This article looks at some harder imperative forms: the third person imperative and the passive imperative. If you’re a beginner, you should first check out the basic imperative, because this mood is something you usually learn pretty early on when studying Finnish. Some examples of the basic imperative in the singular are Syö! Tule! Älä tule! In the plural those forms are Syökää! Tulkaa! Älkää tulko! 

The harder imperative forms that you can find in this article are pretty rare. This is definitely an advanced topic (B1+). The third person imperative and passive imperative are called jussiivi (the jussive mood) by linguists. We will take a closer look at them below.

1. The Meaning of the Jussiivi

The third person imperative is used to give an order to someone who isn’t there to hear it (e.g. Tulkoon vain ‘Just let him come’; Tulkoot vain ‘Just let them come’). Usually, it has a hint of exasperation in it with the behavior of that person or the situation.

When translating this form to English, you will generally use “let him/her/them” with a second verb behind it. Below, you can see some examples of the third person singular imperative (#1), the third person plural imperative (#2) and the passive imperative (#3).

2. The Formation of the Jussiivi

2.1. The Third Person Imperative Forms

The jussiivi will have -koon/köön (in the singular) and -koot/kööt (in the plural) as its marker. This ending is added to the same form of the verb as the regular plural imperative.

2.2. The Passive Imperative Form

In addition to the third person imperative forms, we also have the passive imperative. You will add -koon/köön to the stem of the present passive participle (TAVA-participle). For example annettakoon will be translated to English as “let it be given” and juotakoon as “let it be drunk”.

2.3. Negative Third Person Imperative

The negative third person imperative is formed with älköön in the singular and älkööt in the plural. The main verb will have -ko/kö added to it in the same way as the regular plural imperative (e.g. älkää menkö → älköön menkö, älkööt menkö).

For the passive, you will use älköön and the present passive participle stem with -ko/kö added to it.

3. The Usage of the Jussive

As explained above, the third person imperative is used to order someone who isn’t present to do something (e.g. Tulkoon vain ‘Just let him come’). The passive imperative is usually more stiff or celebratory. Both of these types of harder imperative forms are rare, and they appear most commonly in phrases.

3.1. Phrase-Like Third Person Imperatives

3.2. Bible Phrases with Third Person Imperatives

The bible is filled with great third person imperative examples, because it’s been translated from Hebrew, where this verb form is apparently quite common. The jussiivi appears in many prayers, as well as other texts in the Bible.

3.3. Swears with Third Person Imperatives

The third person imperative has been used in swear word phrases.

3.4. Passive Imperative Phrases

4. The Sentence Construction of the Jussiivi

4.1. Subjects and Objects are Possible

Unlike the regular imperative forms (Syö! Syökää!), these sentences can have a subject and an object. They function well without both as well.

4.2. The Subject’s Position in the Sentence

The subject of a third person imperative sentence won’t have a fixed position in the sentence. It can appear both before and after the verb without changing the meaning of the sentence.

In the passive imperative form, there will of course be no subject. However, as always with the Finnish passive, it does imply that there is a person doing it.

4.3. The Object’s Inflection in the Sentence

In these versions of the imperative, the inflection of the object is different from in the basic imperative. As you know, the object in a regular imperative sentence will never appear in the genitive; instead it will look like the nominative (e.g. Syö omena! Avaa ikkuna!).

For the jussiivi, you will follow the basic object rules. This means that for the third person imperative forms, you will have a genitive total objects (e.g. Syököön omenan. Syökööt omenan.) In contrast, in a passive sentence, your total object will look like the nominative (e.g. Syötäköön omena).

4.4. The Object’s Position in the Sentence

In theory, just like the subject, the object can be placed both before and after the verb. In reality though, you will only run into sentences with the object before the verb when we’re dealing with the passive imperative. For the third persons, you will mainly find the object behind the verb.

5. Advanced Discrepancies (B2+)

Usually the singular third person imperative is generally used when referring to one person (e.g. olkoon hän). Likewise, the plural is generally used with multiple people (e.g. olkoot he).

However, this pattern can and will be broken, as all rules can be broken to stress something. Using -koot/kööt when there is nothing plural present can for example give a sentence an additional affective touch.

5.1. Singular Instead of Plural

You can find tulkoon (when it should be tulkoot) forms with plural subjects even in newspapers; even in the title of the article (read more here). This is interesting, because you’d think breaking rules like this would be purely a phenomenon in spoken language.

5.2. Plural Instead of Singular

Likewise, you can find examples of tulkoot being used with a singular subject. This is more common in spoken language.

In addition, more commonly, some verbs are used this way when there isn’t a clear subject to be mentioned at all, be it singular or plural. This is especially apparent with olkoot, which has gotten the meaning of “I don’t care” when appearing on its own. This is also the case when repeating the same verb twice.

In certain dialects, you will find the third person marker to be -kohon/köhön. This can be explained by looking at the history of the Finnish language. We might have an article discussing this up at some later date. In any case, it is not uncommon to find forms like olkohon, tulkohon, and lähteköhön in some dialects.

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