A verb is a word wich denotates actions, events, or states of being. It's the predicate of a sentence and describes the relationship between subject and object. In Finnish, there is both active and passive form of a verb and it varys in four tempus (present, imperfect, perfect tense, past perfect) and four moods (indicative, imperative, conditional, potential) Verb also agrees with person, and number of subject.
There is six personal forms in Finnish. They are formed by adding an ending after the stem of the verb.
The endings are:
kysyäThe 3rd singular form (he/she) is marked by long vowel. If there is already two vowels, the 3rd form is the stem (for example: syö-dä.)
To get the stem, you must know wich type the verb is.Because verb conjugation indicates the subject, you don't have to use personal pronoun
minä puhun suomea = puhun suomeaThe verb has four tempus
1. Present tense is used when telling about present, and also about future, because there is no future tense in Finnish koska suomessa ei ole erillistä futuuria. Mark of the present tense is null, therefore personal endings are added straight after strong stem.
2. Imperfect tense is simple past tense. It's marked by i, which is added between stem and personal ending.
*No long vowel in 3rd person.
3. perfect tense delivers general information about past, eg.:
Olen käynyt Kiinassa
It consists of nUt-participle and olla-verb.
4. past perfect tells about background of the past event, esim:
Olin tullut juuri kotiin, kun se tapahtui.
It consists of nUt-participle and imperfect form of olla-verb.
Finnish has special negative verb. This means, each grammatical person has its own form.
| singular | plural |
| En | Emme |
| Et | Ette |
| Ei | Eivät |
The verb typology is to help conjugate the verbs. There is six different types, and you will identify them by infinitive form (the form you'll find in a dictionary):
Type 1.
ends with two vowels, remove the last one (always a or ä) to get the stem. This type of verbs undergo consonant gradiation. Examples...
Type 2.
ends with -da or -dä. Examples...
Type 3.
ends in -la/-lä, -na/-nä, -ra/-rä, -sta/-stä. Both in type 2 and 3 you get the stem by removing the mentioned ending. The type 4 undergo consonant gradioation, but the type 3 don't. Examples...
Type 4
These types of verbs end in -ata, -ota, -ytä or -ätä. Examples...
Type 5
ends with -ita or -itä. Remove only the last vowel, and add -se. No consonant gradiation. Examples...
Type 6.
ens with -eta or -etä. Remove a or ä. Undergo consonant gradiation. Examples...