Being and asking

Formation

The present of olla has three forms in the singular: minä olen (I am), sinä olet (you are, to one person), hän on (he is, she is). A name or a noun as the subject takes the third person form, on. The personal pronoun hän stands for a man or a woman; se (it) stands for a thing or an animal.

Use

Olla is followed by a noun, an adjective or a place. A noun after olla has no article: Minä olen opiskelija is “I am a student”. The pronoun is often left out with minä and sinä, since the ending of the verb shows the person: Olen Elina. With hän, the pronoun is said. Sinä is used to one person, whoever it is: friends, strangers and colleagues alike are addressed with sinä in everyday Finnish.

Formation

The plural forms of olla are me olemme (we are), te olette (you are, to several people) and he ovat (they are). Two names or nouns joined by ja take the plural form: Liisa ja Pekka ovat…

Use

Te is said to several people; sinä is said to one. Te is also the polite form for one person, used in shops and in formal letters, with the plural verb: Oletteko te rouva Virtanen? In the plural, too, the pronoun of the first and second person is often left out: Olemme kotona. A plural noun after ovat (they are students) has another form, met at a later level; at A1 the plural forms of olla are used with a place or a state.

Formation

A Finnish sentence is made negative with the negative verb, which has a form for each person: en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät. It is followed by the main verb in a form without a personal ending; for olla that form is ole, the same in every person: minä en ole, sinä et ole, hän ei ole, me emme ole, te ette ole, he eivät ole.

Use

The negative verb is placed before the main verb, usually straight before it. A short negative answer is the negative verb alone, or with ole: Oletko väsynyt? – En. or – En ole. The same negative verb is used with every Finnish verb, as explained in Saying what you do not do: en puhu, et puhu, eivät puhu.

Formation

A question word is placed first in the sentence. Kuka (who) asks about a person, mikä (what) about a thing, missä (where) about a place. Mitä is also “what”; at this point it is used in the greeting Mitä kuuluu? (How are you?). The demonstratives tämä (this) and tuo (that) are used to point at a person or a thing.

Use

After the question word, the subject and the verb come in either order: Missä Aino on? or Missä on Aino? The answer repeats the verb: Mikä tuo on? – Tuo on kahvila. The other question words, with their cases, are gathered in Asking whom, when, why and how many: Kenelle? Milloin? Kuinka monta?.

Formation

A yes/no question is formed by placing the verb first and adding the ending -ko or -kö to it: Olet kotona. → Oletko kotona? The forms of olla are olenko, oletko, onko, olemmeko, oletteko, ovatko. The ending follows vowel harmony, explained in Vowel harmony: a or ä in the ending (talossa, kylässä): a verb with a, o or u takes -ko, a verb with none of them -kö. Every form of olla takes -ko.

Use

The short answer repeats the verb in the person of the answer: Oletko väsynyt? – Olen. Onko hän koulussa? – On. The negative answer is the negative verb: – En., – Ei. Kyllä (yes) may be added before the affirmative answer, and ei (no) is also the answer no on its own: Ei, hän on Oulussa.

Use

Olla says where someone is and how someone is. The place is a single word with an ending, with no word for at or in: kotona (at home), töissä (at work), Suomessa (in Finland). How someone is is said with an adjective in its basic form: Juha on väsynyt. The greeting Mitä kuuluu? is answered Kiitos, hyvää or Hyvää, kiitos; hyvää is the partitive of hyvä (good).

Use

Everyday speech uses short forms of the personal pronouns, which are understood but not written: mä (minä), sä (sinä), se (hän), ne (he); me and te do not change. In writing, se (it) and ne (they) stand for things; in speech they stand for people too. The verb is shortened as well, as shown in Hearing the spoken forms of olla: mä oon, sä oot, me ollaan.