The 4th person

The meaning of the 4th person

We have used the term “4th person” in this book. The term you see most often in Finnish grammars and textbooks is “passive”, or passiivi in Finnish. Many grammaticians regard the term “4th person” as unsuitable, since these forms differ in many ways from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, in their form, usage, and effect on syntax. However, other terms are more seriously misleading.

The reason for avoiding the term “passive” for these forms in this book is that they are not at all the same as the passive voice in English or in other Indo-European languages. Rather, a form like sanotaan expresses that the agent is personal (a human being, or human beings) but otherwise not specified by the verb form. Often its meaning is close to “one says” or to “you say” when using “you” in a generic sense, referring to anyone, but the 4th person forms have rather varying other uses, too.

We can say that the 4th person can be used instead of any other person form, with some change in style or tone. For example, consider the 4th person form juodaan, from juoda “to drink”. We can say Juodaan kahvia, meaning “Let’s have coffee”, but also Juodaanko Italiassa paljon kahvia?, “Do they drink a lot of coffee in Italy?”, and if a foreigner says Suomessa juodaan paljon kahvia to a Finn, he is (quite correctly) using the 4th person in the role of 2nd person plural (You drink a lot of coffee in Finland). It would be grammatically correct to say alternatively Te juotte paljon kahvia Suomessa, but that would have a different tone: it would emphasize that the speaker is not Finnish.

A 4th person form cannot have a subject, except in common colloquial use, where me sanotaan corresponds to the literary sanomme. We can say that 4th person forms can have varying implied subjects, but an explicit subject is not allowed in standard language and not used even in spoken language except for me (we).

The use of the 4th person often helps us to avoid referring to people too directly. It is often used to avoid speaking about oneself directly. We can say Oletetaan, että instead of Oletan, että, much like it is common to say “Let us assume that” rather than “I assume that”. The 4th person is also often used when giving instructions or even commands. For example, Otetaanpa tämä lääke “please take this medicine” uses the indicative mood 4th person form otetaan (“one takes”) with the pa suffix (see Word-like suffixes), avoiding the use of the imperative and the choice between two alternative forms (ota and ottakaa).

Similarly, if you buy coffee in a shop, you might hear the question Otetaanko mukaan? (Will this be taken along?). This avoids the choice between the two forms of the second person, between sinä and te, i.e. between Otatko mukaan? and Otatteko mukaan?

The following table demonstrates how a 4th person form can be associated with any of the six other persons, i.e. used instead of any other person form.

Translating 4th person forms

The 4th person forms require different strategies in translation, and the implied agent, or type of agent, needs to be inferred or guessed. The following situations can be distinguished:

• 4th person used for 1st person plural: use the 1st person plural (“we”) form. Depending on the meaning, we would use the indicative, e.g. Me juotiin kahvia = We had coffee, or the imperative, e.g. Nyt juodaan kahvia = Let’s have coffee.
• 4th person used for unexpressed but contextually determined people: use a subject that corresponds to that reference. E.g. Siellä juodaan kahvia = They are having coffee there.
• 4th person used for generic person: use “you”, “one”, “people”, or other generic subject, e.g. Kahvia juodaan usein enemmän kuin pitäisi = People often drink coffee more than they should.

Comparison with passive

In the English sentence “The house was built in 1980”, the predicate is in the passive voice, and “the house” is the subject. In the cor­re­spond­ing Finnish sentence Talo rakennettiin vuonna 1980, the word order is the same, and the subject talo is in the nominative, which is normally the case of a subject. However, Finnish grammars classify talo on such a sentence as the object, and there is no subject. This is obvious in sentences where the object is a personal pronoun in the accusative case, e.g. Minut hyväksyttiin (I was accepted).

In this sentence type, both English and Finnish highlight the logical object of an action (in the example: the house) by putting it first in a sentence and do not indicate the agent of the action (in the example: who built the house) at all. But the grammatical constructs used to achieve the goal are different.

The suffixes of 4th person

In the indicative mood in present tense, the 4th person form has different suffixes such as dAAn or tAAn, depending on the stem, as described in section Personal forms. In past tense and in other moods, the suffixes are longer. They can be analyzed so that the 4th person suffix consists of two parts, with the mood suffix between them. The first part is tA or ttA (with the A omitted before the past tense suffix i), and the second part is *n, i.e. the vowel before it is doubled (prolonged) and followed by n. Such “split suffixes” do not otherwise appear in Finnish. In most grammars, these forms are described so that the tA or ttA part is a “passive suffix” and only the *n part is a personal suffix.

The following table shows the 4th person forms (simple finite forms) of the verb sanoa, which has no stem variation. The forms are shown as divided into parts: stem, first part of personal suffix, tense or mood suffix, second part of personal suffix. For comparison, the 3rd person singular form is also given.

The following table shows the 4th person forms of another verb, demonstrating how the 4th person forms, unlike other person forms, are based on the consonant stem.

In speech and in informal writing, 4th person conditional forms often lack the *n part and even the i before it, e.g. sanottaisi or sanottais instead of the standard sanottaisiin. Potential forms often lack the final n, e.g. sanottanee instead of the standard sanottaneen.

Using the 4th person form for 1st person plural

As the table in section Personal forms shows, the 4th person form is also used in common spoken language instead the 1st person plural forms. For example, it is normal to say me mennään (we shall go), even though in standard written Finnish, you should write menemme instead.

Used without a personal pronoun, the 4th person form also serves as 1st person plural imperative; e.g. Mennään! means “Let’s go.” It is normally a suggestion rather than a command. Compare:

• Mennään eläintarhaan (Let’s go to the zoo)
• Me mennään eläintarhaan (We’ll go / We are going to the zoo)

In formal language, the imperative is still Menkäämme, a specific imperative form, but it is now very old-fashioned and sounds solemn or ridiculous, depending on context.

Hiding the person

The 4th person form helps to hide who is doing something, much like the passive voice is often used in English. This might be desirable, or it might be a source of misunderstandings and vagueness. Extensive use of the 4th person is common in administrative and political language—much like the passive voice is in English.

On the other hand, the 4th person may indicate the agent as irrelevant in the context, even when the agent is well known. When we say Tähän rakennetaan supermarketti (A supermarket is being built here), we are focusing on the building process and its result, not on the agents of the process. In English, we could say “They are building a supermarket here”, using “they” in generic sense, but in standard Finnish the word he (they) cannot be used that way—it would refer to some group of people mentioned earlier. (However, in speech, we might say Ne rakentaa…, using ne, the colloquial counterpart of he, in a generic sense.)

Thus, we can say that in Finnish, the 4th person is the normal way of describing actions of human beings without mentioning the agents at all, even with a pronoun. In English, the passive voice serves the same purpose. This similarility in some typical uses is one of the causes of the confusion between the 4th person and the passive voice.

Generic statements

In statements that are meant to say something that applies to anyone, or at least anyone within some group, English often uses the pronoun “you”, as in “If you want to win, you need to practice a lot”. In Finnish, we normally use just a verb, in the 3rd person singular form, with no subject, in such situations, e.g. Jos haluaa voittaa, pitää harjoitella paljon, where haluaa and pitää are are verbs without a subject. This corresponds to “If one wants to win, one needs to practice a lot”, except that the subject is omitted.

Consistently with this, if such an expression would have “your” in English, we use the 3rd person possessive suffix in Finnish, without a personal pronoun. For example, “Ten things you should never say to your kids” would be translated as Kymmenen asiaa, joita ei koskaan pidä sanoa lapsilleen.

However, in modern colloquial language, it is common to imitate the generic use of “you” as a generic expression in English and use the 2nd person: Jos sä haluut voittaa, sun pitää harjotella paljon. This is often (misleadingly) called sinä-passiivi or sä-passiivi. In some contexts, such use is natural, e.g. Jos otat, et aja (If you take [alcohol], you don’t [i.e. must not] drive).

Generic statements can also be formed by using ihminen (human being) as subject, e.g. Mitä ihminen kylvää, sitä hän myös niittää (whatever a man sows, that will he also reap). This is somewhat literary; compare with the more colloquial proverb Sitä saa, mitä tilaa (You get what you order for), using verbs without a subject.

Many generic statements could also be formulated using the 4th person forms, but that is often less natural or has a different tone. For example, Tässä puistossa nähdään keväällä monia harvinaisia kukkia (In this park, many rare flowers can be seen in spring) is somewhat more objective than Tässä puistossa näkee monia harvinaisia kukkia (In this park, one can see many rare flowers n spring) In a sense, the former talks about flowers, the latter says what a (generic) person can do. Such differences are often small or nonexistent; there is really no difference between the 4th person expression Tästä voidaan päätellä, että (From this it can be deduced that…) and the 4rd person expression Tästä voi päätellä, että (From this one can deduce that…).

Personal agent

Although 4th person forms do not specify the agent, they specify that the agent is personal, i.e. a human being or human beings, or maybe God or a being regarded as comparable to human beings—but not e.g. domestic animals.

For example, consider the verb tuhota, “to destroy”. An English expression like “was destroyed” is often described with the word tuhottiin, which is the 4th person past tense of the verb. However, this is correct only if we know or imply that something was destroyed by a person or by persons, not e.g. by an earthquake. In the general case, an adequate Finnish word is tuhoutui, which is the past tense form of the passive verb tuhoutua derived from tuhota.

No “afterthought” agent

When a 4th person form is used, there is no acceptable way to express the agent in the same sentence, except in the colloquial use me mennään discussed above. If you start a sentence with Talo purettiin (The house was wrecked), you cannot add, as an afterthought, an expression of the person or company that did the wrecking, like you can add “by…” in English.

In old literary language, a word in the ablative case (with suffix lta, ltä) was sometimes used, but it looks very dated now. Nowadays administrative texts and sometimes translations use an expression with the postposition toimesta, e.g. ministeriön toimesta (by the ministry). This may cause vagueness, since toimesta can also mean “as authorized/requested by”. Other expression types used to express an agent are X:n taholta (from X’s side), X:n keskuudessa (among X), and X:n piirissä (among X).

This means that in spoken Finnish, if you start a sentence in the 4th person and then notice that you wish to express the agent, you need to reconstruct the sentence. You might just stop and pause and start the new sentence, or you might throw in a word like siis (literally: so) in between, e.g. Talo purettiin… siis… Kaupunki purki talon vuonna 1973 (The house was wrecked… eh… The city wrecked the house in 1973).