ending.
The form behaves like it ended in -s, with the exception of the nominative, where it is -nen. Thus, the stem for these words removes the '-nen' and adds '-s(e)' after which the inflectional ending is added:
Here are some of the diminutive forms that are in use:
The diminutive form mostly lives in surnames which are usually ancient words many of whose meaning has been obfuscated. Some of the most common:
Occasionally such nouns become place-names. For example, there is a peninsula called "Neuvosenniemi" beside a certain lake. "Neuvonen" means "a bit of advice/direction"; at this peninsula people rowing tar barrels across the lake would stop to ask whether the weather conditions would allow to continue to the other side. Most place-names ending with -nen assume a plural form when inflected. For instance, the illative of "Sörnäinen
" is "Sörnäisiin" instead of singular "Sörnäiseen".
This set of nouns are a historic class which formerly had a consonant on the end, which has in present times been reduced to a glottal stop in most dialects. The dictionary form represents weak gradation, and each word has two stems, a weak grade stem in which the final glottal stop assimilates (used for the partitive singular), and strong grade vowel stem to which most case suffixes are applied. The vowel stem has an additional -e-: perhe 'family' -> perhee-: perheessä, perheellä, etc.; which represents the historical loss of a medial consonant which is sometimes found in dialects as an -h- (ex. ruostet 'rust' -> ruostehena).
The weak grade stem, which is found in the 'dictionary' form results from another historic change in which a final consonant has changed to a glottal stop. This is important to word inflection, because the partitive ending is suffixed directly onto this stem, resulting in the glottal stop assimilating to a -t-. Otherwise, other case endings are suffixed on to the strong grade/vowel stem.
More of this phenomenon is discussed in Finnish Phonology: Sandhi.
s in Finnish are inflected in exactly the same way as nouns, and an adjective must agree in number and case with the noun it is modifying.
For example, here are some adjectives:
And here are some examples of adjectives inflected to agree with nouns:
Notice that the adjectives undergo the same sorts of stem changes when they are inflected as nouns do.
Since the comparative adjective is still an adjective, it must be inflected to agree with the noun it modifies. To make the inflecting stem of the comparative, the '-mpi' ending loses its final 'i'. If the syllable context calls for a weak consonant, the '-mp-' becomes '-mm-'. Then '-a-' is added before the actual case ending (or '-i-' in plural). This should become clear with a few examples:
Note that because the superlative marker vowel is an 'i', the same kind of changes can occur with vowel stems as happen in verb imperfects, and noun inflecting plurals:
Since the superlative adjective is still an adjective, it must be inflected to agree with the noun it modifies. The '-in' becomes either '-imma-' or '-impa-' (plural '-immi-' or '-impi-') depending on whether the syllable context calls for a weak or strong consonant. Here are the examples:
The form paree "good" is not found in standard Finnish, but can be found in the Southern Ostrobothnian dialect.
Notice also:
There are a small number of other irregular comparative and superlative forms, such as:
Where the inflecting stem is 'uude-' but the superlative is 'uusin' = 'newest'.
In postpositional phrases the noun is usually in genitive:
The noun (or pronoun) can be omitted when there is a possessive suffix:
As with verbs, the pronoun can not be omitted in third person (singular or plural):
"Olin __ mukanasi" -> "I was with you"
vs.
"Olin hänen mukanaan" -> "I was with him/her"
"Tulen __ mukaanne" -> "I will come with you (plural or polite)"
vs.
"Tulen heidän mukanaan" -> "I will come with them"
Some postpositions can also be used as prepositions:
s are usually divided into seven groups depending on the stem type. All seven types have the same set of endings, but the stems undergo (slightly) different changes when inflected.
There are very few irregular verbs in Finnish. In fact, only 'olla' = 'to be' has two irregular forms on "is" and ovat "are (pl.)"; other forms follow from the stem ole–/ol–; e.g. olet ← ole+t "you are", olkoon ← ol+koon "let it be". A handful of verbs, including 'nähdä' = 'to see', 'tehdä' = 'to do/make', and 'juosta' = 'to run' have rare consonant mutation patterns which are not derivable from the infinitive.
Finnish does not have a separate verb for possession. Possession is indicated in other ways, mainly by genitives and existential clause
s. For animate possessors, the adessive case is used with 'olla', for example 'koiralla on häntä' = 'the dog has a tail' - literally 'on the dog is a tail', or in English grammar, "There is a tail on the dog". This is similar to Irish
and Welsh
forms such as "There is a hunger on me".
-aspect
forms.
Consider an example: talo maalataan "the house will be painted". The time when the house is being painted could be added: talo maalataan marraskuussa "the house will be painted in November". The colour and method could be added: talo maalataan punaiseksi harjalla "the house will be painted red with a brush". But nothing can be said about the person doing the painting; there is no simple way to say "the house will be painted by Jim". There is a calque
, evidently from Swedish, toimesta "by the action of", that can be used to introduce the agent: Talo maalataan Jimin toimesta, approximately "The house will be painted by the action of Jim". This type of expression is considered prescriptively incorrect, but it may be found wherever direct translations from Swedish, English, etc. are made, especially in legal texts, and has traditionally been a typical feature of Finnish "officialese". An alternative form, passive + ablative, also a calque from Swedish, was once common but is now archaic.
Hence the form maalataan is the only one which is needed. Notice also that the theme is in the nominative case. Verbs which govern the partitive case continue to do so in the passive, and where the object of the action is a personal pronoun, that goes into its special accusative form: minut unohdettiin "I was forgotten". Whether the object of a passive verb should be termed the subject of the clause has been debated, but traditionally Finnish grammars have considered a passive clause to have no subject.
It can also be said that in the Finnish passive the agent is always human and never mentioned. A sentence such as the tree was blown down would translate poorly into Finnish if the passive were used, since it would suggest the image of a group of people trying to blow the tree down.
Because of its vagueness about who is performing the action, the passive can also translate the English "one does (something)", "(something) is generally done", as in sanotaan että… "they say that…"
Formation of the passive is dealt with in the article on Finnish verb conjugation
.
In modern colloquial Finnish, the passive form of the verb is used instead of the active first person plural in the indicative and the imperative, to the almost complete exclusion of the standard verb forms. For example, in the indicative, the standard form is me menemme ("we are going"), but the colloquial form is me mennään. Without the personal pronoun me, the passive alone replaces the first person plural imperative, as in Mennään! "Let's go!". In colloquial speech, the pronoun me cannot be omitted without confusion, unlike when using the standard forms menemme (indicative) and menkäämme (imperative).
An almost identical (though unrelated) shift has happened in French, whereby the impersonal on replaces first person plural nous.
In the former case, and unlike in English, the conditional must be used in both halves of the Finnish sentence:
"ymmärtäisin jos puhuisit hitaammin" = *"I would understand if you would speak more slowly".
The characteristic morphology of the Finnish conditional is 'isi' inserted between the verb stem and the personal ending. This can result in a 'closed' syllable becoming 'open' and so trigger consonant gradation
:
'tiedän' = 'I know', 'tietäisin' = 'I would know'.
cf. 'haluan' = 'I want', 'haluaisin' = 'I would like'.
Conditional forms exists for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect.
These are the most common forms of the imperative: "Do this", "Don't do that".
The singular imperative is simply the verb's present tense without any personal ending (that is, chop the '-n' off the first person singular form):
To make this negative, 'älä' (which is the active imperative singular 2nd person of the negative verb) is placed before the positive form:
To form the plural, add '-kaa' or '-kää' to the verb's stem:
To make this negative, 'älkää' (which is the active imperative present plural 2nd person of the negation verb) is placed before the positive form and the suffix '-ko' or '-kö' is added to the verb stem:
Note that 2nd person plural imperatives can also be used as polite imperatives when referring to one person.
The Finnish language has no simple equivalent to the English "please". The Finnish equivalent is to use either 'ole hyvä' or 'olkaa hyvä' = 'be good', but it is generally omitted. Politeness is normally conveyed by tone of voice, facial expression, and use of conditional verbs and partitive nouns. For example, voisitteko means "could you", in the polite plural, and is used much like English "Could you..." sentences: voisitteko auttaa "could you help me, please?"
Also, familiar (and not necessarily so polite) expressions can be added to imperatives, e.g. menes, menepä, menehän. These are hard to translate exactly, but extensively used by Finnish speakers themselves. Menes implies expectation, that is, it has been settled already and requires no discussion; menepä has the -pa which indicates insistence, and -hän means approximated "indeed".
The 1st person imperative sounds archaic, and a form resembling the passive indicative is often used instead: 'mennään!' = 'let's go!'
The characteristic morphology of the Finnish conditional is -ne- inserted between the verb stem and the personal ending. Furthermore, continuants assimilate progressively (pes+ne- → pesse-) and stops regressively (korjat+ne- → korjanne-). The verb "lie" always replaces the verb "olla" "to be" in the potential mood, e.g. the potential of on haettu "has been fetched" is lienee haettu "may have been fetched".
Potential forms exists for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect:
In some dialects 'tullee' ('may come') is an indicative form verb ('tulee' = 'comes') but grammatically it is a potential verb.
. It is a combination of the potential and the conditional. It is also used in some dialects of Estonian
.
However, when the stem is itself a single syllable or is of two or more syllables ending in -oi, the suffix is -da.
If the stem ends in one the consonants l,r,n, then the final consonant is repeated before adding the infinitive -a or -ä. In the case of a stem ending in consonant s, the s does not repeat but becomes t before the infinitive -a or -ä. (These consonant stems take a link vowel -e-when forming the present tense or -i- when forming the imperfect, e.g. pestä - pesen - pesin "to wash - I wash - I washed"). Stems ending -ts followed by a link vowel in the present or imperfect drop the s from the stem before adding the infinitive -a or -a marker
Some verbs have so called "alternating stems" or multiple stems with weak-strong consonant gradation
between them. It depends on the verb if the infinitive is in the strong or weak form. These have long vowel stems in the present/future tense, which already ends with -a or ä-. These verbs drop the a which is present in the present tense stem and replace it with -t in the first infinitive stem followed by the standard -a or -ä first infinitive marker. The a dropping to t weakens a preceding KPT consonant so that a weak grade is seen in the first infinitive form. This often creates difficulties for the non-Finn when trying to determine the infinitive (in order to access the translation in a dictionary) when encountering an inflected form. Inflected forms are generally strong except when the stem ending contains a double consonant and there is only a single vowel separating this from the last stem KPT consonant.
Some verbs lose elements of their stems when forming the first infinitive. Some verbs stem have contracted endings in the first infinitive. Stems ending -ene/-eni in the present/imperfect drop the n and replace it with t, which may cause weakness in the infinitive stem. The contracted infinitive ending -eta/-etä have -itse/-itsi verbs take the infiniitve stem -ita/itä. These contracted verbs may also be subject to consonant weakening when forming the infinitive
e.g. mainita to mention has the longer conjugated stem mainits- as in mainitsen huomenna, että... I'll mention tomorrow that...
e.g. paeta to flee has the longer conjugated stem paken- as in me pakenimme Afganistanista we fled from Afghanistan
The first infinitive long form is the translative plus a possessive suffix (rare in spoken language).
The first infinitive only has active form.
It is recognizable by the letter 'e' in place of the usual "a" or "ä" as the infinitive marker. It is only ever ever used with one of two case makers; the inessive "ssa/ssä" indicating time or the instructive "n" indicating manner. Finnish phrases using the second infinitive can often be rendered in English using the gerund.
The second infinitive is formed by replacing the final 'a'/'ä' of the first infinitive with 'e' then adding the appropriate inflectional ending. If the vowel before the 'a'/'ä' is already an 'e', this becomes 'i' (see example from 'lukea' = 'to read').
The cases in which the second infinitive can appear are:
The inessive form is mostly seen in written forms of language because spoken forms usually express the same idea in longer form using two clauses linked by the word kun (when). The instructive is even rarer and mostly exists nowadays in set phrase
s (for example 'toisin sanoen' = 'in other words').
If the person performing the action of the verb is the same as the person in the equivalent relative clause, then the verb uses the appropriate personal possessive suffix on the verb for the person. If the person in the main clause is different to that in the relative clause then this is indicated by with the person in the genitive and the verb is unmarked for person.
The third infinitive is formed by taking the verb stem with its consonant in the strong form, then adding 'ma' followed by the case inflection.
The cases in which the third infinitive can appear are:
A rare and archaic form of the third infinitive which occurs with the verb pitää:
The third infinitive instructive is usually replaced with the first infinitive short form in modern Finnish.
Note that the '-ma' form without a case ending is called the 'agent participle' (see 'participles' below). The agent participle can also be inflected in all cases, producing forms which look similar to the third infinitive.
For example
Though not an infinitive, a much more common -MINEN verbal stem ending is the noun construct which gives the name of the activity described by the verb. This is rather similar to the English verbal noun -ING form, and therefore as a noun, this form can inflect just like any other noun.
in Finnish, please refer to the Finnish verb conjugation
article.
s, both with passive and active forms, and an 'agent' participle. Participles can be used in different ways than ordinary adjectives and they can have an object.
) and in some cases '-lut/lyt' '-sut/syt' '-rut/ryt'. For example:
However, depending on the verb's stem type, assimilation can occur with the consonant of the stem ending.
In type II verbs, and 'n' 'l' 'r' or 's' in the stem ending is assimilated to the consonant in the participle ending (as also happens in formation of the first infinitve, although -s stem endings take an extra t in the first infinitive)
The assimilation causes the final consonant cluster to be strengthened which in turn can weaken a strong cluster if one exists in the stem. See harjoitella above.
In verbs of types IV-VI, the 't' at the end of the stem is assimilated to the 'n':
It is not required for the action to be in the past, although the examples above are. Rather, the construction simply specifies the subject, the object and the action, with no reference to time. For an example in the future, consider: huomenna käyttämänänne välineenä on -- "tomorrow, as the instrument you will be using is --". Here, käyttämä "that which is used" describes, i.e. is an attribute to väline "instrument". (Notice the case agreement between käyttämä-nä and välinee-nä.) The suffix -nne "your" specifies the person "owning" the action, i.e. who does it, thus käyttämänne is "that which was used by you(pl.)", and käyttämänänne is "as that which was used by you".
It is also possible to give the actor with a pronoun, e.g. sinun käyttämäsi "that which was used by you". In standard language, the pronoun sinun "your" is not necessary, but the possessive suffix is. In inexact spoken usage, this goes vice versa; the possessive suffix is optional, and used typically only for the second person singular, e.g. sun käyttämäs.
in front of the stem from the present tense (in its 'weak' consonant form). This verb form used with the negative verb is called a connegative
.
Note that the inflection is on the negative verb, not on the main verb, and that the endings are regular apart from the 3rd person forms.
Note one exception: when the 'te' 2nd person plural form is used in an honorific way to address one person, the singular form of the participle is used: 'te ette puhunut' = 'you (s, polite) did not speak'.
Note that in the spoken language, this form is used for the first person plural. In this case, the personal pronoun is obligatory:
s is by adding the ending '-sti' to the inflecting form of the corresponding adjective:
Adverbs are modifying verbs, not nouns, therefore they don't inflect.
Because of the '-i-', the stem vowel can change, similarly to superlative adjectives, or to avoid runs of three vowels:
The most usual neutral order, however, is subject-verb-object. But usually what the speaker or writer is talking about is at the head of the sentence.
Here koira, dog is in the nominative form but the word expressing man, mies is marked as object by the case marked form miestä. This sentence is a bald statement of fact.
Changing the word order changes the emphasis slightly but not the fundamental meaning of the sentence.
minulla here is the word minä (I) in a case form ending -lla which when used with the verb olla (to be, expressed here in the form 'on') expresses ownership. This is because Finnish does not have a verb form equivalent of the English word 'have'. Minulla is not considered the subject.
and finally, a classic example:
Besides the word-order implications of turning a sentence into a question, there are some other circumstances where word-order is important:
The location of the thing whose existence is being stated comes first, followed by its stative verb, followed by the thing itself. Note how this is unlike the normal English equivalent, though English can also use the same order:
In the following example, note what happens to the verb in the English and Finnish versions when the meaning is plural.
Note that the verb remains singular in Finnish existential statements when declaring more than one item. The English construction moves the verb to a plural form because English follows the beds as subject whereas the Finnish construction treats the beds as objects (it is essentially ADVERB-STATIVE VERB-OBJECT)
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
of the Finnish language (the article "Finnish language
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
" discusses the language in general and contains a quick overview of the grammar). For the ways in which the spoken language differs from the written language, see Colloquial Finnish. Unlike the two languages spoken in the other two Scandanavian countries, Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...
, Finnish is an Uralic language, and is structurally considered an agglutinative language
Agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
.
Pronouns
The pronounPronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s are inflected in the Finnish language much in the same way that their referent nouns are.
Personal pronouns
The personal pronounPersonal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s are used to refer to human beings only. The personal pronouns in Finnish in the nominative case are listed in the following table:
| Personal pronouns | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| Singular | |
| minä | I |
| sinä | you |
| hän | she or he |
| Plural | |
| me | we |
| te | you |
| he | they |
| Polite | |
| Te | you |
Since Finnish verbs are inflected for person, personal pronouns are not required for sense, and the first and second person pronouns are usually omitted in standard Finnish except where used for emphasis. In spoken Finnish
Spoken Finnish
Colloquial Finnish is the "dialectless" colloquial standard of the Finnish language. It is spoken in the Greater Helsinki region, and in urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna...
, all pronouns are generally used. In the third person, the pronoun is required: "hän menee" = he goes, "he menevät" = they go. This applies to both colloquial and written language.
In colloquial Finnish, the pronouns se and ne are very commonly used as the singular and plural third person pronouns, respectively. Use of hän and he is mostly restricted to writing and formal or markedly polite speech. Minä and sinä are usually replaced with colloquial forms (the most common variants mä and sä, in some dialects mää and sää, mnää and snää or mie and sie). Me, te and he are too short to have reduced colloquial forms and all their variants are felt dialectal. Some of the most common verbs, such as olla ("to be") and tulla ("to come") exhibit similar reduced colloquial forms:
| Personal pronouns | |
|---|---|
| Written/Formal | Spoken/Colloquial |
| Singular | |
| (minä) olen/tulen | mä oon/tuun |
| (sinä) olet/tulet | sä oot/tuut |
| hän/se on/tulee | se on/tulee |
| Plural | |
| (me) olemme/tulemme | me ollaan/tullaan |
| (te) olette/tulette | te ootte/tuutte |
| he/ne ovat/tulevat | ne on/tulee |
| Polite | |
| Te olette/tulette | Te ootte/tuutte |
In common with some other languages, the second person plural can be used as a polite form
T-V distinction
In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
when addressing one person. This usage is diminishing in Finnish society.
Demonstrative pronouns
The demonstrativeDemonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
s are used of non-human animate entities and inanimate objects. However, se and ne are often used to refer to humans in colloquial Finnish. (This usage is quite correct in a demonstrative sense, i.e. when qualified by the relative pronoun joka, and in fact it is hypercorrect to replace a demonstrative se or ne with hän or he just because the antecedent
Antecedent (grammar)
In grammar, an antecedent is a noun, noun phrase, or clause to which an anaphor refers in a coreference. For example, in the passage "I did not see John because he wasn't there", "John" is the antecedent of the anaphor "he"; together "John" and "he" are called a coreference because they both refer...
is human.) Furthermore, the demonstratives are used to refer to group nouns and the number of the pronoun must correlate with the number of its referent.
| Demonstrative pronouns | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| Singular | |
| tämä | this |
| tuo | that |
| se | it/that |
| Plural | |
| nämä | these |
| nuo | those |
| ne | they/those |
Interrogative pronouns
| Interrogative pronouns | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| kuka | who, which (of many) |
| mikä | what, which (of many) |
| ken | who, which (of many) - (old or dialectal word) |
| kumpi | which (of two) |
| kumpainen | which (of two) - (old or dialectal word) |
"Ken" is now archaic, but its inflected forms are used instead of those of "kuka": "ketä" instead of "kuta" ("whom"). "Ketä rakastat?" = "Whom do you love?"
Relative pronounRelative pronounA relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
s
| Relative pronouns | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pronoun | Example | English |
| joka (refers to preceding word) | "hän on ainoa, jonka muistan" | "[s]he is the only one whom (I) remember" |
| mikä (refers to preceding clause/ sentence or to a pronoun or a superlative that refers to a thing) |
"se on ainoa asia, minkä muistan" | "it is the only thing that (I) remember" |
Reciprocal pronounReciprocal pronounThe reciprocal pronouns in English are one another and each other. Together with the reflexive pronouns — myself, yourself, ourselves, yourselves, and others — they are classified as anaphors....
s
| Reciprocal pronouns | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pronoun | Example | English |
| toinen | "he rakastavat toisiaan" | "they love each other" (plural) |
| "he rakastavat toinen toistaan" | "they love one another" (double singular) | |
Reflexive pronounReflexive pronounA reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
s
| Reflexive pronouns | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pronoun | Suffix | Example | English |
| itse | plus corresponding possessive suffix | "keitin itselleni teetä" | "(I) made myself some tea" |
Indefinite pronounIndefinite pronounAn indefinite pronoun is a pronoun that refers to one or more unspecified beings, objects, or places.-List of English indefinite pronouns:Note that many of these words can function as other parts of speech too, depending on context...
s
A large group that entails all of the pronouns that do not fall into any of the categories above. Notice that there are no negative pronouns, such as "nobody", but the positive pronoun has to be negated with the negative verb "ei". No double negatives are possible.| Indefinite pronouns | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| joka (uninflected) | every, each |
| jokainen | every, everyone |
| joku | some, someone (person) |
| jompikumpi | either one |
| jokin | some, something (animal, thing) |
| kukin | each one |
| kumpainenkin | both (old or dialectal) |
| kumpikin | both |
| mikin | each thing (dialectal) |
| kenkään | anyone (old or poetic) |
| kukaan (nom.), kene+..+kään (oblique) | anyone |
| -> ei kukaan | no one |
| kumpikaan | either one |
| -> ei kumpikaan | neither one |
| mikään | anything -> ei mikään = nothing |
| mones (nom.), monente- (oblique) | the ordinal pronoun (representing first, second, etc.) |
Each pronoun declines. However, the endings -kAAn and -kin are clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s, and case endings are placed before them, e.g. mikään "any", miltäkään "from any". It should be noted that there are irregular nominatives. As indicated, kukaan is an irregular nominative; the regular root is kene- with -kään, e.g. kukaan "(not) anyone", keneltäkään "from (not) anyone".
English lacks a direct equivalent to the pronoun mones; it would be "that-th", or "which-th" for questions. For examples, Palkkio riippuu siitä monentenako maaliin tulee "The reward depends on as-which-th one comes to the finish", or explicitly "The reward depends on in which position one comes to the finish". It would be difficult to translate the question Monesko?, but, while far from proper English, the question How manyeth may give an English-speaking person an idea of the meaning.
Some indefinite adjectives are often perceived as indefinite pronouns. These include:
| Indefinite adjectives | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| ainoa | the only one |
| eräs | some, certain, one |
| harva | few |
| itse (non-reflexive) | self |
| kaikki | all, everyone, everything |
| molemmat | both |
| moni | many |
| muu | other |
| muutama | some, a few |
| sama | same |
| toinen (non-reciprocal, non-numeral use) | another |
Noun forms
The Finnish language does not distinguish gender in nounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s or even in personal pronouns: 'hän' = 'he' or 'she' depending on the referent.
Cases
Finnish has fifteen noun casesDeclension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
: four grammatical cases, six locative cases, two essive cases (three in some Eastern dialects) and three marginal cases. Notice that the word in a given locative case modifies the verb, not a noun.
| Finnish cases | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case | Suffix | English prep. | Example | Translation |
| Grammatical | ||||
| nominative Nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments... (nominatiivi) |
- | - | talo | house |
| genitive Genitive case In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun... (genetiivi) |
-n | of / 's | talon | of (a) house / house's |
| accusative Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions... (akkusatiivi) |
-, -t or -n | - | talo / talon | house |
| partitive Partitive case The partitive case is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with numbers.... (partitiivi) |
-(t)a | - | taloa | house (as an object) |
| Locative (internal) | ||||
| inessive Inessive case Inessive case is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is "talo·ssa" in Finnish, "maja·s" in Estonian, "etxea·n" in Basque, "nam·e" in Lithuanian and "ház·ban" in Hungarian.In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding... (inessiivi) |
-ssa | in | talossa | in (a) house |
| elative Elative case See Elative for disambiguation.Elative is a locative case with the basic meaning "out of".... (elatiivi) |
-sta | from (inside) | talosta | from (a) house |
| illative Illative case Illative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"... (illatiivi) |
-an, -en, etc. | into | taloon | into (a) house |
| Locative (external) | ||||
| adessive Adessive case In Uralic languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, the adessive case is the fourth of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "on". For example, Estonian laud and laual , Hungarian asztal and asztalnál... (adessiivi) |
-lla | at, on | talolla | at (a) house |
| ablative Ablative case In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ... (ablatiivi) |
-lta | from | talolta | from (a) house |
| allative Allative case Allative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.-Finnish language:In the Finnish language, the allative is the fifth of the locative cases, with the... (allatiivi) |
-lle | to | talolle | to (a) house |
| Essive | ||||
| essive Essive case The essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary location or state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a ".In the Finnish language, this case is marked by adding "-na/-nä" to the stem of the noun.... (essiivi) |
-na | as | talona | as a house |
| (exessive; dialectal) (eksessiivi) | -nta | from being | talonta | from being a house |
| translative Translative case The translative case is a grammatical case that indicates a change in state of a noun, with the general sense of "becoming X" or "change to X".... (translatiivi) |
-ksi | to (role of) | taloksi | to a house |
| Marginal | ||||
| instructive Instructive case In the Finnish language and Estonian language, the instructive case has the basic meaning of "by means of". It is a comparatively rarely used case, though it is found in some commonly used expressions, such as omin silmin → "with one's own eyes".... (instruktiivi) |
-n | with (the aid of) | taloin | with the houses |
| abessive Abessive case In linguistics, abessive , caritive and privative are names for a grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun... (abessiivi) |
-tta | without | talotta | without (a) house |
| comitative Comitative case The comitative case , also known as the associative case , is a grammatical case that denotes companionship, and is used where English would use "in company with" or "together with"... (komitatiivi) |
-ne- | together (with) | taloineen | with the house(s) |
Note that a noun in the comitative case is always followed by a possessive suffix, but an adjective is not: "Mies ylellisine taloineen", "A man with his luxurious house(s)". Also, only the pronouns' accusative is different from the nominative and/or genetive: minut, the accusative form of minä, "I".
Nominative plural
The nominative plural is the definite, divisible, telicTelicity
In linguistics, telicity is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense...
plural. The suffix is -t; it can only appear in final position.
| Nominative plural | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| "koirat olivat huoneessa" | "the dogs were in the room" |
| "huoneet olivat suuria" | "the rooms were large" |
Following numerals
After numerals greater than one in the nominative singular, the noun is put in the partitive singular. Otherwise the noun agrees with the numeral in number and case.| Following numerals | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| "huoneessa oli kaksi koiraa" | "there were two dogs in the room" |
| "talossa oli kolme huonetta" | "the house had three rooms" |
| "ostin tietokoneen tuhannella eurolla" | "I bought a computer for a thousand euros" |
Inflected plural
This uses the stem of the partitive plural inflected with the same set of endings as for singular nouns. The suffix is -i-, and it suppresses long vowels; it may only appear before another suffix.| Inflected plural | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'huone' -> 'huoneita' | '(some) rooms' |
| -> 'huoneissa' | 'in rooms' |
As a combined example of plurals
| Inflected plural | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'lintu on puussa' | 'the bird is in the tree' |
| -> 'linnut ovat puissa' | 'the birds are in the trees' |
Inflection of pronouns
The personal pronouns are inflected in the same way as nouns, and can be found in most of the same cases as nouns. For example:| Inflection of pronouns | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Finnish | Case | Example | English |
| 'minä' | nominative | 'I' | |
| 'minun' | genitive | ('my, mine') | |
| 'tämä talo on minun ' | 'this house is mine ' | ||
| 'tämä on minun taloni ' | 'this is my house' | ||
| 'minut' | accusative | 'hän tuntee minut' | '[s]he knows me' |
| 'minua' | partitive | 'hän rakastaa minua' | '[s]he loves me' |
| 'minussa' | inessive | 'tämä herättää minussa vihaa' | 'this provokes (lit. awakens) anger in me' |
| 'minusta' | elative | 'hän puhui minusta' | '[s]he was talking about/ of me'. Also used idiomatically to mean 'in my opinion'. |
| 'minuun' | illative | 'hän uskoi minuun' | '[s]he believed in me' |
| 'minulla' | adessive | 'minulla on rahaa' | 'I've got some money' |
| 'minulta' | ablative | 'hän otti minulta rahaa' | '[s]he took some money from/off me'. |
| 'minulle' | allative | 'anna minulle rahaa' | 'give me some money' |
| 'sinuna' | essive | 'sinuna en tekisi sitä' | 'If I were you, I wouldn't do it' (lit. 'as you') |
| 'minuksi' | translative | 'häntä luullaan usein minuksi' | '[s]he is often mistaken for me' |
Vowel stems
Vowel stems are generally invariable. However, the ending vowel can change.| English | singular | sg. gen. Genitive case In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun... |
sg. part. Partitive case The partitive case is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with numbers.... |
plural | pl. gen. | pl. part. | notes |
| a fish | kala | kalan | kalaa | kalat | kalojen | kaloja | Mutation a → o before i or j. |
| a country | maa | maan | maata | maat | maiden | maita | A long vowel is shortened before the oblique plural -i-. |
| a road | tie | tien | tietä | tiet | teiden | teitä | Historically *tee, later diphthongized, but the original vowel survives in other forms. |
An exception is the word ending -i, which is elided under agglutination to produce the stem, e.g. nimi ~ nim-. In singular, an epenthetic -e- is inserted, e.g. nime-. In plural, the plural marker -i- is added, followed by the aforementioned -e-, e.g. nimie-. This is used e.g. in this manner: nimi "name", nimen "of the name", nimien "of the names".
Failure to elide the -i changes meanings. For example, the genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
will be mistaken for the instructive case
Instructive case
In the Finnish language and Estonian language, the instructive case has the basic meaning of "by means of". It is a comparatively rarely used case, though it is found in some commonly used expressions, such as omin silmin → "with one's own eyes"....
, e.g. nimen "of the name" → nimin "using names". Another good example is the accidental production of a plural, e.g. nimiä "(at the) names", as contrasted to the nimeä "at the name".
Recent loanwords are an exception to this elision, but the plural is unchanged. (Often the -i is added to nativize a word as Finnish nouns generally don't end in consonants). For example, the singular stem of taksi is taksi-, but the plural stem is taksie-. The usage is as such: taksin "of the taxi", taksien "of the taxies". Likewise, applying the elision rule to the recent loans produces unintended meanings.
Consonant stems
In general, Finnish does not borrow new consonant stems, but employs paragogeParagoge
Paragoge , adj. paragogic , is the addition of a sound to the end of a word. Often, this is due to nativization. It is a type of epenthesis, most commonly vocalic epenthesis.-Diachronic paragoge:...
, adding 'i' and adding a gemination to the consonant if necessary (e.g. netti < "the Internet"). However, older consonant stems are retained, in all forms if the consonant is alveolar (n, r, l, or s), e.g. sydän "heart", tanner "solid ground", kannel
Kannel
Kannel may refer to:*Kannel , an open source Wireless Application Protocol and Short Message Service gateway for UNIX operating systems.*Kannel is the Estonian name for kantele, a traditional plucked string instrument...
, mies "man". Former -m-stems have merged with the n-stems in the nominative but not in the other cases, e.g. ydin "core", ytimet "cores". -h and -k stems have been abbreviated, but they still behave like consonant stems. In some dialects, the -h stems have shifted to -s instead, e.g. standard vene, in Pohjanmaa venes ← veneh. By analogy, in standard Finnish all words ending in 'e' behave as former -h stems. The illative case
Illative case
Illative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...
also changes form with a consonant stem, where the ending -hen is assibilated to -seen, as -hen is the genitive.
Nouns ending in -s
Vocalization or lenition is found in addition to any possible consonant gradation
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
, e.g. kuningas (nominative) ~ kuninkaan (genitive), or mies ~ miehen. The illatives are marked thus: kuninkaaseen, mieheen.
-nen nouns
This is a very large class of words which includes common nouns (for example 'nainen' = 'woman'), many proper names, and many common adjectives. Adding -nen to a noun is a very productive mechanism for creating adjectives ('muovi' = 'plastic' -> 'muovinen' = 'made of plastic'/'plastic-like' ). It can also function as a diminutive ending.
The form behaves like it ended in -s, with the exception of the nominative, where it is -nen. Thus, the stem for these words removes the '-nen' and adds '-s(e)' after which the inflectional ending is added:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'muovisessa pussissa' | 'in the plastic bag' |
| 'kaksi muovista lelua' | 'two plastic toys' |
| 'muoviseen laatikkoon' | 'into the plastic box' |
Here are some of the diminutive forms that are in use:
| Finnish | Stemming from | English |
|---|---|---|
| 'kätönen' | käsi | 'a small hand' (affectionate) |
| 'lintunen' | lintu | 'birdie', 'a small bird' |
| 'veikkonen' | veikko | 'lad' |
| 'kirjanen' | kirja | 'booklet' |
| 'kukkanen' | kukka | 'a little flower' |
| 'lapsonen' | lapsi | 'a little child' |
The diminutive form mostly lives in surnames which are usually ancient words many of whose meaning has been obfuscated. Some of the most common:
| Finnish | From word | English |
|---|---|---|
| 'Rautiainen' | rautio | blacksmith (of a blacksmith's family) |
| 'Korhonen' | korho | 'deaf' (of a deaf man's family) |
| 'Leinonen' | leino | 'sorrowful, melancholic'; alternatively male name Leino as short for Leonard |
| 'Virtanen', 'Jokinen', 'Järvinen', 'Nieminen'... | virta, joki, järvi, niemi | 'the family from by the stream (virta), river (joki), lake (järvi), peninsula (niemi)' |
| 'Mikkonen' | [A family name assimilated from the name of the farmhouse, after the householder's name 'Mikko'] | |
| 'Martikainen' | possible origin Martikka, a South Karelian Karelian Karelian refers to something from or related to the region of Karelia, in present-day Russia and FInland*Karelians*Karelian language*Karelian foods* Karelian pasties* Karelian hot pot* Karelian Birch, a cultivar of Betula pendula... surname, identical to Russian surname Martika Martika Martika is an American pop singer-songwriter and actress. As a singer she released two internationally successful albums in the late 1980s and early 1990s, selling over four million copies worldwide.-Early life and career:Martika entered mainstream show business in an uncredited role as one of the... |
|
| 'Lyytikäinen' | from 'Lyytikkä', originating to Germanic male name 'Lydecke' |
Occasionally such nouns become place-names. For example, there is a peninsula called "Neuvosenniemi" beside a certain lake. "Neuvonen" means "a bit of advice/direction"; at this peninsula people rowing tar barrels across the lake would stop to ask whether the weather conditions would allow to continue to the other side. Most place-names ending with -nen assume a plural form when inflected. For instance, the illative of "Sörnäinen
Sörnäinen
Sörnäinen is a neighbourhood in the city of Helsinki, Finland.Sörnäinen is located a little more than one kilometre north from the coastal centre of Helsinki, near the district of Hakaniemi. The east side of Sörnäinen borders the sea....
" is "Sörnäisiin" instead of singular "Sörnäiseen".
-e nouns
This set of nouns are a historic class which formerly had a consonant on the end, which has in present times been reduced to a glottal stop in most dialects. The dictionary form represents weak gradation, and each word has two stems, a weak grade stem in which the final glottal stop assimilates (used for the partitive singular), and strong grade vowel stem to which most case suffixes are applied. The vowel stem has an additional -e-: perhe 'family' -> perhee-: perheessä, perheellä, etc.; which represents the historical loss of a medial consonant which is sometimes found in dialects as an -h- (ex. ruostet 'rust' -> ruostehena).
The weak grade stem, which is found in the 'dictionary' form results from another historic change in which a final consonant has changed to a glottal stop. This is important to word inflection, because the partitive ending is suffixed directly onto this stem, resulting in the glottal stop assimilating to a -t-. Otherwise, other case endings are suffixed on to the strong grade/vowel stem.
| -e nouns | |
|---|---|
| huone 'room' | laite 'device' |
| kaksi huonetta 'two rooms' |
kaksi laitetta 'two devices' |
| huoneet 'rooms' |
laitteet' 'devices' |
| huoneessa 'in the room' |
laitteessa 'in the device' |
| huoneeseen 'into the room' |
laitteeseen 'into the device' |
More of this phenomenon is discussed in Finnish Phonology: Sandhi.
Adjectives
AdjectiveAdjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s in Finnish are inflected in exactly the same way as nouns, and an adjective must agree in number and case with the noun it is modifying.
For example, here are some adjectives:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'iso' | 'big' |
| 'pieni' | 'small' |
| 'punainen' | 'red' |
And here are some examples of adjectives inflected to agree with nouns:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'iso>n talo|n edessä | 'in front of the big house' |
| 'kaksi pien>tä talo|a' | 'two small houses' |
| 'punaise>ssa talo|ssa' | 'in the red house' |
Notice that the adjectives undergo the same sorts of stem changes when they are inflected as nouns do.
Comparative formation
The comparative of the adjective is formed by adding '-mpi' to the inflecting stem. For example:| Finnish | English | Finnish | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| 'iso' | 'big' | 'iso>mpi' | 'bigger' |
| 'pieni' | 'small' | 'piene>mpi' | 'smaller' |
| 'punainen' | 'red' | 'punaise>mpi' | 'redder' |
Since the comparative adjective is still an adjective, it must be inflected to agree with the noun it modifies. To make the inflecting stem of the comparative, the '-mpi' ending loses its final 'i'. If the syllable context calls for a weak consonant, the '-mp-' becomes '-mm-'. Then '-a-' is added before the actual case ending (or '-i-' in plural). This should become clear with a few examples:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'iso>mma|n talo|n edessä' | 'in front of the bigger house' |
| 'kaksi piene>mpä|ä talo|a' | 'two smaller houses' |
| 'punaise>mma|ssa talo|ssa' | 'in the redder house' |
| 'punaise>mmi|ssa taloi|ssa' | 'in the redder houses' |
Superlative formation
The superlative of the adjective is formed by adding '-in' to the inflecting stem. For example:| Superlative formation | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Finnish | English | Finnish | English |
| 'iso' | 'big' | 'iso>in' | 'biggest' |
| 'punainen' | 'red' | 'punais>in' | 'reddest' |
Note that because the superlative marker vowel is an 'i', the same kind of changes can occur with vowel stems as happen in verb imperfects, and noun inflecting plurals:
| Finnish | English | Finnish | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| 'pieni' | 'small' | 'pienin' | 'smallest' (not *'pienein') |
Since the superlative adjective is still an adjective, it must be inflected to agree with the noun it modifies. The '-in' becomes either '-imma-' or '-impa-' (plural '-immi-' or '-impi-') depending on whether the syllable context calls for a weak or strong consonant. Here are the examples:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'iso>imma|n talo|n edessä' | 'in front of the biggest house' |
| 'kaksi pien>in|tä taloa' | 'the two smallest houses' |
| 'punais>imma|ssa talo|ssa' | 'in the reddest house' |
| 'punais>immi|ssa taloi|ssa' | 'in the reddest houses' |
Irregular forms
The most important irregular form is:| Main irregular form | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'hyvä, parempi, paras' | 'good, better, best' |
The form paree "good" is not found in standard Finnish, but can be found in the Southern Ostrobothnian dialect.
Notice also:
| More irregular forms | ||
|---|---|---|
| Finnish | Hypothetic regular | English |
| 'pitkä, pidempi ~ pitempi, pisin' | 'pitkä, *pitkempi, *pitkin' | 'long, longer, longest' |
| 'lyhyt, lyhyempi ~ lyhempi, lyhin' | 'lyhyt, lyhyempi, lyhyin' | 'short, shorter, shortest' (although the standard forms are also used) |
There are a small number of other irregular comparative and superlative forms, such as:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'uusi, uudempi, uusin' | 'new, newer, newest' |
Where the inflecting stem is 'uude-' but the superlative is 'uusin' = 'newest'.
Postpositions and prepositions
Postpositions are more common in Finnish than prepositions. Both postpositions and prepositions can be combined with either a noun or a possessive suffix to form a P-positional phrase.Postpositions
Postpositions indicate place, time, cause, consequence or relation.In postpositional phrases the noun is usually in genitive:
| Postpositions | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'pöydän alla | under the table' |
| 'joulun jälkeen | after Christmas' |
| 'lasten tähden | for the sake of the children' |
| 'jonkun puolesta | on behalf of somebody' |
The noun (or pronoun) can be omitted when there is a possessive suffix:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| vierellä>si' | '(I) am next to (you) '(I) am by (your) side |
As with verbs, the pronoun can not be omitted in third person (singular or plural):
"Olin __ mukanasi" -> "I was with you"
vs.
"Olin hänen mukanaan" -> "I was with him/her"
"Tulen __ mukaanne" -> "I will come with you (plural or polite)"
vs.
"Tulen heidän mukanaan" -> "I will come with them"
Prepositions
There are few important prepositions in Finnish. In prepositional phrases the noun is always in the partitive:| Prepositions | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| ennen joulua | before Christmas |
| ilman sinua | without you |
Some postpositions can also be used as prepositions:
| Prepositions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Finnish | Equal Finnish | English |
| kylän keskellä | keskellä kylää | in the middle of the village |
Verb forms
Finnish verbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s are usually divided into seven groups depending on the stem type. All seven types have the same set of endings, but the stems undergo (slightly) different changes when inflected.
There are very few irregular verbs in Finnish. In fact, only 'olla' = 'to be' has two irregular forms on "is" and ovat "are (pl.)"; other forms follow from the stem ole–/ol–; e.g. olet ← ole+t "you are", olkoon ← ol+koon "let it be". A handful of verbs, including 'nähdä' = 'to see', 'tehdä' = 'to do/make', and 'juosta' = 'to run' have rare consonant mutation patterns which are not derivable from the infinitive.
Finnish does not have a separate verb for possession. Possession is indicated in other ways, mainly by genitives and existential clause
Existential clause
Existential clauses are clauses that indicate only an existence. In English, they are formed with the dummy subject construction with "there", e.g. "There are boys in the yard". Many languages do not require a dummy subject, e.g. Finnish, where the sentence Pihalla on poikia is literally "On the...
s. For animate possessors, the adessive case is used with 'olla', for example 'koiralla on häntä' = 'the dog has a tail' - literally 'on the dog is a tail', or in English grammar, "There is a tail on the dog". This is similar to Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
and Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
forms such as "There is a hunger on me".
Tense-aspect forms
Finnish verbs have present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect tenseGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
-aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
forms.
- Present (nonpast): corresponds to English present and future tense forms. For the latter, a time qualifier may need to be used to avoid ambiguity. The present is formed with using the personal suffixes only. For example, otan "I take" (from ottaa, "to take").
- Imperfect: actually a preteritePreteriteThe preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
, but called "imperfect" for historical reasons; corresponds to English past continuous and past simple, indicating a past action which is complete but might have been a point event, a temporally extended event, or a repeated event. The imperfect is formed with the suffix -i- in addition to the personal suffixes, e.g. otin "I took". - Perfect: corresponds to the English present perfect ("I have eaten") in most of its usages, but can carry more sense than in English of a past action with present effects. The form is Germanic of origin, and uses the verb olla "to be" in the present tense as an auxiliary verb. Personal suffixes are added to the auxiliary, while the main verb is in the -nut/-nyt participle form. For example, olen ottanut "I have taken", where ole- is the auxiliary verb stem, -n is the personal suffix for "I", otta- is the stem for the main verb, and -nut is the participle marker.
- Pluperfect: corresponds to the English past perfect ("I had visited") in its usage. Similarly to perfect, the verb olla is used in the past tense as an auxiliary verb. For example, olin ottanut "I had taken".
Voices
Finnish has two possible verb voices: active and passive. The active voice corresponds with the active voice of English, but the Finnish passive voice has some important differences from the English passive voice.Passive voice
The Finnish passive is unipersonal, that is, it only appears in one form regardless of who is understood to be performing the action. In that respect, it could be described as a "fourth person", since there is no way of connecting the action performed with a particular agent (except for some nonstandard forms; see below).Consider an example: talo maalataan "the house will be painted". The time when the house is being painted could be added: talo maalataan marraskuussa "the house will be painted in November". The colour and method could be added: talo maalataan punaiseksi harjalla "the house will be painted red with a brush". But nothing can be said about the person doing the painting; there is no simple way to say "the house will be painted by Jim". There is a calque
Calque
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
, evidently from Swedish, toimesta "by the action of", that can be used to introduce the agent: Talo maalataan Jimin toimesta, approximately "The house will be painted by the action of Jim". This type of expression is considered prescriptively incorrect, but it may be found wherever direct translations from Swedish, English, etc. are made, especially in legal texts, and has traditionally been a typical feature of Finnish "officialese". An alternative form, passive + ablative, also a calque from Swedish, was once common but is now archaic.
Hence the form maalataan is the only one which is needed. Notice also that the theme is in the nominative case. Verbs which govern the partitive case continue to do so in the passive, and where the object of the action is a personal pronoun, that goes into its special accusative form: minut unohdettiin "I was forgotten". Whether the object of a passive verb should be termed the subject of the clause has been debated, but traditionally Finnish grammars have considered a passive clause to have no subject.
It can also be said that in the Finnish passive the agent is always human and never mentioned. A sentence such as the tree was blown down would translate poorly into Finnish if the passive were used, since it would suggest the image of a group of people trying to blow the tree down.
Because of its vagueness about who is performing the action, the passive can also translate the English "one does (something)", "(something) is generally done", as in sanotaan että… "they say that…"
Formation of the passive is dealt with in the article on Finnish verb conjugation
Finnish verb conjugation
Verbs in the Finnish language are usually divided into six main groups when teaching the language to non-native speakers depending on the stem type. All six types have the same set of endings, but the stems undergo different changes when inflected....
.
As first person plural
In modern colloquial Finnish, the passive form of the verb is used instead of the active first person plural in the indicative and the imperative, to the almost complete exclusion of the standard verb forms. For example, in the indicative, the standard form is me menemme ("we are going"), but the colloquial form is me mennään. Without the personal pronoun me, the passive alone replaces the first person plural imperative, as in Mennään! "Let's go!". In colloquial speech, the pronoun me cannot be omitted without confusion, unlike when using the standard forms menemme (indicative) and menkäämme (imperative).
An almost identical (though unrelated) shift has happened in French, whereby the impersonal on replaces first person plural nous.
Zero person
The so-called ”zero person” is a construct in which a verb appears in the third person singular with no subject, and the identity of the subject must be understood from the context. Typically the implied subject is either the speaker or their interlocutor, or the statement is intended in a general sense. The zero person has some similarity to the English use of the formal subject one.- Saunassa hikoilee "In the sauna, one sweats"
- Jos tulee ajoissa, saa paremman paikan "If you arrive in good time, you get a better seat"
Indicative
The indicative is the form of the verb used for making statements or asking simple questions. In the verb morphology sections, the mood referred to will be the indicative unless otherwise stated.Conditional
The conditional mood expresses the idea that the action or state expressed by the verb may or may not actually happen. As in English, the Finnish conditional is used in conditional sentences (e.g. "I would tell you if I knew") and in polite requests (e.g. "I would like some coffee").In the former case, and unlike in English, the conditional must be used in both halves of the Finnish sentence:
"ymmärtäisin jos puhuisit hitaammin" = *"I would understand if you would speak more slowly".
The characteristic morphology of the Finnish conditional is 'isi' inserted between the verb stem and the personal ending. This can result in a 'closed' syllable becoming 'open' and so trigger consonant gradation
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
:
'tiedän' = 'I know', 'tietäisin' = 'I would know'.
cf. 'haluan' = 'I want', 'haluaisin' = 'I would like'.
Conditional forms exists for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect.
Imperative
The imperative mood is used to express commands. In Finnish, there is only one tense form (the present-future). The possible variants of Finnish imperatives are:- 1st, 2nd or 3rd person
- singular or plural
- active or passive
- positive or negative
Active, 2nd person imperatives
These are the most common forms of the imperative: "Do this", "Don't do that".
The singular imperative is simply the verb's present tense without any personal ending (that is, chop the '-n' off the first person singular form):
| Active, 2nd person imperatives | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'tule!' | 'come!' |
| 'syö!' | 'eat!' |
| 'huomaa!' | 'note!' |
To make this negative, 'älä' (which is the active imperative singular 2nd person of the negative verb) is placed before the positive form:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'älä sano!' | 'don't say!' |
| 'älä mene!' | 'don't go!' |
| 'älä valehtele!' | 'don't lie!' (from 'valehdella' = 'to lie', type II) |
To form the plural, add '-kaa' or '-kää' to the verb's stem:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'tulkaa!' | 'come!' |
| 'juokaa!' | 'drink!' |
| 'mitatkaa!' | 'measure!' (from 'mitata' = 'to measure', type IV) |
To make this negative, 'älkää' (which is the active imperative present plural 2nd person of the negation verb) is placed before the positive form and the suffix '-ko' or '-kö' is added to the verb stem:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'älkää sanoko!' | 'don't say!' |
| 'älkää menkö!' | 'don't go!' |
| 'älkää tarjotko!' | 'don't offer!' |
Note that 2nd person plural imperatives can also be used as polite imperatives when referring to one person.
The Finnish language has no simple equivalent to the English "please". The Finnish equivalent is to use either 'ole hyvä' or 'olkaa hyvä' = 'be good', but it is generally omitted. Politeness is normally conveyed by tone of voice, facial expression, and use of conditional verbs and partitive nouns. For example, voisitteko means "could you", in the polite plural, and is used much like English "Could you..." sentences: voisitteko auttaa "could you help me, please?"
Also, familiar (and not necessarily so polite) expressions can be added to imperatives, e.g. menes, menepä, menehän. These are hard to translate exactly, but extensively used by Finnish speakers themselves. Menes implies expectation, that is, it has been settled already and requires no discussion; menepä has the -pa which indicates insistence, and -hän means approximated "indeed".
Passive imperatives
| Passive imperatives | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| tehtäköön | let (sth) be done |
| älköön tehtäkö | let (sth) not be done |
| olkoon tehty | let (sth) have been done |
| älköön olko tehty | let (sth) not have been done |
3rd person imperatives
| 3rd person imperatives | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'olkoon' | 'let it (him, her) be' |
| 'tehkööt' | 'let them do' |
| 'älköön unohtako' | 'let him not forget', 'he better not forget' |
| 'älkööt unohtako' | 'let them not forget' |
1st person plural imperatives
| 1st person plural imperatives | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'menkäämme' | 'let's go' |
| 'älkäämme tehkö' | 'let us not do', 'we better not do' |
The 1st person imperative sounds archaic, and a form resembling the passive indicative is often used instead: 'mennään!' = 'let's go!'
Optative
The optative mood is a variant of the imperative mood. It expresses hopes or wishes. Archaic and/or poetic. It is not used in normal language.| Optative | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'ollos' | 'would that it were' |
Potential
The potential mood is used to express that the action or state expressed by the verb is likely but not certain. It is relatively rare in modern Finnish, especially in speech. Most commonly it is used in news reports and in official written proposals in meetings. It has only the present tense and perfect. The potential has no specific counterpart in English, but can be translated by adding "probably" to the verb.The characteristic morphology of the Finnish conditional is -ne- inserted between the verb stem and the personal ending. Furthermore, continuants assimilate progressively (pes+ne- → pesse-) and stops regressively (korjat+ne- → korjanne-). The verb "lie" always replaces the verb "olla" "to be" in the potential mood, e.g. the potential of on haettu "has been fetched" is lienee haettu "may have been fetched".
Potential forms exists for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect:
| Potential | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| |
I may be / it's possible that I am |
| |
[s]he may wash / she is [likely] to wash |
| |
[s]he may fix / she is [likely] to fix |
| |
it is possible that they are mourning/ will mourn |
| |
it will probably be washed (by smb.) |
| |
you may have seen |
| |
possibly may not have been given (by smb.) |
In some dialects 'tullee' ('may come') is an indicative form verb ('tulee' = 'comes') but grammatically it is a potential verb.
Eventive
No longer used in modern Finnish, the eventive mood is used in the KalevalaKalevala
The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
. It is a combination of the potential and the conditional. It is also used in some dialects of Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
.
| Eventive | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'kävelleisin' | 'I probably would walk' |
First infinitive
The first infinitive short form of a verb is the "dictionary entry" form. It is not unmarked; its overt marking is always the suffix -a or -ä, though sometimes there are modifications (which may be regarded as stem or ending modifications depending on your personal preference).| Finnish infinitive | English infinitive |
|---|---|
| |
to say |
| |
to know |
| |
to read |
However, when the stem is itself a single syllable or is of two or more syllables ending in -oi, the suffix is -da.
| Finnish infinitive | English infinitive |
|---|---|
| |
to bring |
| |
to vacuum |
If the stem ends in one the consonants l,r,n, then the final consonant is repeated before adding the infinitive -a or -ä. In the case of a stem ending in consonant s, the s does not repeat but becomes t before the infinitive -a or -ä. (These consonant stems take a link vowel -e-when forming the present tense or -i- when forming the imperfect, e.g. pestä - pesen - pesin "to wash - I wash - I washed"). Stems ending -ts followed by a link vowel in the present or imperfect drop the s from the stem before adding the infinitive -a or -a marker
| Finnish infinitive | English infinitive |
|---|---|
| |
to go |
| |
to be |
| |
to bite |
| |
to wash |
| |
to mention |
Some verbs have so called "alternating stems" or multiple stems with weak-strong consonant gradation
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
between them. It depends on the verb if the infinitive is in the strong or weak form. These have long vowel stems in the present/future tense, which already ends with -a or ä-. These verbs drop the a which is present in the present tense stem and replace it with -t in the first infinitive stem followed by the standard -a or -ä first infinitive marker. The a dropping to t weakens a preceding KPT consonant so that a weak grade is seen in the first infinitive form. This often creates difficulties for the non-Finn when trying to determine the infinitive (in order to access the translation in a dictionary) when encountering an inflected form. Inflected forms are generally strong except when the stem ending contains a double consonant and there is only a single vowel separating this from the last stem KPT consonant.
| Inflected Finnish | English | Finnish infinitive | English infinitive | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| minä putoan | I am falling | |
to fall down | putoa- strong grade |
| minä putosin | I fell down | |
to fall down | putosi- strong grade |
| olen pudonnut | I have fallen down | |
to fall down | pudon- weak grade (nn forces weak grade) |
| he kokoavat | they'll assemble | to assemble | kokoa- strong grade | |
| me kokoamme | we'll assemble | to assemble | kokoa- strong grade (mm does not cause weakness due to preceding diphthong) |
Some verbs lose elements of their stems when forming the first infinitive. Some verbs stem have contracted endings in the first infinitive. Stems ending -ene/-eni in the present/imperfect drop the n and replace it with t, which may cause weakness in the infinitive stem. The contracted infinitive ending -eta/-etä have -itse/-itsi verbs take the infiniitve stem -ita/itä. These contracted verbs may also be subject to consonant weakening when forming the infinitive
e.g. mainita to mention has the longer conjugated stem mainits- as in mainitsen huomenna, että... I'll mention tomorrow that...
e.g. paeta to flee has the longer conjugated stem paken- as in me pakenimme Afganistanista we fled from Afghanistan
The first infinitive long form is the translative plus a possessive suffix (rare in spoken language).
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| |
'...([s]he) phoned in order to say...' |
| |
(idiomatic use:) 'as far as we know' |
| |
' in order for me to be able to read' |
The first infinitive only has active form.
Second infinitive
The second infinitive is used to express aspects of actions relating to the time when an action takes place or the manner in which an action happens. In equivalent English phrases these time aspects can often be expressed using 'when', 'while' or 'whilst' and the manner aspects using the word 'by' or else the gerund, which is formed by adding "ing" to English verb to express manner.It is recognizable by the letter 'e' in place of the usual "a" or "ä" as the infinitive marker. It is only ever ever used with one of two case makers; the inessive "ssa/ssä" indicating time or the instructive "n" indicating manner. Finnish phrases using the second infinitive can often be rendered in English using the gerund.
The second infinitive is formed by replacing the final 'a'/'ä' of the first infinitive with 'e' then adding the appropriate inflectional ending. If the vowel before the 'a'/'ä' is already an 'e', this becomes 'i' (see example from 'lukea' = 'to read').
The cases in which the second infinitive can appear are:
| Second infinitive | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| Active Inessive (while someone is in the act of) | |
| |
'when doing' |
| |
'when saying' |
| Active Inessive + Possessive Suffix (while themselves in the act of) | |
| |
'while he is/was reading' |
| |
'while you are/were saying' |
| Passive Inessive (when or while in the act of something being done) | |
| |
'when saying' |
| |
'when doing' |
| |
'when reading' |
| Active Instructive (by means of/ while in the act of) | |
| |
'by doing' |
| |
'by saying' |
| |
'by reading' |
| |
'she came into the room crying' |
The inessive form is mostly seen in written forms of language because spoken forms usually express the same idea in longer form using two clauses linked by the word kun (when). The instructive is even rarer and mostly exists nowadays in set phrase
Set phrase
A set phrase or fixed phrase is a phrase whose parts are fixed, even if the phrase could be changed without harming the literal meaning. This is because a set phrase is a culturally accepted phrase. A set phrase does not necessarily have any literal meaning in and of itself. Set phrases may...
s (for example 'toisin sanoen' = 'in other words').
If the person performing the action of the verb is the same as the person in the equivalent relative clause, then the verb uses the appropriate personal possessive suffix on the verb for the person. If the person in the main clause is different to that in the relative clause then this is indicated by with the person in the genitive and the verb is unmarked for person.
| Second infinitive inessive | Equivalent kun phrase | English translation |
|---|---|---|
| ollessani Englannissa kävin monessa pubissa | kun olin Englannissa, kävin monessa pubissa | when I was in England, I went into many pubs |
| ollessaan Englannissa he kävivät monessa pubissa | kun he olivat Englannissa, he kävivät monessa pubissa | when they were in England, they went into many pubs |
| Jaakon ollessa Englannissa Laura meni Espanjaan | Kun Jaakko oli Englannissa, Laura meni Espanjaan | when Jaakko was in England, Laura went to Spain |
Third infinitive
This corresponds to the English gerund ("verb + ing" form), and behaves as a noun in Finnish in that it can be inflected, but only in a limited number of cases. It is used to refer to a particular act or occasion of the verb's action.The third infinitive is formed by taking the verb stem with its consonant in the strong form, then adding 'ma' followed by the case inflection.
The cases in which the third infinitive can appear are:
| Case | Finnish | English |
|---|---|---|
| inessive | 'lukemassa' | '(in the act of) reading' |
| Example: 'hän on lukemassa kirjastossa' | '[s]he's reading in the library' | |
| elative | 'lukemasta' | '(from just having been) reading' |
| illative | 'lukemaan' | '(about to be / with the intention of) reading' |
| adessive | 'lukemalla' | '(by) reading' |
| abessive | 'lukematta' | '(without) reading' |
A rare and archaic form of the third infinitive which occurs with the verb pitää:
| Case | Finnish | English |
|---|---|---|
| instructive | 'sinun ei pidä lukeman' | 'you must not read' |
The third infinitive instructive is usually replaced with the first infinitive short form in modern Finnish.
Note that the '-ma' form without a case ending is called the 'agent participle' (see 'participles' below). The agent participle can also be inflected in all cases, producing forms which look similar to the third infinitive.
Fourth infinitive
The fourth infinitive has the stem ending -MINEN and indicates obligation, but it is quite rare in Finnish today. This is because there are other words like pitää and täytyy that can convey this meaning.For example
| Fourth Infinitive | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'Sinne ei ole menemistä' | 'There is no going there' i.e. 'One must not go there' |
Though not an infinitive, a much more common -MINEN verbal stem ending is the noun construct which gives the name of the activity described by the verb. This is rather similar to the English verbal noun -ING form, and therefore as a noun, this form can inflect just like any other noun.
| -MINEN noun formation | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'lukeminen on hauskaa' | 'reading is fun' |
| 'vihaan lukemista' | 'I hate reading' |
| 'nautin lukemisesta' | 'I enjoy reading' |
Fifth infinitive
This is a fairly rare form which has the meaning 'on the point of ...ing / just about to ...'| Fifth infinitive | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'olin lukemaisillani' | 'I was just about to read' |
Verb conjugation
For full details of how verbs are conjugatedGrammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
in Finnish, please refer to the Finnish verb conjugation
Finnish verb conjugation
Verbs in the Finnish language are usually divided into six main groups when teaching the language to non-native speakers depending on the stem type. All six types have the same set of endings, but the stems undergo different changes when inflected....
article.
Participles
Finnish verbs have past and present participleParticiple
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
s, both with passive and active forms, and an 'agent' participle. Participles can be used in different ways than ordinary adjectives and they can have an object.
Past passive participle
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'lähde>tty|ä|si kotiin' | 'after you went home' [pass. II participle sg. ess.+ poss.suff.] |
Past active participle
Basically this is formed by removing the infinitive ending and adding '-nut/nyt' (depending on vowel harmonyVowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
) and in some cases '-lut/lyt' '-sut/syt' '-rut/ryt'. For example:
| 1st infinitive | active past participle |
|---|---|
| 'puhua' | 'puhunut' |
| 'syödä' | 'syönyt' |
However, depending on the verb's stem type, assimilation can occur with the consonant of the stem ending.
In type II verbs, and 'n' 'l' 'r' or 's' in the stem ending is assimilated to the consonant in the participle ending (as also happens in formation of the first infinitve, although -s stem endings take an extra t in the first infinitive)
| 1st Infinitve | Stem | Active past participle |
|---|---|---|
| 'mennä' | ('men-') | 'mennyt' |
| 'pestä | ('pes-') | 'pessyt' |
| 'harjoitella' | ('harjoittel-') | 'harjoitellut' |
The assimilation causes the final consonant cluster to be strengthened which in turn can weaken a strong cluster if one exists in the stem. See harjoitella above.
In verbs of types IV-VI, the 't' at the end of the stem is assimilated to the 'n':
| 1st Inifinitve | To | To |
|---|---|---|
| 'haluta' | ('halut-') | 'halunnut' |
| 'tarvita' | ('tarvit-') | 'tarvinnut' |
| 'rohjeta' | ('rohjet-') | 'rohjennut' |
Present passive participle
| Present passive participle | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'minun on nuku>tta|va' | 'I must sleep' [pass. I participle sg. nom.] |
Present active participle
| Present active participle | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'nukku>va koira' | 'sleeping dog' |
| 'häikäise>vä valo' | 'blinding light' |
| 'olin luke>v|i|na|ni' | 'I pretended to be reading' [act. I participle pl. essive + poss. suff.] |
Agent participle
The agent participle is formed in a similar way as the third infinitive (see above), adding -ma or -mä to the verb stem. It allows the property of being a target of an action to be formatted as an adjective-like attribute. Like adjectives, it can be inflected in all cases. For example, ihmisen tekemä muodostelma "a man-made formation". The party performing the action is indicated by the use of genitive, or by a possessive suffix. This is reflected in English, too: ihmisen tekemä — "of man's making", or kirjoittamani kirja "book of my writing". For example:| Agent participle | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'tytön lukema kirja' | the book read by the girl |
| 'tytön lukemaa kirjaa' | (partitive) the book read by the girl |
| 'tytön lukemassa kirjassa' | in the book read by the girl |
| etc. | |
It is not required for the action to be in the past, although the examples above are. Rather, the construction simply specifies the subject, the object and the action, with no reference to time. For an example in the future, consider: huomenna käyttämänänne välineenä on -- "tomorrow, as the instrument you will be using is --". Here, käyttämä "that which is used" describes, i.e. is an attribute to väline "instrument". (Notice the case agreement between käyttämä-nä and välinee-nä.) The suffix -nne "your" specifies the person "owning" the action, i.e. who does it, thus käyttämänne is "that which was used by you(pl.)", and käyttämänänne is "as that which was used by you".
It is also possible to give the actor with a pronoun, e.g. sinun käyttämäsi "that which was used by you". In standard language, the pronoun sinun "your" is not necessary, but the possessive suffix is. In inexact spoken usage, this goes vice versa; the possessive suffix is optional, and used typically only for the second person singular, e.g. sun käyttämäs.
Present indicative
Verbs are negated by using a negative verbNegative verb
A negative verb is a type of auxiliary that is used to form the negative of a main verb. The main verb itself has no personal endings, while the negative verb takes the inflection...
in front of the stem from the present tense (in its 'weak' consonant form). This verb form used with the negative verb is called a connegative
Connegative
The connegative is a word form used in negative clauses. In the grammar of French, it refers to an obligatory negation marker such as pas in Je ne sais pas "I don't know". In the grammar of Finnish, it refers to a verb form consisting of an endingless stem used with a negative verb, as for example...
.
| Present indicative | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finnish | English | Finnish | English | |
| Singular | ||||
| 'tiedän' | 'I know' | → | 'en tiedä' | 'I don't know' |
| 'tiedät' | 'you know' | → | 'et tiedä' | 'you don't know' |
| 'tietää' | '(s)he knows' | → | 'ei tiedä' | '(s)he doesn't know' |
| Plural | ||||
| 'tiedämme' | 'we know' | → | 'emme tiedä' | 'we don't know' |
| 'tiedätte' | 'you know' | → | 'ette tiedä' | 'you don't know' |
| 'tietävät' | 'they know' | → | 'eivät tiedä' | 'they don't know' |
Note that the inflection is on the negative verb, not on the main verb, and that the endings are regular apart from the 3rd person forms.
Present passive
The negative is formed from the third-person singular "negative verb" - 'ei' - and the present passive with the final '-an' removed:| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'ei puhuta' | 'it is not spoken' |
| 'ei tiedetä' | 'it is not known' |
Imperfect indicative
The negative is formed from the appropriate part of the negative verb followed by the nominative form (either singular or plural depending on the number of the verb's subject) of the active past participle. So for 'puhua' the pattern is:| Imperfect indicative | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| Singular | |
| 'en puhunut' | 'I did not speak' |
| 'et puhunut' | 'you did not speak' |
| 'ei puhunut' | '([s]he) did not speak' |
| Plural | |
| 'emme puhuneet' | 'we did not speak' |
| 'ette puhuneet' | 'you did not speak' |
| 'eivät puhuneet' | 'they did not speak' |
Note one exception: when the 'te' 2nd person plural form is used in an honorific way to address one person, the singular form of the participle is used: 'te ette puhunut' = 'you (s, polite) did not speak'.
Imperfect passive
The negative is formed from the third-person singular negative verb - 'ei' - and the nominative singular form of the passive present participle (compare this with the negative of the imperfect indicative):| Imperfect passive | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'ei puhuttu' | 'it was not spoken' |
| 'ei tiedetty' | 'it was not known' |
Note that in the spoken language, this form is used for the first person plural. In this case, the personal pronoun is obligatory:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'me ei menty' | 'we did not go' |
Interrogatives (questions)
There are two main ways of forming a question - either using a specific question word, or by adding a '-ko/kö' suffix to one of the words in a sentence. A question word is placed first in the sentence, and a word with the interrogative suffix is also moved to this position:| Interrogatives (questions) | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'mikä tämä on?' | 'what is this?' |
| 'tämä on kirja' | 'this is a book' |
| 'onko tämä kirja?' | |
| 'tämäkö on kirja?' | 'is this a book?' |
| 'kirjako tämä on?' | 'is this a book?' |
| 'eikö tämä ole kirja?' | 'is this not a book?' (note the '-kö' goes on the negative verb) |
Adverbs
A very common way of forming adverbAdverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s is by adding the ending '-sti' to the inflecting form of the corresponding adjective:
| Adverbs | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'nopea, nopeasti' | 'quick, quickly' |
| 'kaunis, kauniisti' | 'beautiful, beautifully' |
| 'hidas, hitaasti' | 'slow, slowly' |
| 'helppo, helposti' | 'easy, easily' |
Adverbs are modifying verbs, not nouns, therefore they don't inflect.
Comparative formation
The comparative form of the adverb has the ending '-mmin'| Comparative formation | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'nopea, nopeasti, nopeammin' | 'quick, quickly, more quickly/faster' |
| 'kaunis, kauniisti, kauniimmin' | 'beautiful, beautifully, more beautifully' |
| 'hidas, hitaasti, hitaammin' | 'slow, slowly, more slowly' |
| 'helppo , helposti, helpommin' | 'easy, easily, more easily' |
Superlative formation
The superlative form of the adverb has the ending '-immin'.| Superlative formation | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'helppo, helposti, helpommin, helpoimmin' | 'easy, easily, more easily, most easily' |
Because of the '-i-', the stem vowel can change, similarly to superlative adjectives, or to avoid runs of three vowels:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'nopea, nopeasti, nopeammin, nopeimmin' | 'quick, quickly, more quickly/faster, fastest' |
| 'kaunis, kauniisti, kauniimmin, kauneimmin' | 'beautiful, beautifully, more beautifully, most beautifully' |
| 'hidas, hitaasti, hitaammin, hitaimmin' | 'slow, slowly, more slowly, most slowly' |
Irregular forms
There are a number of irregular adverbs, including:| Irregular forms | |
|---|---|
| Finnish | English |
| 'hyvä, hyvin, paremmin, parhaiten' | 'good, well, better, best' |
Numbers
Please refer to the separate numbers article for details of how numbers work in Finnish.Word order
Since Finnish is an inflected language, word order within sentences can be much freer than, for example, English. In English the strong subject-verb-object order typically indicates the function of a noun as either subject or object although some English structures allow this to be reversed. In Finnish sentences, however, the role of the noun is determined not by word order or sentence structure as in English but by case markings which indicate subject and object.The most usual neutral order, however, is subject-verb-object. But usually what the speaker or writer is talking about is at the head of the sentence.
| Finnish | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 'koira puri miestä' | 'the dog bit the man' | we are talking of the dog and what it did |
| 'miestä puri koira' | 'the man was bitten by a/the dog' | we are talking about the man and what it was that bit him, e.g. not a snake |
| 'koira miestä puri' | 'the dog bit the man ' | we are talking of the dog's actions in a somewhat poetic form |
Here koira, dog is in the nominative form but the word expressing man, mies is marked as object by the case marked form miestä. This sentence is a bald statement of fact.
Changing the word order changes the emphasis slightly but not the fundamental meaning of the sentence.
| Finnish | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 'minulla on rahaa' | 'I have money' | a bald statement of fact |
| 'rahaa minulla on' | 'money is something I do have' | although I may not have something else |
| 'rahaa on minulla' | 'The money is with me' | I am telling you where the money is |
| 'minulla rahaa on' | 'I've definitely got (the) money' | I am confirming that I do have (the) money |
| 'on minulla rahaa' | 'Yes, I do have (the) money' | if having money has been questioned |
minulla here is the word minä (I) in a case form ending -lla which when used with the verb olla (to be, expressed here in the form 'on') expresses ownership. This is because Finnish does not have a verb form equivalent of the English word 'have'. Minulla is not considered the subject.
and finally, a classic example:
| Finnish | Translation |
|---|---|
| 'minä olen valtio' | 'I am the state' (matter-of-fact) |
| 'valtio olen minä' | ‘L'État, c'est moi’ (French - attributed to Louis XIV) |
Besides the word-order implications of turning a sentence into a question, there are some other circumstances where word-order is important:
Existential sentences
These are sentences which introduce a new subject - they often begin 'there is' or 'there are' in English.| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'huoneessa on sänky' | 'there is a bed in the room' |
The location of the thing whose existence is being stated comes first, followed by its stative verb, followed by the thing itself. Note how this is unlike the normal English equivalent, though English can also use the same order:
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'siellä seisoi mies' | '(in/out) there stood a man' |
In the following example, note what happens to the verb in the English and Finnish versions when the meaning is plural.
| Finnish | English |
|---|---|
| 'huoneessa on sänky' | 'there is a bed in the room' |
| 'huoneessa on sänkyjä' | 'there are beds in the room' |
Note that the verb remains singular in Finnish existential statements when declaring more than one item. The English construction moves the verb to a plural form because English follows the beds as subject whereas the Finnish construction treats the beds as objects (it is essentially ADVERB-STATIVE VERB-OBJECT)
See also
- Finnish
- Finnish phonologyFinnish phonologyUnless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard Finnish, which is based on the dialect spoken in Häme Province in central south Finland. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such as the reporters and the news presenters on television.-Vowels:Phonetically, the...
- Finnish numerals