Persoonapronomineja

Persoonapronomineja, or personal pronouns, are words that stand in for nouns referring to people or things. In Finnish, they are a fundamental part of grammar, changing their form depending on their grammatical case and number. The basic personal pronouns in Finnish are minä (I), sinä (you, singular), hän (he/she), me (we), te (you, plural), and he (they). It's important to note that the pronoun hän is gender-neutral in its base form, although in spoken language, it can sometimes refer specifically to a male or female person.

These pronouns decline into various cases, such as nominative, genitive, partitive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, instructive, abessive, and comitative. For example, minä becomes minun in the genitive (my/mine), minua in the partitive, and so on. Similarly, sinä becomes sinun, sinua, etc. The plural pronouns me, te, and he also decline accordingly. The use of these different case forms is crucial for constructing grammatically correct Finnish sentences.

Finnish personal pronouns are not typically used when the subject is clear from the verb conjugation. This is a common feature of many agglutinative languages. For instance, "Minä puhun" (I speak) uses "minä" for clarity or emphasis, but "Puhun" on its own already means "I speak" due to the verb ending. Therefore, personal pronouns are often omitted unless they are needed for emphasis or contrast.