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

The different personal pronoun forms mentioned in this blog post:

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:

Finnish verb olla and personal pronouns

Spoken language:

Finnish verb olla and personal pronouns in spoken language

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‘. 

The Finnish personal pronouns in the partitive

Spoken Finnish:

The Finnish personal pronouns in the partitive in spoken Finnish

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:

Standard Finnish:

The Finnish personal pronouns in the accusative

Spoken Finnish:

The Finnish personal pronouns in the accusative in spoken Finnish

Video: Personal pronouns as objects

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