The passive conditional is pretty rarely used in written language, but it has its place in the spoken language me-passive (first person plural). You can read more about the passive and the conditional elsewhere!

1. The Use of the Passive Conditional

1.1. With ”if” sentences expressing a condition

The passive conditional is the form of the verb which means that something would be done, IF something else happened. There is no specific subject (we don’t know who, or it’s not important), but there is maybe, possibly, hypothetically something being done.

1.2. As the spoken language we-form

“Puhekielen me-muoto” is a very popular form in spoken language. You can use it as an alternative for the regular me-form: tulisimme becomes me tultaisiin. Remember that for this form, you always need to add the “me” to the beginning of your sentence!

You will find this form fairly often in spoken language, but very rarely in its full form. It gets shortened considerably:

1.3. In questions, suggestions, requests

One of the uses of the passive is to suggest to do something together, comparable to the “let’s” form in English. You can also use the passive conditional for this. This doesn’t make the request any more polite, it just expresses that you would like to do something together with someone.

2. The Formation of the Passive Conditional

The present passive and the past passive are not always added to the same form, nor have the same ending each time. Some verbtypes have -taisiin as the past passive’s marker, while others have -ttaisiin. If you know the past passive well, you can use the same rules for the present passive.

2.1. Verbtype 1 Passive: weak stem + -ttaisiin/ttäisiin

Let’s first look at the most simple rule. For verbtype 1 verbs that end in -oa, -öä, -ua, -yä, -ea, -eä, -ia, and -iä (simply put: two vowels, except -aa, -ää), you use the weak stem and add -ttaisiin/-ttäisiin to it. The weak stem is found by taking the minä-form of the verb and remove the -n.

The second rule for verbtype one only applies to verbs whose infinitive ends in -aa/ää. For these verbs you first find the weak stem by removing the -n from the 1st person singular. After that, you replace the -a/ä- at the end of the stem with an -e-.

2.2. Verbtypes 2 and 3: stem + -taisiin/-täisiin

The infinitive’s stem is the stem you get by removing the last two letters of verb type 2 and 3. These verbtypes only have one -t-.

2.3. Verbtypes 4, 5, and 6: infinitive’s stem + -ttaisiin

The infinitive’s stem is the stem you get by removing the last two letters of verb type 4, 5 and 6. These verbtypes will get two -t-‘s.

3. Consonant Gradation in the Passive Conditional

The passive conditional for all verbtypes is weak!

4. The Negative Passive Conditional

Take the positive passive imperfect and remove the -in. In front of this word construction you of course have to add “ei”. In spoken language, you will usually drop -iin (eg. ei nukuttais, ei oltais).

5. The Object

In passive sentences, the object will never appear in the genetive case. Affirmative sentences in the passive will have objects in the basic form. In negative sentences there is no difference between regular sentences and passives.

You can read more about the object in general here.

That concludes the article on the passive conditional!