The present passive – often just called the passive – is used extremely often in spoken language. It is therefore a topic that you should familiarize yourself with fairly early in your studies.

1. Use of the Present Passive

1.1. When we don’t say WHO

In most sentences, the passive is used when we don’t say WHO is doing the action. The reason why we’re not mentioning it can be that it’s not important who is doing the thing or we don’t know who is doing it:

For example: “Tampereelle rakennetaan raitiovaunulinjaa.”

• Translation: “A tram line is being built in Tampere” or “They’re building a tram line in Tampere”
• Interpretation #1: We don’t know who is doing the actual building. We don’t know what company is building it, which workers are actively doing the building.
• Interpretation #2: We don’t really care who is doing the building. The point of the sentence is the end result that we’re expecting.

The Finnish passive always implies it’s a person or group doing the thing. Most of the time it’s used for plural “subjects” (I use the term subject loosely, because of course there is no subject in a passive sentence).

For advanced learners: more about the difference between the passive and intransitivity.

1.2. As the spoken language we-form

“Puhekielen me-muoto” is a very popular form in spoken language, up to the point where you are much more likely to hear “me mennään” over the regular “me menemme” form. In standard language and especially in official written sources, you will not find this form.

1.3. With suggestions

The third use is often translated to the “let’s…” form in English. You’re suggesting something that you and whoever you’re talking to can do together. The idea is specifically that you both do it; it’s not an imperative to make the other person do something.

1.4. How to tell usage 1 to 3 apart

The three ways of using the passive mentioned above each have a very distinct sentence pattern to them.

1. The no-subject passive will always have either a place, an object or a time at the beginning of the sentence.
2. The spoken language passive will always start with “me”.
3. The suggestion passive will always have the passive verb at the beginning of the sentence.

As you can see above, 1 has a location case (“junalla“), expression of time (“ensi vuonna“) and an object (“vedenkeitintä“) at the beginning of the sentence. In contrast, 2 starts with the 1st person plural personal pronoun “me”. In 3 the verb is at the beginning of the sentence.

2. The Formation of the Present Passive

The passive has one rule for verbtypes 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Verbtype 1 is the odd one out, with two separate rules that differ from the other verbtypes.

2.1. Verbtype 1 Passive: weak stem + -taan/-tään

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 -taan/-tään to it (according to the vowel harmony rules). The weak stem is found by taking the minä-form of the verb and remove the -n.

The second rule for verbtype 1 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, 3, 4, 5, and 6: infinitive + -an/-än

For every verbtype other than 1, you will take the infinitive of the verb as it is and add -an/-än (vowel harmony) to the end of it. Simple as can be, as long as you remember the basic form of the verb!

3. Consonant Gradation in the Present Passive

The passive present for all verbtypes is weak! That’s due to the fact that verbtype 1 is taken from the first person singular (the minä-form) and the other verbtypes from the basic form. Finally something is easy! In the table below, VT means verbtype.

4. The Negative Present Passive

To say something isn’t being done, you should take the positive passive and remove the -an/än from the end. For most verbtypes, this actually means that you will return to the basic form of the verb. However, for verbtype 1, that isn’t the case. In front of this word construction you of course have to add “ei“.

You can find more information about the negative present passive here.

5. The Object in Passive Sentences

In passive sentences, the object will never appear in the genitive 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.

In other words, the only case endings you can find in passive sentences are the basic form (#1), the partitive case (#2) and the accusative for pronouns (#3). For plural objects, you can have the T-plural (#4) and the plural partitive (#5). You won’t get the genetive case at all in passive sentences!

You can read more about the object in general here.

This article deals with the present passive. Finnish also has other passive forms, which are a more advanced topic. You can find an overview of the different passives here.