Colloquial Finnish - Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

Some dialects have the full-length personal pronouns 'minä' and 'sinä', but most people use shorter equivalents, like these found in Greater Helsinki region:

minä → mä

sinä → sä

The root words are also shorter:

minu- → mu-, e.g. minun → mun "my"

sinu- → su-, e.g. sinun → sun "yours"

The third-person pronouns 'hän' ('he' or 'she') and 'he' ('they'), are commonly used in spoken language only in Southwestern Finland, and increasingly rarely also there. Elsewhere they are usually replaced by their non-personal equivalents - note that there is no pejorative sense in talking about people as 'it', unlike in English. Do note when speaking of animals, they are always called it, even in written Finnish.

hän → se

he → ne

For example, the sentence "Did he mistake me for you?" has these forms:

Luuliko hän minua sinuksi?

Luuliks se mua suks? or :"Luulikse mua suks?"