Pidän

Pidän is the present tense, first-person singular form of the Finnish verb pitää. The core meaning is “I like” or “I enjoy,” but pitää has many other senses, including “to hold,” “to keep,” or “to be obliged/required to.” When pidän expresses liking, the target of the liking is usually a noun or pronoun in a suitable case, often the partitive. Common examples include Pidän kahvista (I like coffee), Pidän tästä kirjasta (I like this book), and Pidän sinusta (I like you). The sentence Pidän tästä is a natural and common way to say that you enjoy something you are experiencing.

Grammar and usage notes: Pidän follows standard Finnish present tense conjugation for the verb pitää. The object may appear with pronouns like tästä, siitä, tästä kirjasta, or with other phrases indicating what is liked. To form a question, Finnish uses the enclitic -ko/-kö after the verb, for example Pidänkö tästä? (Do I like this?) or Pidätkö tästä? (Do you like this?) The negative form is En pidä … (I don’t like …), with pidä in the negative root.

Etymology and range: Pidän derives from the Finnish verb pitää, which covers multiple concepts beyond liking, including holding, keeping, or being responsible for something. In everyday speech, pidän is the most common way to express personal preference, taste, or enjoyment, and it appears across contexts such as hobbies, foods, people, and experiences.

See also: pitää, pidä, pidettäessä.