General characteristics of Finnish verbs
A verb is a word which denotes actions, events, or states of being. In more simple terms, it shows what someone is doing. Or what happens; if it's raining, there's not necessarily anyone who is doing the rain, but still "to rain" is a verb.
One important feature of the verb is, that it describes the relationship between subject and object. Subject is the one, who is doing something. Object is the other, it's the target of the action. Thus, verb expresses what the subject is doing to the object.
In Finnish, it matters a lot who is the subject. This is called personal conjugation:
|minä kysyn||I ask||me kysymme||we ask|
|sinä kysyt||You ask||te kysytte||you ask|
|hän kysyy||He/She asks||he kysyvät||they ask|
As you can see, the verb has different endings, depending on the subject (The 3rd singular (he/she) is marked by long vowel.)
In addition to 6 persons, Finnish verbs have also other forms. There are some examples below, but they are very arbitrary, since there are not always equivalent translations in English, or quite often English has one form, which covers several functions. Click the titles to find out more information about the forms.
Finnish verbs have 4 Tenses. There's no future tense, but you can use present tense to talk about the future. The past tenses are more or less the same as in English.
|Present (including future)|
|I live in Finland.|
|Imperfect (simple past)|
|I lived in Finland|
|Olen asunut Suomessa.|
|I have lived in Finland.|
|Olin asunut Suomessa.|
|I had lived in Finland.|
There are 4 moods in Finnish. Often times English uses modal verbs (such as "may" or "would"), but Finnish has its own forms. Potential is rather marginal.
|I speak Finnish (the default case)|
|Puhuisin suomea, jos osaisin.|
|I would speak Finnish, if I knew how.|
|I may speak Finnish|
Active is the default and in addition to that there's the passive.
|I speak Finnish. (the default case)|
|Suomea puhutaan Suomessa.|
|Finnish is spoken in Finland.|
Infinitives are verb forms which behave like nouns. The first infinitive is the one you can find in dictionaries. The 2nd and 5th are marginal.
|Haluan puhua suomea.|
|I want to speak Finnish (the default case)|
|Hän käveli puhuen suomea.|
|He walked while speaking Finnish.|
|Hän oli puhumassa suomea.|
|He was speaking Finnish.|
|Suomen puhuminen on vaikeaa.|
|Speaking Finnish is difficult.|
|Hän oli puhumaisillaan suomea.|
|He was about to speak Finnish.|
|Suomea puhuva mies.|
|A Finnish speaking man (a man, who speaks Finnish)|
|Suomea puhunut mies.|
|A Finnish speaking man (a man, who spoke Finnish)|
To conjugate a verb, you need to know which type it is. There are 6 different types of verbs.
Verb is the "head" of the sentence. It determines the meaning of the sentence and what other parts it may, or has to, include.