The imperative mood is something you probably want to learn pretty early on when studying Finnish. The singular imperative is easy to form and used so much that it’s a great way to expand your communication skills (e.g. Syö! Mene! Tule!). The plural imperative is a whole lot more complicated.

In this article we will only look at the very basics of forming the imperative mood of verbs.

1. The Use of the Imperative Mood

1.1. Functions of the imperative

The imperative mood is used in orders and requests. It’s one of the ways to express necessity, just like “täytyy” and “pitää”. It’s common to add an exclamation point to the end of an imperative sentence.

1.2. The imperative can be polite

Despite what is sometimes taught in classes, the imperative is not necessarily impolite. It’s a neutral, polite way of phrasing instructions. The politeness is especially apparent in cases where to person receiving the instruction benefits from following the instructions. There is nothing impolite about, for example, instructions on how to act when there’s an emergency situation (#1). In advertisements (#2), doctor related documents (#3) and recipes (#4) you will also find a lot of imperative forms.

Parents (#1) or teachers (#2) can also address their children with imperatives without a negative interpretation.

1.3. Sometimes the imperative is impolite

Sometimes the imperative will be too direct. This is especially the case in situations where the recipient of the order doesn’t benefit from doing as they’re told. In these situations the recipient can be taken aback by the directness of the order.

Here are some impolite examples of the imperative:

In those, you might want to use the polite conditional instead (#1). You can also soften the imperative by adding the clitic -pa/-pä or -han/-hän to the end of the imperative verb (#2).

2. The Formation of the Imperative

The Finnish imperative can be conjugated in all the personal forms except the first person singular. The more difficult forms will be addressed in a different article.

2.1. The singular imperative

To form the imperative, you take the first person singular without the -n. This is the case for all verbtypes (VT). The negative form will be the exact same, but with älä “don’t” in front of it. You can find more example sentences of the negative imperative here.

If you’re a beginner, note that I’m only adding verbtype 6 to be complete. In the beginning of your studies, it’s fine to forget about verbtype 6 because it’s so rarely used.

2.2. The plural imperative

The plural imperative’s marker -kaa/-kää (see vowel harmony) will be added to infinitive’s stem of the verb. You can find the infinitive’s stem by removing the infinitive’s marker.

• Verbtype 1: remove the final -a/-ä
• Verbtype 2: remove the final -da/-dä
• Verbtype 3: remove the final two letters
• Verbtype 4: remove the final -a/-ä (not the -t-!)
• Verbtype 5: remove the final -a/-ä (not the -t-!)
• Verbtype 6: remove the final -a/-ä (not the -t-!)

For the negative plural imperative, your auxiliary verb will be “älkää“, and your main verb will get -ko/-kö added to its infinitive stem. This means the stem of both the positive main verb and the negative one will be identical.

3. The Object in Imperative Sentences

A regular sentence can have an object that looks like the genitive (Ostan omenan). When you turn a sentence like that into an imperative sentence, you will need to use the basic form of the object.

Partitive objects will remain partitive in an imperative sentence, and so will plural forms.

That’s it for the basic rules of the imperative!

If you have mastered the imperative, you might want to look at some other pages:

Overview

In addition to the basic rules, there are other imperative forms that are interesting once you hit level B1. You can read more about the kertokoon, kertokoot and kerrottakoon forms in our article on the jussiivi.

Related posts:

Asking for Directions in Finnish – Tien neuvominen Body Movements – Imperative – Kapteeni Käskee Making someone do something – Pyytää Kehottaa Käskeä Plural Imperative Wedding Checklist Examples Sentences