Finnish verb conjugation

Verbs in the Finnish language can be divided into six main groups depending on the stem type, both for formal analysis and for teaching the language to non-native speakers. All six types have the same set of personal endings, but the stems assume different suffixes and undergo (slightly) different changes when inflected.
The article on Finnish language grammar has more about verbs and other aspects of Finnish grammar.
Tables of conjugation.
Tables of conjugation are given here for the regular verb, of type I "puhua" (to speak), as used in the formal, written language. Verb conjugation in the everyday spoken language is somewhat different.
Basic tenses in the indicative mood.
The present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect correspond fairly well to English: "speaks", "spoke", "has spoken", and "had spoken", respectively or in the passive voice, "it is spoken", "it was spoken", "it has been spoken", and "it had been spoken". The auxiliary verb "ei" used for negation, usually with the naked stem of the main verb but with the past participle in the negative imperfect. Finnish lacks a true future tense, so normally the present tense is used for future time as well.
Conditional and potential mood.
The conditional mood corresponds mostly to "would" or "should" or to the past subjunctive in English. (Finnish lacks a subjunctive mood.) The potential mood is rather rare, and corresponds to "may" or "might" in English. The perfect forms of these moods are easily understood as "would have", "should have", "might have", etc.
Imperative mood and miscellaneous tenses.
The first and third person imperative forms here correspond to English "let us speak", "let him not speak", "let it not be spoken", etc. The perfect imperative is still valid, if somewhat awkward and contrived: as English "let it (not) have been spoken". The first person plural imperative "puhukaamme" sounds rather formal and archaic so in everyday speech, the passive present indicative, "puhutaan", is used instead, but it may not quite be considered correct. There are many variations of the imperative forms: in old writings, one may also see the forms "puhukaat" or "puhukaatte" for the second person plural, "puhukaan" for the third person plural, or "puhuttakaan" for the passive. In the passive or third person, the imperative is sometimes used for the present or perfect subjunctive of other languages, a mood lacking in Finnish.
The and the correspond best to "I am to speak" and "I was to speak" in English. It is not correct Finnish to use these tenses in the plural: the plural form of the present participle, "puhuvat", would be confusing if used in this sense, as it resembles too closely the third person plural present indicative. Despite the apparently equivalent use of the present participle, the grammatical aspect of these tenses is prospective rather than continuous or progressive as in English.
Verbs of obligation in the agent construction.
Verbs of obligation such as "täytyä", "tarvita", "pitää", and "tulla", with the meanings "must", "need to", "ought to", "shall", respectively are often used in the agent form of construction in which the verb is not conjugated for person but is in the impersonal third person singular. Here
There is no equivalent of this type of construction in English.
The verb "täytyä" can be used only in this construction and therefore has no other personal forms. The other verbs can carry personal endings in other forms of construction with the normal subject, verb, and object in which the obligation is less strong or in which the verb takes on a different meaning altogether.
Infinitives and participles.
In Finnish there are five infinitive forms, with past and present participles for both active and passive voices.
Infinitive I.
First infinitive is the dictionary form of the verb: "puhu-a" = "to speak" (stem "puhu"), and it corresponds in meaning and function to the English infinitive introduced by the particle "to". The suffix of the first infinitive depends on the type of the verb stem. With so-called "vowel" stems, (see verbs of Type I, below), the first infinitive suffix is "-a"/"-ä", whereas with "consonantal" stems, (types IV-VI), the suffix is most often "-ta"/"-tä". With vowel stems that consist of a single open syllable ending in a long vowel or a diphthong or longer stems that end in such syllables, (Type II), the infinitive suffix is "-da"/"-dä": "saa-da" = "to get", "syö-dä" = "to eat", "reagoi-da" = "to react". The first infinitive of consonantal stems always has the weak consonant grade in the stem, e.g., "karata" = "to flee" < stem "karkaa-".
It can be used in a sentence similarly to the English infinitive and stand for a subject or a direct object, without any additional inflection. It is also governed by modal verbs like "saattaa" "might" or "voida" "be able to": "saattaa mennä" = "might go" or "voi hakea" = "can fetch".
It has a so-called "long form", with the ending of the nominal translative case and an obligatory possessive suffix. The long form is usually associated with the literary register. It connotes either extent or intent:
In spoken Finnish, intent is often expressed with the short form infinitive if the subject is implicit or understood by context or more explicitly with a subordinate clause containing a conditional verb: "että minä muistaisin". Nevertheless, the long form is still used to signify extent; another example: "tietä-ä" = "to know", "tietä-ä-kse-ni" = "as far as I know".
The first infinitive generally takes on no inflected forms. It appears only in the short (dictionary) form and in the long form, and the long form is not used without a possessive suffix.
Infinitive II.
The second infinitive may be formed from the first infinitive by replacing the final 'a/ä' with an 'e'. It occurs in the instructive and inessive cases. If the second infinitive has a subject, the subject is put in the genitive case; in the inessive case, the second infinitive also accepts a possessive suffix if it is appropriate.
The instructive form conveys manner of action corresponding approximately with "-ing" or "-ingly" in English, less commonly with "-ande/ende" in Swedish and very commonly with "-ant" in French. It is parallel in function and meaning to the Russian adverbial participle (as opposed to the adjectival participle):
The inessive form conveys coterminal action, something happening at the same time as something else. More properly, it is seen as some action whose accomplishment simultaneously brings about the accomplishment of something else. It corresponds approximately in English to the use of "when", "while", or the somewhat archaic or British "whilst"; strict co-terminality is still expressed in English with "in" or"by", the present participle "-ing" and any subject in the possessive case in a manner analogous to the Finnish, like in French with ""en" and the present participle "-ant"":
The inessive of this infinitive also has a passive form:
Infinitive III.
The third infinitive is formed by adding the ending "-ma/mä" to the hard grade of the present stem. It is a noun in its own right, denoting "the act" of a verb. It is fully declineable as a noun, but some of the cases have special or commonly understood meanings. The illative of the third infinitive is a common inchoative, governed by such verbs as "ruveta" and "joutua":
The elative is used in the sense of forbidding or discouraging an action.
The adessive is used to tell how the action is done.
Also with a possessive suffix.
Agentive participle.
In Finnish, the passive participle cannot be used when the agent is expressed. Finnish uses forms ending in "-ma/mä" that are formally identical to the third infinitive. (Some authors include it as one of the uses of the third infinitive; others list it under the special name "agentive participle".) The agentive participle is never used when the agent is not expressed, and it must be used in all situations that one wishes to use the passive and express the agent:
As expected for a participle, it agrees with the head noun; in the following, the ending "-mia" and "kirjeita" 'letters' are in the partitive plural:
Infinitive IV.
The fourth infinitive is formed just like the third but with the ending "-minen", which is declined like all other Finnish nouns in "-nen". It is also a noun but its meaning is more "the process" rather than the very act of a verb. This often corresponds to "-ation" words in English:
The use of this form as a proper infinitive rather than an "action noun" is generally restricted to forms such as the following in which it implies a sort of obligation:
or this construction, where the finite verb is repeated in the partitive with a possessive suffix:
Infinitive V.
The rarely used fifth infinitive is a "diminutive" of the third infinitive. It is apparently used only in the adessive plural with a possessive suffix. It indicates that at some point, the action of the verb is "but little" accomplished:
Present participles.
Active.
The active present participle is formed by adding "-va/vä" to the hard grade of the present indicative stem of the verb.
Passive.
There is also a passive present participle formed by adding the same ending to the passive stem:
This form is also ambiguous: it could equally well be the active present participle of the causative "puhuttaa", "to cause (someone) to speak", thus:
Past participles.
Active.
The active past participle is usually formed by adding "-nut/nyt" to the short stem, omitting any epenthetic vowel. Verbs of type III (ending in "-lla/llä", "-rra/rrä", and "-sta/stä") assimilate the "n" of this ending:
The stem of the active past participle, for all other cases except the nominative singular, ends in "-nee-", which may be likewise assimilated. See tables of conjugation.
Agentive.
See Agentive Participle above.
Passive.
The passive past participle has the ending "-tu/ty" or "-ttu/tty" to the soft grade of the stem. For a verb of type I, a final -a/ä- of the stem is replaced by -e- for the passive past participle:
The passive past participle is subject to consonant gradation:
and for verbs of type III:
Derived passive forms.
All other passive forms of the verb may be regularly derived from the passive past participle by replacing the final "-u/y" with the following endings:
Overview of main verb types.
The following table shows the basic changes and marks for conjugating each of the types of Finnish verbs:
Type I verbs.
They are verbs whose infinitive forms end in vowel + "a/ä", for example "puhua" = "to speak", "tietää" = "to know". The group contains a very large number of verbs. Here is how "tietää" conjugates in the present indicative:
The personal endings are "-n", "-t", "-(doubled final vowel)", "-mme", "-tte", "-vat". The inflecting stem is formed by dropping the final "-a/ä" of the infinitive and has a strong-grade consonant in the third-person forms and weak-grade elsewhere. For the third person plural, it is an exception to the general rule for strong grade.
Past tense.
In the simple case (which applies to most type I verbs), the imperfect indicative is formed by inserting the characteristic marker "i" between the stem and the personal endings, which are the same as in the present tense except that the vowel does not double in the third person singular:
However, the insertion of the "i" often has an effect on the stem. Of type I verbs, one notable exception is "tietää":
"ymmärtää" = 'to understand' also follows this pattern. Changes of stem for other verb types will be discussed in the relevant sections below.
Type II verbs.
With verbs whose first infinitive ends in vowel + "da" ( "juoda" = 'to drink', "syödä" = 'to eat'), it is a fairly large group of verbs partly because one way in which foreign borrowings are incorporated into the Finnish verb paradigms is to add "oida": "organisoida" = 'to organise'.
Another important verb of this type is "voida" = 'to be able/allowed to'.
The stem is formed by removing "da" with no vowel doubling in the third person singular: juon, juot, juo, juomme, juotte, juovat.
Imperfect indicative.
For these verbs whose stems end in two vowels, the first of the vowels is lost when the "i" is added in the imperfect:
"juon = 'I drink', "join" = 'I drank'.
There is an exception to the rule if the stem already ends in an "i" ("voida" or the "-oida" verbs mentioned earlier). Then, the stem does not change between present and imperfect indicative so the imperfect forms are the same as the present forms, and the distinction between them must be made from context.
Passive.
Passives are formed in the same way:
Type III verbs.
Verbs have a first infinitive ending in two consonants + "a": "mennä" = 'to go'. Another way of looking at the verbs is that they have verb stems ending in a consonant to which a vowel must be added ("e" for the present tense or "i" for the past tense) before the personal ending. The final consonant of the stem is generally emphasised by length in the infinitive and participle forms and so is written as a double consonant. If the consonant ending of the stem is -s, however, the dictionary form of the verb ends with -stä or -sta. It is another large group of verbs.
Present indicative.
The stem is formed by removing the "a" and its preceding consonant, and "e" followed is added, followed by the personal endings: menen, menet, menee, menemme, menette, menevät.
Imperfect indicative.
The "i" of the imperfect is added directly to the stem formed as for the present tense, and the personal endings are added:
"pestä" = 'to clean', "pesen" = 'I clean', "pesin" = 'I cleaned' etc.
'Olla' ('to be').
Strictly, 'olla' belongs to this group. 'To be' is irregular in most languages, and Finnish is no exception, but the irregularities are confined to the 3rd-person forms of the present tense and to all person forms in the active potential mood – everything else is regular.
Indicative present:
Potential:
Type IV verbs.
Types IV-VI have a first infinitive ending in a vowel and "ta/tä". Most commonly, type IV verbs end with "ata/ätä", "ota/ötä", "uta/ytä", but other vowels are possible: "tavata" = "to meet", "pilkata" = "to mock", "vastata" = "to answer", "haluta" = "to want", "tarjota" = "to offer".
The stem used in present indicative conjugation is formed by dropping the "-ta/-tä" suffix from the infinitive form and adding "a/ä". In conjugation, the normal personal ending is added; the final vowel is doubled in the third person singular unless the stem already ends in "aa/ää":
The consonant in the stem appears in the strong grade.
Imperfect indicative.
The imperfect stem can be obtained from the infinitive by changing the final "t" to "s" followed by the usual imperfect marker "i"; the stem consonant appears in the strong grade: "halusi-n" = "I wanted", "tapasi-t" = "you met", "vastasi", "he answered", etc.
Passive.
Passives in this type are formed in the same fashion as for type I verbs; as in type I, the stem consonant appears in the weak grade:
Type V verbs.
All verbs have infinitives ending in "ita/itä". There are few members, but "tarvita" = "to need" is a common example.
The indicative stem may be obtained by dropping the final "a" and adding "-se": tarvitsen, tarvitset, tarvitsee, tarvitsemme, tarvitsette, tarvitsevat.
Imperfect indicative.
"-si" takes the place of "-se", but in the third-person singular, there is only one vowel: "tarvitsin, tarvitsit, tarvitsi, tarvitsimme, tarvitsitte, tarvitsivat".
Passive.
The passive forms of these verbs are built just like those of type IV; both types end in "-ta".
Type VI verbs.
Almost all verbs have infinitives ending in 'eta' (notable exceptions are "parata" = "to improve/become better" and "huonota" = "to deteriorate/become worse"). There are not many verbs in this category, and they tend to be uncommon. However, it is a fairly common route for turning adjectives into verbs: "kylmä" = "cold", "kylmetä" = "to get cold".
The present stem is characterized by the insertion of "ne" after the infinitive stem and so the final syllable of the stem is open, and hence the final consonant of the stem is in strong grade:
Imperfect indicative.
The imperfect indicative is formed by replacing the final "e" of the "ne" stem with the imperfect marker "i":
Passive.
Passives are formed in the same way as for type IV verbs.
Nonderivable and irregular stems.
Standard Finnish has comparatively very few irregular verbs in addition to 'olla' discussed above. However, because the infinitive is an inflected form of the root, the consonant gradation may obscure the root. The root of the word 'juosta' = 'to run' is ; when generating the infinitive, the pattern "ks" → "s" is applied: → "juosta". Epenthetic 'e' is added for personal forms: "juoksen".
There is a rare pattern with a stem with "-k-" rendered as "-hdä" in the infinitive but disappearing in gradation:
That is, "teke-" and "näke-" forms are rendered as "tehdä" and "nähdä" in the infinitive but are subject to gradation of 'k' in personal forms like "teen". In some colloquial forms, the 'e' is rendered as a chroneme instead: "nään" instead of "näen" etc.
Spoken Finnish adds some more irregular verbs by assimilative deletion: