Finnish
verbs 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 = 'to be' has two irregular forms "is" and "are ()"; other forms follow from the stem ; e.g. ← "you are", ← "let it be". A handful of verbs, including "to see", "to do/make", and "to run" have rare consonant mutation patterns which are not derivable from the infinitive. In
spoken Finnish, some frequently used verbs () have irregular stems (, instead of ("go, come, be, put"), respectively). Finnish does not have a separate verb for possession (compare English "to have"). Possession is indicated in other ways, mainly by genitives and
existential clauses. For animate possessors, the adessive case is used with , for example = '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".
Tense-aspect forms Finnish verbs have present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect
tense-
aspect 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, "I take" (from , "to take"). • Imperfect: actually a
preterite, 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 in addition to the personal suffixes, e.g. "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 uses the verb "to be" in the present tense as an
auxiliary verb. Personal suffixes are added to the auxiliary, while the main verb is in the participle form. For example, "I have taken", where is the auxiliary verb stem, is the personal suffix for "I", is the stem for the main verb, and is the participle marker. • Pluperfect: corresponds to the English past perfect ("I had visited") in its usage. Similarly to perfect, the verb is used in the past tense as an auxiliary verb. For example, "I had taken". As stated above, Finnish has no grammatical future tense. To indicate futurity, a Finnish speaker may use forms that are, by some, deprecated as ungrammatical. One is the use of the verb , 'to come', as it were as an auxiliary: 'This is going to be a problem', cf Swedish . Another, less common and now archaic, is to use the verb , 'to be', with the present passive participle of the main verb: 'For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord' (Luke 1:15).
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 so-called Finnish passive is impersonal and unipersonal, that is, it only appears in one form regardless of who is implicitly understood to be the performer of 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). It is called "passive" for historical reasons in imitation of Swedish and Latin grammars, but this term is in fact incorrect because the object of an active sentence remains an object in the equivalent Finnish "passive" sentence, in other words, the Finnish "passive" sentence is in fact active. In languages with true passives, an active sentence's object becomes the subject in the equivalent passive sentence. Active: "we will arrest him" => passive: "he will be arrested". Consider the example: "the house will be painted". The time when the house is being painted could be added: "the house will be painted
in November". The colour and method could be added: "the house will be painted
red with a brush". But nothing can be said about the person who will do the painting; there is no simple way to say "the house will be painted by Jim". There is a
calque, evidently from Swedish, "by the action of", that can be used to introduce the agent: , 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. Notice also that the object is in the form of the accusative that has the same form as the nominative case (which is true of all words except for the personal pronouns). Verbs which govern the partitive case continue to do so in the passive, and where the object of the action is a personal pronoun in the accusative, that goes into its special accusative form: "I/you/(s)he/we/you/they was/were 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. Use of the passive voice is not as common in Finnish as in Germanic languages; sentences in the active voice are preferred, if possible. Confusion may result, as the agent is lost and becomes ambiguous. For instance, a bad translation of the English "the PIN code is asked for by the device when..." into raises the question "who asks?", whereas ("the device asks for the PIN code when...") is unambiguous. Nevertheless, this usage of the passive is common in Finnish, particularly in literary and official contexts. Occasionally this leads to extreme cases such as "it is wanted that the municipal board be dismissed", implying that a popular uprising could be near, when this suggestion could also be made by a political group in the town council consisting of only a few or theoretically (very unlikely because misleading) even a single person. 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. Colloquially, the first-person plural indicative and imperative are replaced by the passive, e.g. ("we'll go to our place") and ("let us go to our place") are replaced by (see
spoken Finnish). 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 "they say that..." Formation of the passive is dealt with in the article on
Finnish verb conjugation.
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 'we are going', but the colloquial form is . Without the personal pronoun , the passive alone replaces the first-person plural imperative, as in 'Let's go!'. In colloquial speech, the pronoun cannot be omitted without confusion, unlike when using the standard forms (indicative) and (imperative).
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 . :* "In the sauna, one sweats" :* "If you arrive in good time, you get a better seat" ===
Moods===
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 (for example "I would tell you if I knew") and in polite requests (for example "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: : = *"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: : = 'I know', = 'I would know'. : = 'I want', = 'I would like'. Conditional forms exist for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect. The conditional can be used for added politeness when offering, requesting, or pleading: 'Would you like some coffee?'; 'May I have that red one?'; 'I do wish you would tell me'.
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, remove the from the first-person-singular form): : To make this negative, (which is the active imperative singular 2nd person of the negative verb) is placed before the positive form: : To form the plural, add or to the verb's stem: : To make this negative, (which is the active imperative present plural 2nd person of the negative verb) is placed before the positive form and the suffix or 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 or = '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, means "could you", in the polite plural, and is used much like English "Could you..." sentences: "could you help me, please?" Also, familiar (and not necessarily so polite) expressions can be added to imperatives, e.g. , , . These are hard to translate exactly, but extensively used by Finnish speakers themselves. implies expectation, that is, it has been settled already and requires no discussion; has the which indicates insistence, and means approximated "indeed".
Passive imperatives :
3rd-person imperatives The 3rd-person imperatives behave as if they were
jussive; besides being used for commands, they can also be used to express permission. In colloquial language, they are most often used to express disregard to what one might or might not do, and the singular and plural forms are often confused. :
1st-person-plural imperatives : The 1st-person imperative sounds archaic, and a form resembling the passive indicative is often used instead: = 'let's go!'
Optative The optative mood is an archaic or poetic variant of the imperative mood that expresses hopes or wishes. It is not used in normal language. Although it in principle has all forms, it is encountered mainly in the 2nd person singular forms
-:os/
-:ös (replacement of /k/ with the
gemination of the previous consonant). : Optatives are rare even in original archaic poems, and the forms used to express the optative are different from standard Finnish. An example of a true optative is
ruvetkommas tappelohon "let's go and start fighting". However, when compiling the
Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot tripled the number of optatives, by changing these dialectal forms in the original poems to the standard optative.
Potential The potential mood is used to express that the action or state expressed by the verb is possible 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 "possibly" (or occasionally "probably") to the verb. The characteristic morphology of the Finnish potential is , inserted between the verb stem and the personal ending. Before this affix, continuants assimilate progressively ( → ) and stops regressively ( → ). The verb 'to be' in the potential has the special suppletive form , e.g. the potential of 'has been fetched' is 'may have been fetched'. Potential forms exists for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect: : In some dialects ('may come') is an indicative form verb ( 'comes'). This is not a potential form, but rather due to
secondary gemination.
Eventive No longer used in modern Finnish, the eventive mood is used in the
Kalevala. It is a combination of the potential and the conditional. It is also used in some dialects of
Estonian. :
Infinitives Finnish verbs are described as having four, sometimes five
infinitives:
First infinitive The
first infinitive short form of a verb is the
citation form found in dictionaries. It is not unmarked; its overt marking is always the suffix or , though sometimes there are modifications (which may be regarded as stem or ending modifications depending on personal preference). : When the stem is itself a single syllable or is of two or more syllables ending in or , the suffix is or , respectively. (This represents the historically older form of the suffix, from which the has been lost in most environments.) : If the stem ends in one of the consonants , , , then the final consonant is doubled before adding the infinitive or . In the case of a stem ending in the consonant , the infinitive ending gains the consonant , becoming or . (These consonant stems take a linking vowel when forming the present tense, or when forming the imperfect, e.g. 'to wash': 'I wash' : 'I washed'). Stems ending in , followed by a link vowel in the present or imperfect, drop the from the stem before adding the infinitive marker or . : 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 or . These verbs drop the which is present in the present tense stem and replace it with in the first infinitive stem followed by the standard or first infinitive marker. The dropping to weakens a preceding , or 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 , or . : Some verbs lose elements of their stems when forming the first infinitive. Some verbs stem have contracted endings in the first infinitive. Stems ending / in the present/imperfect drop the and replace it with , and where applicable, trigger the weak grade in the infinitive stem. The contracted infinitive ending / have / verbs take the infinitive stem /. These contracted verbs may also be subject to consonant weakening when forming the infinitive e.g. 'to mention' has the longer conjugated stem as in 'I'll mention tomorrow that...' e.g. 'to flee' has the longer conjugated stem as in '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 an 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 in place of the usual or as the infinitive marker. It is only ever used with one of two case makers; the inessive indicating
time or the instructive 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 of the first infinitive with then adding the appropriate inflectional ending. If the vowel before the is already an , this becomes (see example from '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 ("when"). The instructive is even rarer and mostly exists nowadays in
set phrases (for example = '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 from that in the relative clause then this is indicated by with the person in the genitive and the verb is unmarked for person. :
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 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 : : The third infinitive instructive is usually replaced with the first infinitive short form in modern Finnish. Note that the 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 and indicates obligation, but it is quite rare in Finnish today. This is because there are other words like and that can convey this meaning. For example : Though not an infinitive, a much more common 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. :
Fifth infinitive This is a fairly rare form which has the meaning 'on the point of ...ing / just about to ...' :
Verb conjugation For full details of how verbs are
conjugated in Finnish, please refer to the
Finnish verb conjugation article.
Participles Finnish verbs have past and present
participles, 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 This is formed in the same way as the passive perfect or passive past-perfect forms, by taking the passive past form, removing the ending and replacing it with (depending on
vowel harmony) :
Past active participle Basically this is formed by removing the infinitive ending and adding (depending on
vowel harmony) and in some cases , , . 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 , , or in the stem ending is assimilated to the consonant in the participle ending (as also happens in formation of the first infinitive, although stem endings take an extra 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 above. In verbs of types IV, V and VI, the at the end of the stem is assimilated to the : :
Present passive participle The present passive participle can be constructed from the past passive form of the verb. The ending of the past passive is replaced with , which can be inflected in the same way as the present active participle. For example: : It is possible to translate this participle in several related ways e.g. 'which must be/is to be said', 'which can be said', 'which will be said' or 'which is said'. Here are some sentences and phrases further illustrating the formation and use of the present passive participle: : This participle can also be used in other ways. If used with the appropriate third-person singular form of the verb and with the subject in the genitive it can express necessity or obligation. : 'I must leave' : 'They would have to go' Inflected in the inessive plural, it can be used in conjunction with the verb 'to be' to indicate that something can or cannot be done. : 'Is Pekka available?'/'Is Pekka able to be met with?'
Present active participle This participle is formed simply by finding the 3rd person plural form of the verb and removing -t, and acts as an adjective describing what the object or subject of the sentence is doing, for example: :
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, "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: – "of man'
s making", or "book of
my writing". For example: : 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: "tomorrow, as the instrument
you will be using is...". Here, "that which is used" describes, i.e. is an attribute to "instrument". (Notice the case agreement between and .) The suffix "your" specifies the person "owning" the action, i.e. who does it, thus is "that which was used by you()", and is "as that which was used by you". It is also possible to give the actor with a pronoun, e.g. "that which was used by you". In standard language, the pronoun "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. .
Negation of verbs Present indicative Verbs are negated by using a
negative verb 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.
Present passive The negative is formed from the third-person singular "negative verb" and the present passive with the final removed: :
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 the pattern is: : 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: = 'you ( 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): : Note that in the spoken language, this form is used for the first-person plural. In this case, the personal pronoun is obligatory: : ==Adverbs==