If you only ever learn one Finnish verb, make it olla. It's "to be," and it does the same enormous amount of work it does in English: I am hungry, you are late, this is my wife, it's cold outside, where are you. Six forms cover the whole present tense, and once you have them, half the phrases on this site become sentences you can build yourself.
There's a bonus hiding in the table below. Finnish verb endings carry the person, which means olen on its own already says "I am" — the word minä ("I") is optional and usually dropped. So the six forms you're about to learn aren't six words plus six pronouns. They're six words.
Olla — Present Tense
I am
(minä) olen
you are
(sinä) olet
he / she is
hän on
we are
(me) olemme
you are (plural)
(te) olette
they are
he ovat
Practice these words
(minä) olen
Quick notes:
- The pronouns in brackets are optional. Finns say olen suomalainen, not minä olen suomalainen, unless they're stressing the "I."
- Hän and he are the exception — third-person forms usually keep their pronoun, because on alone doesn't tell you who.
- Hän means both "he" and "she." Finnish has no gender, so there's nothing to choose between.
- Te is both "you all" and the formal singular "you." You'll almost never need the formal one; see the note below.
Olla — Negative Forms
Finnish doesn't say "am not." It uses a separate negative word that changes with the person, followed by a bare ole.
I am not
en ole
you are not
et ole
he / she is not
ei ole
we are not
emme ole
you are not (plural)
ette ole
they are not
eivät ole
Practice these words
en ole
Quick note: the negative word carries the person, and ole never changes. That's the whole system, and it works the same way for every other verb in Finnish.
Everyday Phrases with Olla
I am Finnish.
Olen suomalainen.
I am tired.
Olen väsynyt.
I am hungry.
Minulla on nälkä.
Are you ready?
Oletko valmis?
I'm not sure.
En ole varma.
This is my wife.
Tämä on vaimoni.
Where are you?
Missä olet?
It is cold.
On kylmä.
It's fine. / That's good.
Se on hyvä.
We are tourists.
Olemme turisteja.
Is it open?
Onko se auki?
I am not from here.
En ole täältä.
Practice these words
Olen suomalainen.
Quick notes:
- Watch out for I am hungry. Finnish doesn't use olla here — it says minulla on nälkä, literally "on me is a hunger." Same for thirst, cold and fear. That construction gets its own lesson.
- On kylmä ("it is cold") has no word for "it" at all. Weather sentences just start with the verb.
- Add -ko to make a question: olet → oletko, on → onko. It works with every form in the table.
What to Know About Olla
The first thing is that Finnish drops subject pronouns in the first and second person, and this feels wrong for a long time. English can't say "am tired" — the pronoun is doing structural work. In Finnish the ending -n on olen already means "I," so repeating minä is like saying "I, I am tired." Use the bare verb and you'll immediately sound less like a textbook. The catch is that this only applies to minä, sinä, me, te. Third person keeps hän and he, because on and ovat don't specify who you mean.
The second is that what you read and what you hear are noticeably different. In everyday spoken Finnish the forms shorten: minä olen becomes mä oon, sinä olet becomes sä oot, hän on becomes se on, me olemme becomes me ollaan, and he ovat becomes ne on. That's not slang or bad Finnish — it's what almost everyone actually says, including on television. Written Finnish keeps the long forms, so learn the table above first, then recognise the short ones when they fly past you.
Finnish has a polite plural te, the way French has vous. You can more or less ignore it. Outside official letters and speaking to someone considerably older, Finns use sinä with everyone — colleagues, strangers, bosses, police officers. Using te in a café would land as stiff rather than respectful. The one place it survives in daily life is service: staff will ask onko teillä…? ("do you have…?"), and that's simply how counter Finnish sounds.