Hänellä

Hänellä is a Finnish word formed from the third-person singular pronoun hän (he/she) combined with the adessive case suffix -llä. It functions as a possessive non-lexical form used with the verb olla (to be) to express possession. The combination literally conveys “on him/her” and is the standard construction for saying someone has something.

In sentences, hänellä is typically followed by the present tense form on: for example, Hänellä on auto means “He/she has a car.” The same structure can express past possession with oli, as in Hänellä oli auto, meaning “He/she had a car.” The pronoun itself is gender-neutral, reflecting Finnish’s gender-inclusive pronoun system.

Morphology and usage notes:

- Hänellä is the adessive singular form of hän. Other possessive forms include minä (minulla, I have), sinä (sinulla, you have), and so on; for plural subjects the corresponding forms are heillä, meillä, teillä, etc.

- The genitive-like possessive pronoun muodossa esimerkiksi hänen or hänen kirjansa can denote ownership when the noun carries its own possessive suffix, as in hänen kirjansa (“his/her book”). Hänellä, by contrast, marks the possessor in a clause where the possessed item is stated after olevan/omistaa structures.

Examples:

- Hänellä on aikaa. (He/she has time.)

- Hänellä oli ystävä vuonna 1990. (He/she had a friend in 1990.)

Hänellä is mainly a functional form used in everyday Finnish to express possession or existence of a possessed attribute, without implying gender.