“Which words should I learn first in Finnish?”
I hear this question a lot, and I see a lot of videos and articles out there listing the ‘top 50 words to learn in Finnish’.
I secretly want to rebel against this concept of the most important words that somehow are unique to each language – when the truth is that the vocabulary you need depends so much on your specific life situation.
If you’re a student, you need to know academic vocabulary.
If you’re a hairdresser, you need to know hair-related vocabulary (plus all the small talk vocabulary you can think of!)
But the one thing that prevails regardless of your life situation or the language you speak, are verbs. You cannot form a sentence without a verb (in Finnish at least).
And talking about what we do or what happens actually requires a very short list of verbs.
This is why, in this article, you will learn the 10 most important and common verbs in Finnish – which, apart from a couple rather unique verbs, would be the most important and common verbs to learn in any language.
I want to say a couple of words about conjugations. I’m sorry to tell you that Finnish verbs are conjugated in different ways in each persona. On top of that, these conjugations are regrettably often different in the written and spoken language.
This means that if you’ve learned them with a textbook or any online conjugation website, you’ve learned them in kirjakieli and might not understand them in the everyday Finnish conversation.
If you want to understand Finns with ease and sound like one yourself, you can master the puhekieli conjugations with the help of The Finnish Verb Handbook.
The Finnish Handbook includes the 10 most important Finnish verbs conjugated in:
the main tenses – present, imperfect, perfect, past perfect, conditional and past conditional
all personas – me, you, he/she, we, you pl. and they
negative and positive
declarative and interrogative clauses
But now, let me explain what these 10 verbs are and why they are the most important verbs in Finnish.
Do I even have to explain this? To be is probably the most used verb in the whole world.
In Finnish, we use it to describe the location, feelings, appearance…
Mä oon Janne. = I am Janne.
Mä oon kotona. = I am at home.
Mä oon surullinen. = I am sad.
Sä oot kaunis. = You are beautiful.
I can’t think of a more important verb to learn first!
The frustrating thing is that this is also one of the verbs that has a very different form in puhekieli. Sorry guys!
If to be is number 1 in the important verb competition, to want is definitely a strong runner-up.
Just think about it: how many times do you need it per day?
It’s even a bit embarrassing to admit how many things we want every day.
To start with, I would recommend learning to use it automatically in present and past conditional: mä haluisin and mä oisin halunnu.
This will already get you quite far!
Well what can ‘can’ do for you?
In Finnish, you can use it to ask people to do something for you – that’s the polite voisiksä auttaa mua? (could you help me?) – or to come up with excuses – mä en mitenkään voi nyt siivota koska mun täytyy käydä suihkussa (I really can't clean up now because I have to take a shower).
You can also use it in exclamations like ei voi olla totta! (it can’t be true!) or suggestions like me voitais vaikka mennä kävelylle (we could for example go for a walk).
It’s a nice, short and versatile verb – and conjugated mostly in the kirjakieli form. Wohoo!
This is definitely in the top tier of the most commonly used verbs, and we use it in so many ways in Finnish.
Just a few examples:
Mä meen töihin. = I go to work.
Mä meen Tampereelle. = I go to Tampere.
Mä meen suihkuun. = I go to the shower (= I’ll take a shower).
Se meni hyvin. = It went well.
Learn this one with its twin verb, tulla.
Like the previous one, tulla is very versatile and commonly used in everyday Finnish conversation. Who needs the fancier saapua (to arrive) if you can simply use tulla?
Something to note is that we use tulla as both ‘to come’ and ‘to become’ in English:
Mun veli tuli kotiin. = My brother came home.
Mun veljestä tuli muusikko. = My brother became a musician.
But notice that when it’s used as ‘to become’, we think of it as a transformation, hence the elative case -sta/-stä.
While this is of course an important verb in any language, in Finnish it doesn’t have exactly the same range of use cases as for example in French, where it’s used more widely – like ‘je fais les courses’, ‘je fais un gâteau’ or ‘je fais du sport’.
In Finnish, these would be mä käyn kaupassa, mä leivon kakun and mä harrastan liikuntaa.
But we do use it a lot nevertheless, including in sentences where another verb is used in English, such as:
Mä teen ruokaa. = I make food (= I cook).
Mä teen töitä. = I do work (= I work).
Another extremely common verb – I don’t know why!
Tietää is not 100% equal to the English version, because we have another verb for expressing ‘knowing a person’: tuntea – which translates into ‘to feel’ (and is also used for feelings).
So if you want to ask whether someone knows your neighbour Maija personally, you ask tunneksä sen naapurin Maijan?
If you use the verb tietää in that example, it would mean something like have you ever heard about Maija – not whether you’ve actually ever met her.
With tietää, you can also hear some common phrases like tiiäkkö mitä? (you know what?) or en kyl tiiä, which, despite including the word yes (kyl = kyllä), means ‘I don’t know’.
This is an interesting one and perhaps more important than its direct translation in English. This is because in addition to using it with things we actually see with our eyes, such as…
Mä en nää mitään! = I don’t see anything!
Ooksä nähny Leonardo DiCaprion uusimman leffan? = Have you seen Leonardo DiCaprio’s newest movie?
…we also use it to describe meeting a person.
Me nähtiin Jannen kanssa viime perjantaina = We saw each other with Janne last Friday = We met with Janne last Friday.
The direct English translation doesn’t really convey the true meaning, which indicates more like a planned encounter.
Okay now we’re getting into the more complex stuff. This and the next verb are so commonly used in Finnish, but they don’t exactly have a direct translation in other languages.
The meaning of käydä varies a lot and depends a lot on the context it is used in – another reason why we use it so often!
Mä käyn kaupassa. = I’ll do the groceries.
Mä käyn nopeesti syömässä. = I’ll just quickly eat.
Mä kävin tänään mummalla ja vaarilla. = I visited grandma and grandpa today.
Mä kävin koulua Itälän ala-asteella. = I went to school at Itälä primary school.
Käykö sulle kolmelta? = Does at 3 pm work for you?
I could go on and on with the examples, but the best way to grasp the true meaning of käydä is to listen to a lot of authentic everyday Finnish!
As you can see from the several translations, päästä is another difficult one. Like with the previous one, it has a lot of different meanings. Here are just a few examples:
Millon sä pääset koulusta? = What time do you finish school?
Se pääsi pälkähästä! = He/she got out of trouble!
Toivottavasti mä pääsen yliopistoon. = I hope I get into the university.
Se pääsi maaliviivalle asti. = He/she made it to the finish line.
And don’t mix this up with the verb päästää, which means to let go.
As the inventors of the sauna, Finns of course have created specific vocabulary related to it.
Saunoa means the complete experience of going to the sauna, of sitting there while throwing water on the hot rocks, and of showering afterwards.
While this is a very commonly used verb, we do often replace it with käydä saunassa.
In any case, this is a good one to learn as it doesn’t really have an equivalent in most languages!
There you go, the most important and definitely mostly often used Finnish verbs. Of course, there are many other important verbs out there, but starting with these and being able to use them automatically will tremendously improve both your understanding and your speaking of Finnish.
You might be wondering: “Well how do I learn all of these and the proper puhekieli conjugations??”
And I have two tips for you. First, as mentioned earlier, you can get your cheat sheet The Finnish Verb Handbook to accelerate the learning process and have the conjugations imprinted in your brain for when you need them.
Second, you can learn these verbs by listening to everyday authentic Finnish. Because these are the most common verbs, we use them A LOT in our day-to-day life.
If you want to acquire them naturally, with the Natural Method, check out my FREE video class and learn how to use this most efficient way to learn languages.
Published on 24 November 2023.