Have you ever experienced the awkward situation, when you’ve studied Finnish for a while from a textbook or a course, you think you’ve finally got it and feel ready to speak – but when you go talk to Finns, you can’t understand what they say?
Yep, that happens a lot.
And it’s not only because we talk too fast (which we don’t, usually). It’s because most textbooks and courses teach the standard written Finnish that we don’t actually use in the spoken language.
The written Finnish – kirjakieli – is used in books, magazines, emails, news and the president’s speeches.
But the language we use in everyday life, on every occasion and with everyone regardless of how formal the relationship, is spoken Finnish – puhekieli.
And why do we have these two different forms of Finnish? Because the written form was only created in the 1500s, when bishop Michael Agricola tried to tame the Finnish grammar into rules – whereas the spoken Finnish used today was already spoken about a thousand years ago.
While all languages have some differences between the spoken and written forms – to make it faster, the spoken language is often shorter with letters dropped out – the spoken and written Finnish are more like two dialects with somewhat differing use of grammar.
This means that if you learn the standard form only, you will find it difficult to understand Finns speak. Having conversations in Finnish will be hard, because even if you say a perfect sentence in standard Finnish, we might switch to English because we know you can’t actually speak or understand normal spoken Finnish.
To help you with that, in this article you will learn the main differences between the spoken and written Finnish – so that you can start using the everyday Finnish and avoid exposing as a foreigner from the first sentence you say.
Throughout this article, I call the standard written language ‘standard Finnish’ and the colloquial everyday Finnish ‘spoken Finnish’, bearing in mind that we also write text messages in spoken Finnish, so it’s not used only orally.
Let’s start with something that you usually learn on your first Finnish lesson: pronouns. Sorry to tell you, but even these most basic words are very different in the standard and spoken Finnish.
You’ve probably learned that I/me in Finnish is minä, and you (singular) is sinä. Well, those are too long for us, and we rarely use them. Instead, you will hear us say mä and sä.
This applies to the possessive forms as well. My and your in the standard Finnish are minun and sinun, but in the spoken form we use mun and sun.
Sound simple enough? It doesn’t stop here…
In the spoken Finnish, we rarely use the pronouns hän, which is a gender-neutral pronoun for he/she, or he, which is the plural form.
Instead, we use se (singular) and ne (plural) – which directly translates into it and they, in the standard Finnish used only for objects, things and animals.
I know, we are polite like that 😄 But it actually has no pejorative meaning!
Finally – and I promise you this is the final point on this – if you want to point at someone to mean something like that person, you would say toi, or noi for those people – not tuo and nuo.
Don’t worry if these sound complicated. These are such basic words that you will hear them in every sentence in Finnish – which means that you will absorb them quickly!
Next up, the most common thing that exposes a foreigner: verbs. Because hear me out: we NEVER use the standard Finnish versions of the first- and third-person plural forms in any tense. If you do that, you’re burnt.
The standard Finnish version is me syömme (we eat). But in the spoken Finnish, we always use the passive form: me syödään – or more often me syyään, but I’ll talk about that later.
Another tip to give you here is that you must use the pronoun in this form, because if you drop it out, it becomes a suggestion: me mennään = we go, but mennään = let’s go.
For he syövät (they eat), the correct spoken Finnish version is ne syö. We always use the third person singular form even with the plural pronoun (which, as you can see, is not he, as you learned in the first point).
If you master at least these two things, you’re on your way to sounding like a native.
Personal pronouns are not the only case where Finns cut out letters in the middle of the word. We want to make the language easier to pronounce, so the letter d is often omitted in words such as tehdä -> tehä, mahdoton -> mahoton, kahdeksan -> kaheksan.
Another example of this is the conditional form of to be. Minä olisin is often shortened into mä oisin – goodbye letter l! And this applies to all persons but the first plural, because we would be in spoken language is me oltais, which does not require cutting the -l.
Other very common examples of cutting middle letters are: mä tiedän -> mä tiiän, mä haluaisin -> mä haluisin – again, applicable to all persons.
The most basic verbs also have a spoken form with most of the middle letters dropped out: to be, come, go and put are not usually used in their standard form in the spoken language, but like this:
I am = minä olen -> mä oon
I come = minä tulen -> mä tuun
I go = minä menen -> mä meen
I put = minä panen -> mä paan
There are tons of other examples, but with this one, I’d just recommend learning by doing – you will learn these if you just listen to a lot of normal spoken Finnish.
To not make things too easy, we also drop out letters at the end of the word. I can see you facepalming there… But don’t worry! Usually it’s the letter i (not always though…).
We have this thing, where words ending in -si lose the final -i: anteeksi -> anteeks, uusi -> uus. The third singular conditional form always falls into this category:
He/she would be = hän olisi -> se olis
He/she would come = hän tulisi -> se tulis
He/she would sing = hän laulaisi -> se laulais
You might also notice that some Finnish numbers have the -si ending. And you’re right: those also lose the final -i. So instead of yksi, kaksi, viisi, kuusi, we say yks, kaks, viis, kuus. Finnish numbers have additional differences in the spoken language, and you can learn more about them in this video.
Finally, especially in Southern Finland it is common to cut out the final -a/ä (I told you the -i rule is not the only one!) in some grammatical cases. I would say Helsingissä and Helsingistä (in Helsinki and from Helsinki) – but people from there say Helsingis and Helsingist. This applies to pöydällä -> pöydäl (on the table) and kuulostaa kivalta -> kuulostaa kivalt (sounds nice) as well.
Different Finnish dialects also differ in how much cutting they do – so you can experiment a bit and see at which point you are no longer understood in a given location.
You might have struggled with Finnish diphthongs – gliding vowels, with two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Well, apparently, so do Finns.
Diphthongs at the end of the word, especially in the partitive case, are often smoothed out:
I speak English = minä puhun englantia -> mä puhun englantii
He is handsome = hän on komea -> se on komee
A dark room = pimeä huone -> pimee huone
Here it’s extremely important to pronounce the double vowel as a long sound – otherwise you’ll be exposed as a foreigner faster than you can say “mä puhun suomee”.
I’m sure one of the first things you learn at a Finnish class is that to formulate a question without an interrogative – such as what, when, how, why – you add the suffix -ko/kö at the end of the verb.
In theory, yes. BUT in everyday Finnish, this ending turns into -ks. Don’t ask me why!
So this is what questions look like in spoken Finnish:
Am I beautiful? = Olenko minä kaunis? -> Oonks mä kaunis?
Does the train come already? = Tuleeko se juna jo? -> Tuleeks se juna jo?
Do you eat breakfast? = Syötkö sinä aamupalaa? -> Syöksä aamupalaa?
In some dialects, questions with the second singular person – sinä/sä (you in singular) – drop the -k altogether: Syötsä aamupalaa?
And finally, if it’s a request, the correct form would be tuukko auttaan? (will you come help?) – without the -ks but with -ko instead.
Oh dear, this starts to get complicated for me as well…
As the final point, let’s finish with a relatively easy one: we don’t use the possessive suffix in spoken Finnish. These are the -ni, -si, -nsa etc. suffixes for nouns you’ve probably learned at your Finnish class.
Well, we don’t use them – save one.
Here are a few examples:
My book = minun kirjani -> mun kirja
Our book = meidän kirjamme -> meidän/meiän kirja
Your book (plural) = teidän kirjanne -> teidän/teiän kirja
The only one we use in some cases is the singular third person form: kirjansa. This is to avoid repeating the pronoun, like in se unohti sen takin -> se unohti takkinsa (he/she forgot their coat).
Basically, you only have to learn the possessive pronouns + one suffix – so easy!
I’ve presented a few key differences between the spoken and written Finnish, but of course there are many more. If you are interested to hear more, you can watch these videos about Finnish untranslatable filler words or the main Finnish dialects.
But rather than learning about the differences, I would suggest just learning the spoken language first – that’s what Finns do too. The mother tongue that we learn as babies is the spoken Finnish. We then have Finnish classes at school to learn how to use the written language properly.
So why should you do this the other way around?
Learning the spoken language will help you understand Finns in day-to-day life and make you sound like a native – that’s what you want, right?
I would therefore recommend ditching your standard Finnish textbook for now and focusing on the spoken Finnish. Some textbooks do teach it, but I personally prefer the Natural Method that is based on comprehensible input through listening and reading.
If you are sick of learning the textbook Finnish that no Finn speaks in everyday life, sign up on my FREE masterclass and start understanding Finns for real!