puhuimme

Puhuimme is the past tense form of the Finnish verb puhua, meaning to speak or to talk. It translates to “we spoke” or “we talked” in English and is used to describe a completed action by a plural subject.

Form and morphology: In Finnish, the past tense for the first-person plural is created by taking the verb stem and adding the ending -imme, often with an inserted -i- before the ending. For puhua, the form is built from the stem puh- with the past tense marker and plural ending, yielding puh-u-hi-m-me as the standard spelling puhuimme. This pattern is common for many Finnish verbs in the same conjugation class and contrasts with, for example, minä puhuin (I spoke) or sinä puhuit (you spoke).

Usage: Puhuimme is used in narrative and descriptive contexts to indicate that the speakers spoke in the past. It is compatible with various sentence types, including statements, reports, and storytelling. In everyday Finnish, it can appear with or without an explicit subject, depending on context.

Examples: Puhuimme eilen puhelimessa. We spoke on the phone yesterday. Another set of past-tense forms for the same verb includes minä puhuin, sinä puhuit, hän puhui, me puhuiimme (colloquially uncommon in isolation), te puhuitte, he puhuivat, illustrating how person and number shift in past tense.

Related forms: Puhua also appears in present tense (puhumme, we speak), as well as other past-tense forms for different subjects. The_ form puhui, puhui, and puhuivat reflect the broader Finnish verb conjugation system and its reliance on stem changes and endings to convey person and tense.