Learning the Finnish personal pronouns? Get to know some of the most common forms of the Finnish personal pronouns here. Trust me, you will need them.

You may have heard that Finnish personal pronouns have many different forms. In this blog post, you’ll find examples of the most common forms of the Finnish personal pronouns.

I’ve also included a video that will help you get started with the Finnish object cases. You’ll find it at the end of this post!

The nominative

This first part is about the simplest form of the Finnish personal pronouns. You will use these forms when the pronoun is the subject, i.e. the ‘doer’, in the sentence. This case is called the nominative, and it’s the most basic form of a word, the form that you find in dictionary entries. I’ve also included the verb olla, ‘to be’. Learn these examples and you’re off to a good start!

I’ve also included the spoken language versions (‘puhekieli‘). However, I figured including too many different spoken dialects would only confuse you, so I only used the dialect spoken in Helsinki area (other areas, too, but particularly in Helsinki).

If you’d like to learn more about the Finnish personal pronouns in the nominative, check out this blog post.

Standard Finnish:

The Finnish personal pronouns in standard Finnish, with the verb olla, ‘to be’

minä olen

sinä olet

hän on

me olemme

te olette

he ovat

Minä olen iloinen.

Sinä olet kiva.

Hän on ystäväni.

Me olemme ystäviä.

Te olette opiskelijoita.

He ovat täällä.

Spoken language:

The Finnish personal pronouns in spoken Finnish (just one of the dialects!), with the verb olla, ‘to be’

mä oon

sä oot

se on

me ollaan

te ootte

ne on

Mä oon iloinen.

Sä oot kiva.

Se on ystäväni. (also common: se on mun ystävä)

Te ootte opiskelijoita.

Ne on täällä.

Personal pronouns as objects - the partitive and the accusative

The partitive

Standard Finnish:

(Learn more about this in my online courses inside the Finking Cap Club.)

Now, let’s talk about another form the personal pronouns will often appear in. The image below is about the personal pronouns in the partitive, which you often need to use when the pronoun is the object of the verb. For example. in the sentence
Hän rakastaa minua
‘hän‘ is the subject, i.e. the person who loves. The object of the verb, i.e. the person who is loved, is ‘minua‘.

Finnish personal pronouns in the partitive (standard Finnish)

minua

sinua

häntä

meitä

teitä

heitä

Hän rakastaa minua.

Minä rakastan sinua.

Minä rakastan häntä.

Hän rakastaa meitä.

Minä rakastan teitä.

Minä rakastan heitä.

Spoken Finnish:

Finnish personal pronouns in the partitive (spoken Finnish)

mua

sua

sitä

meitä

teitä

niitä

Se rakastaa mua.

Mä rakastan sua.

Mä rakastan sitä.

Se rakastaa meitä.

Mä rakastan teitä.

Mä rakastan niitä.

The accusative

Finally, we have the accusative. Sometimes, when the personal pronoun is the object in the sentence, you may choose the accusative instead of the partitive (or the nominative).

You’ll have to gradually learn which verbs prefer the partitive object and which verbs are likely to require the accusative or the nominative, and there are also a lot of verbs that are possible to pair with any of those cases – but there are some rules for that because the meaning may slightly change. I chose the example verbs ‘rakastaa‘ and ‘muistaa‘ for this blog because ‘rakastaa‘ requires the partitive 99% of the time, and ‘muistaa‘ is usually used with the accusative unless it’s a negative sentence.

Without going into too much detail, here are some example sentences: