sinä

Sinä is the Finnish second-person singular pronoun used to refer to the person or people being spoken to. It functions as the subject in a sentence and contrasts with minä (I). In typical Finnish, sinä is written in lowercase unless it starts a sentence or appears in a title.

Finnish pronouns decline through cases, so sinä has several inflected forms. The most common object forms are sinut (accusative) and sinua (partitive). In other cases, forms such as sinussa (in you), sinulla (on/with you), sinulta (from you), sinulle (to you), and sinuksi (as you) appear, among others. The language commonly uses the colloquial shortened form sä as a variant of sinä in informal speech, and sometimes jopa in writing to convey speech style.

Usage notes: sinä is used for a single listener in informal settings. For addressing multiple people, or in formal contexts, the pronoun te is used. Finnish has no grammatical gender in pronouns, so sinä applies the same to all listeners regardless of gender. Capitalization rules follow general writing conventions: sinä is capitalized only at the beginning of a sentence or in titles.

Etymology and variants: sinä is cognate with Estonian sina and other Finnic forms, tracing back to Proto-Finnic roots. In regional dialects and historical registers, you may encounter variations or polite forms, but sinä remains the standard second-person singular pronoun in contemporary Finnish.

See also: Finnish pronouns, Finnish grammar, second person.