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?"
Read more about this topic: Colloquial Finnish
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or pronouns:
“In contrast with envy, which usually occurs between two people and is focused upon another person’s qualities or possessions, jealousy occurs when a third person becomes a threat to a dyad. Jealousy involves the loss or the impending loss of a relationship that one wants to hold onto, a relationship that is vital to personal fulfillment and claimed as one’s own.”
—Carol S. Becker (b. 1942)
“In the meantime no sense in bickering about pronouns and other parts of blather.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)