Personal pronouns

Standard and spoken forms

The following table shows the personal pronouns in standard Finnish and in common spoken language. In addition to the nominative form, the inflection stem used in most other forms is given. Various dialect forms, such as the Eastern Finland mie and sie for minä and sinä, are used, too, even in urban environments.

For example, “I love you” is rakastan sinua (or, colloquially, mä rakastan sua), since the word for “you” is in the partitive form, formed from the stem sinu-.

The words se and ne used as 3rd person pronouns in spoken language are classified as demonstrative pronouns in grammars. Their inflection is described in the next section. That section also describes the use of tämä and nämä instead of hän and he in certain contexts.

Apart from the irregular stem variation described in the table above, the inflection of personal pronouns is mostly regular. However, the genitives of me, te, and he have the exceptional case suffix dän in addition to the plural suffix i: meidän, teidän, heidän. Moreover, the personal pronouns have accusative forms (minut etc.).

For clarity and for quick reference, the inflection is also presented in the following tables.

Inflection of minä and sinä

The following table shows the case forms of minä (mä). The inflection of sinä (sä) is the same. In most forms, the standard and colloquial forms differ only in the presence or absence of the -in- part, except in the illative.

Inflection of hän

Inflection of me, te and he

The following table shows the case forms of me. The inflection of te and he is the same.

The 2nd person singular pronouns

In 2nd person singular, the form Te (usually capitalized) is a polite form, often used when talking to someone that you do not know personally and who is not very young.

In older language, the use of Te (called teitittely in Finnish) was widespread and often required by social norms. The situation is complicated now, and it is not rare to hear even sinä and Te mixed when talking or writing to a person. Using sinä (called sinuttelu) is increasingly common, partly due to the influence of similar changes in Swedish usage. The issue is sensitive. The use of sinä in official letters by state administration has even been called unconstitutional, but the Parliamentary Ombudsman decided that it is acceptable.

The use of sinä vs. Te also affects possessive suffixes, si vs. nne, and person suffixes of verbs, t vs. tte. For example, when asking “Where did you leave your car?”, you could say Minne jätit autosi? when using sinä form of address and Minne jätitte autonne? when using Te. The pronouns themselves do not appear here, as they are implied by the verb forms.

It is best to start with Te when in doubt but stay tuned to switching to sinä as soon as you have noticed that you are being addressed as sinä. However, among young people and usually between colleagues at work, sinä is normally used, and Te might sound rather odd. In shops, using sinä when addressing a customer is common, though frowned upon by some.

Earlier, people used to make sinunkaupat (an agreement to call each other sinä, also implying being on a first-name basis), but this is not common any more. Instead, people usually just adopt the more informal language.

In the old days, a third form of address was in use: the 3rd person singular was used, with a suitable title as the subject, e.g. Haluaako rouva vielä jotain muuta? (literally: Does the lady want something else?). This sounds very dated, but can still be heard.

Often the choice between sinä and Te can be avoided by using sentences that do not refer to a person in any way. For example, instead of asking Haluatteko/Haluatko vielä jotain muuta? we can ask neutrally Tuleeko vielä jotain muuta? (Will there be anything else?)

A different method, in rather common use, is to use fourth person verb forms when applicable. For example, instead of saying Ota paita pois or Ottakaa paita pois (Take off the shirt), a doctor might say Otetaan paita pois, which leaves the agent formally unspecified, but the context makes things clear.

The 3rd person pronouns in spoken language

In common spoken Finnish, the 3rd person pronouns (hän, he) are normally not used. Instead, the pronouns se and ne (described in the next section), cor­re­spond­ing to English “it” and “they”, are in use. However, hän or he may be used for politeness or in an attempt at being more formal, even when otherwise using spoken language forms.

In literary Finnish, it is essential to distinguish between a person and other things in the use of 3rd person pronouns (hän versus se, he versus ne). In spoken language, the situation has always been more complicated. Although common spoken language rarely uses hän, in popular and dialectal language, hän appears both as referring to people and as referring to animals and even things.

Even in common spoken language, hän is used to refer to things in phrases like tiedä häntä, väliäpä hällä, hällä väliä, which all mean more or less “it doesn’t matter” or “who cares”.

Implications of the lack of he/she distinction

Obviously, the lack of distinction between sexes in the 3rd person singular pronoun causes some problems, especially in translations. The spoken language usage where se stands for “he”, “she”, and “it” can make expressions even more ambiguous.

We normally mention a person by name or some other denotation, such as mies (man) or nainen (woman), when a pronoun would be ambiguous in practice. In translations, it can be difficult to do such things without losing too much of the style of the original. In spoken language, nouns like mies or nainen in such usage are normally preceded by the determinative pronoun se, used in an article-like manner. E.g. “The he said…” might be translated as Sitten mies sanoi… to avoid ambiguity; in speech, we might say Sit se mies sano. Often it is more natural to use a proper name, e.g. Sitten John sanoi…

Although Finns may thus use people’s names instead of pronouns more often than in English, it needs to be said here that in conversations, it is not at all common to mention the name of the person you are talking to. Things are changing, but we still mostly use just the personal pronoun, or maybe just an inclined form of a verb, e.g. Voitko sä sanoo… (Can you say…) or, more formally, Voitko sanoa… (or even Voitteko sanoa…, which corresponds to the use of Te). It would not be incorrect to say John, voitko sanoa… (John, can you say…), it’s just less common.

Use of se, joka instead of hän, joka

When a 3rd person pronoun would be accompanied with a relative clause, se is normally used instead of hän and ne instead of he, even in standard language. Example: Se, joka ei syö lihaa, voi ottaa kasvislasagnea (One who does not eat meat can have the vegetable lasagna). In such contexts, Hän, joka… would be incorrect; it sometimes appears as a hypercorrectism, since normally the use of se about people is colloquial.

However, if the pronoun in such a context refers to a specific person or specific persons, rather than “anyone”, the pronoun hän or he is used in standard language. This means that the relative clause is non-restrictive. Such expressions are rare and somewhat artificial. Example: hän, jonka me kaikki hyvin tunnemme (he, whom we all know well).

Use of genitives of personal pronouns

Instead of possessive pronouns like “my” and “your”, Finnish uses genitive forms of personal pronouns. They all end with the usual genitive suffix n but are otherwise somewhat irregularly formed. See section Possessive suffixes for the use of suffixes instead of or in addition to these pronouns.

Omission of personal pronouns

In literary language, when the predicate is in a 1st or 2nd person form, it is normal to omit the subject. Thus, we write sanon, sanot, sanomme, or sanotte instead of minä sanon, sinä sanot, me sanomme, or te sanotte. It is possible to use a personal pronoun in such a context, but then there is emphasis on the person. For example, Asumme Espoossa is a normal literary way of saying “We live in Espoo”, and Me asumme Espoossa would imply emphasis, in practice contrast with some other people who live elsewhere.

On the other hand, in common spoken language, a mere sanon without a personal pronoun would sound somewhat odd. Normally one says mä sanon, mie sanon, or something similar, using a colloquial or dialectal personal pronoun.

The 3rd person pronouns are normally not omitted, except in a subordinate clause when its subject is the same as in the main clause. Thus, we can write Hän sanoi, että tulee myöhemmin (He said that he will come later). The subject of the subordinate clause could also be omitted if the subject of the main clause is a noun rather than a pronoun, e.g. Johtaja tulee heti kun voi (The director will come as soon as he can). Such omissions even make the sentences somewhat easier to understand, since if hän is present, the question may arise who is referred to. In spoken language, the pronoun is normally not omitted in such contexts; instead, we say Se sano että se tulee myöhemmin and Johtaja tulee heti kun se voi (or … heti kun hän voi, since in a context like this, hän may well be used instead of se in speech).

Use of sun and mun as adverbs

The colloquial genitive forms sun and mun are sometimes used as adverbs, even in literary language. In the phrases sitä sun tätä and less common sitä mun tätä, they act more or less as conjunctions, so that the meaning is “this and that, things of different kinds”. They act as strengthening adverbs or just fill words in expressions like Voi sun pojat! = Voi pojat! (Oh boys!).