The Finnish language is spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns elsewhere. Unlike the Indo-European languages spoken in neighbouring countries, such as Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages, or Russian, which is a Slavic language, Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic languages group. Typologically, Finnish is agglutinative. As in some other Uralic languages, Finnish has vowel harmony, and like other Finnic languages, it has consonant gradation.
Pronouns The pronouns are inflected in the Finnish language much in the same way that their referent nouns are.
Personal pronouns Personal pronouns are used to refer to human beings only. In Finnish all personal pronouns are gender-neutral and the English she and he can't be translated directly. Personal pronouns in Standard Finnish in the nominative case are listed in the following table:
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Personal pronouns |- ! Finnish !! English |- ! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Singular |- | || I |- | || you (thou) |- | || he/she/they |- ! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Plural |- | || we |- | || you (y'all) |- | || they |- ! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Polite |- | || you
Because Finnish verbs are inflected for person and number, in Finnish standard language subject pronouns are not required, and the first and second-person pronouns are usually omitted except when used for emphasis. In the third person, however, the pronoun is required: '(s)he goes'/'they go (singular they)'. In spoken Finnish, all pronouns are generally used, even without emphatic meaning.
In colloquial and dialectal Finnish, the pronouns and , which in standard Finnish are used for inanimate things and animals, are the usual third-person pronouns instead of and , respectively. Use of and is mostly restricted to writing and formal or markedly polite speech. In dialectal Finnish, and have special uses, such as to indicate that another person is being paraphrased. Animals are in standard Finnish never referred to as or . and are usually replaced with colloquial forms. The most common variants are and , though, in some dialects and , and or and are used. On the other hand, , and lack reduced colloquial forms, so variants such as , , and of some eastern varieties are dialectal. Some common verbs, such as "to be" and "to come", exhibit similarly reduced colloquial forms:
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Personal pronouns |- ! Written/formal !! Spoken/colloquial |- ! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Singular
! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Plural
! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Polite
The second-person plural can be used as a polite form when addressing one person, as in some Indo-European languages. However, this usage is diminishing in Finnish society.
Demonstrative pronouns The demonstratives are used of non-human animate entities and inanimate objects. However, and is 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 , and in fact, it is hypercorrect to replace a demonstrative or with or 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.
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Demonstrative pronouns |- ! Finnish !! English |- ! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Singular |- | || this |- | || that |- | || it/that |- ! colspan="2" style="background:#efefef;" | Plural |- | || these |- | || those |- | || they/those
Interrogative pronouns {| class="wikitable" |- |+ Interrogative pronouns |- ! Finnish !! English |- | || who, which (of many) |- | || who, which (of many) — old or dialectal word |- | || what, which (of many) |- | || which (of two) |- | || which (of two) — old or dialectal word
is now archaic, but its inflected forms are used instead of those of : instead of ("whom"): "Whom do you love?"
Relative pronouns {| class="wikitable" |- |+ Relative pronouns |- ! Pronoun !! Example !! English |- | (refers to preceding word) | | "they are (singular), s/he is the only one whom (I) remember" |- | (refers to preceding clause/sentence or to a pronoun or a superlative that refers to a thing) | | "it is the only thing that (I) remember"
Reciprocal pronouns {| class="wikitable" |- |+ Reciprocal pronouns |- ! Pronoun !! Example !! English |- | rowspan="2" | toinen | | "they love each other" (plural)
| "they love one another" (dual)
Reflexive pronouns {| class="wikitable" |- |+ Reflexive pronouns |- ! Pronoun !! Suffix !! Example !! English
| plus corresponding possessive suffix | | "(I) made myself some tea"
Indefinite pronouns 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"; rather, the positive pronoun is negated with the negative verb . No double negatives are possible.
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Indefinite pronouns |- ! Finnish !! English |- | (uninflected) || every, each |- | || every, everyone |- | || some, someone (person) |- | || either one |- | || some, something (animal, thing) |- | || each one |- | || both (old or dialectal) |- | || both |- | || each thing (dialectal) |- | || anyone (old or poetic) |- | (), (oblique) || anyone |- | → || no one |- | || either one |- | → || neither one |- | || anything |- | → || nothing |- | (), (oblique) || the ordinal pronoun (representing first, second, etc.)
Each pronoun declines. However, the endings and are clitics, and case endings are placed before them, e.g. "any", "from any". There are irregular nominatives. As indicated, is an irregular nominative; the regular root is with , e.g. "(not) anyone", "from (not) anyone".
English lacks a direct equivalent to the pronoun ; it would be "that-th", or "which-th" for questions. For example, "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 , but, although 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:
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Indefinite adjectives |- ! Finnish !! English |- | || the only one |- | || some, certain, one |- | || few |- | (non-reflexive) || self |- | || all, everyone, everything |- | || both |- | || many |- | || other |- | || some, a few |- | || same |- | (non-reciprocal, non-numeral use) || another
Nouns Finnish does not have grammatical gender, not even in personal pronouns: is 'he', 'she' or 'they(sg.)' depending on the referent. There are no articles, neither definite nor indefinite.
Possessive suffixes
Cases
Finnish has fifteen noun cases: four grammatical cases, six locative cases, two essive cases (three in some Eastern dialects), and three marginal cases.
+ Finnish cases Case Suffix English Example Translation Grammatical nominative () – – , you, house genitive () of, 's , your(s), house's accusative () –, , – , , you (thee), house (see discussion below) partitive () – , you, house (as the object of an atelic verb) Locative (internal) inessive () / in in a house elative () / out of out of a house illative () , , into , into a house, into Porvoo Locative (external) adessive () / at, on , at a house, on a roof ablative () / from from a house allative () onto, to , , onto a roof, to (the proximity of) a house, to a boy Essive essive () / as as a house translative () into (the role of) into (being) a school Marginal instructive () , with (the aid of) with the houses abessive () / without without a house comitative () together (with) with their house(s) Some notes about the cases listed in the table above: The locative cases are also used for grammatical function, such as benefactive, dative (often in the allative), and other functions. There is historically some difference of opinion as to the character and indeed existence (for most words) of the accusative case in modern Finnish. The recent, authoritative grammar Iso suomen kielioppi takes the position that only the personal pronouns and the personal interrogative pronoun have a true accusative case which is distinguished by the suffix . For nouns, adjectives, numerals, and other pronouns, there is no accusative case; instead, these words take the nominative or genitive in object positions (where they do not take the partitive). This differs from the more traditional view, to which many learners' grammars still adhere, that there are accusative forms that appear identical to the nominative or genitive. This traditional view is based on known diachronic phonological changes in the language. Marginal cases are mostly used in writing, or in the case of the instructive, in fixed expressions such as Vedä pyyhe molemmin käsin ('Pull the paper towel using both hands') A noun in the comitative case is always followed by a possessive suffix. However, as is typical in Finnish, an adjective does not take possessive suffixes: "A man with his luxurious house(s)", with comitative on both the adjective and noun, but the third person possessive suffix on the noun only. Regarding the illative suffix : "V" stands in for a preceding (short) vowel: yields , but yields .
Relationship between locative cases As in many other Uralic languages, locative cases in Finnish can be classified according to three criteria: the spatial position (interior or surface), the motion status (stationary or moving), and within the latter, the direction of the movement (approaching or departing). The classification captures a morphophonological pattern that distinguishes interior and surface spatial position; long consonants ( in / and in / ) express stationary motion, whereas a expresses "movement from". The table below shows these relationships schematically: + Schematic summary of locative cases Spatial position Motion status Stationary Moving approaching departing Interior inessive ('in') illative ('into') elative ('out of') Surface adessive ('on') allative ('onto') ablative ('off from')
Plurals Finnish nominal plurals are often marked by (though is a suppletive variant in the nominative and accusative, as is common in Uralic languages). Singular and plural numbers cross-cut the distinctions in grammatical cases, and several number/case combinations have somewhat idiosyncratic uses. Several of these deserve special mention.
Nominative/accusative plural The nominative plural is used for definite count nouns that are subjects, while the plural object of a telic verb bears the accusative plural. The syncretic suffix that covers both uses is . This suffix can only appear in the word-final position; i.e. it is omitted when a possessive suffix is present.
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Nominative plural |- ! Finnish !! English |- | || "The dogs were in the room" |- | || "The rooms were large"
|"I too saw the dogs"
Numerals
When a noun is modified by a numeral not equal to one, and the numeral is in the nominative singular, the noun bears the partitive singular. Otherwise, the noun and the numeral agree with each other in number and case.
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Following numerals |- ! Finnish !! English |- | || "there were two dogs in the room" |- | || "the house had three rooms" |- | || "I bought a computer for a thousand euros" |- | || "I need two pairs of shoes"
Inflected plural This uses the stem of the partitive plural inflected with the same set of endings as for singular nouns. The suffix is , and it suppresses long vowels; it may only appear before another suffix.
{| class="wikitable" |- |+ Inflected plural |- ! Finnish !! English |- | → || '(some) rooms' |- | → || 'in rooms'
As a combined example of plurals
{| class="wikitable" |-