Spoken Finnish: Verbs in 1st person plural
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- In spoken Finnish, people almost solely use the passive to express action in the 1st person plural (we):
- Me menemme Ranskaan -> Me mennään Ranskaan (We go to France)
- Me osaamme puhua suomea -> Me osataan puhua Suomea (We know how to speak Finnish)
- Me emme mene Ranskaan -> Me ei mennä Ranskaan (We don't go to France)
- The passive is also used to express let's... in spoken Finnish:
- Menkäämme Ranskaan! -> Mennään Ranskaan! (Let's go to France!)
- Juokaamme kahvia! -> Juodaan kahvia! (Let's drink coffee!)
- If we make the passive a question by adding -ko/-kö, it means shall we..?. This is also colloquial.
- Mennäänkö Ranskaan? - Shall we go to France?
- Juodaanko kahvia? - Shall we drink coffee?
To express this in official writing (kirjakieli), one should use the conditional (made into a question):
- Menisimmekö Ranskaan? - Shall we go to France? (lit. would we go...?)
- Joisimmeko kahvia? - Shall we drink coffee? (lit. would we drink...?)
However, to complicate things, there is also a colloquial version of this; by putting the passive in conditional and making it a question, we likewise get the meaning of shall we..?:
- Mentäisiinkö Ranskaan? - Shall we go to France?
- Juotaisiinko kahvia? - Shall we drink coffee?
BUT the above is only the grammatically correct way of writing it, used for example in written dialogues of spoken language. What people really say is an abbreviation (the 'iin' is dropped):
- Mentäisiinkö? -> Mentäiskö? -> Mentäiskö Ranskaan? - Shall we go to France?
- Juotaisiinko? -> Juotaisko? -> Juotaisko kahvia? - Shall we drink coffee?
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