Finnish IRL
ne - an older couple on an apartment balcony looking down at neighbours in the courtyard below, yellow autumn leaves around them

ne

/ne/

They. Those. Written he Finland advertised its pronoun on billboards abroad. At home it says this one

he on paper, ne out loud

Kirjakieli · written he
Puhekieli · spoken ne

One of the written-and-spoken pairs - every word on this site that exists in both forms is in that table, beside the change between them.

The same sentence, both ways
What you will hear What the book writes
Ne on jo lähteny. He ovat jo lähteneet.
Ne asuu Tampereella. He asuvat Tampereella.
Niiden auto on toi punanen. Heidän autonsa on tuo punainen.

Quick answer

Ne means they, or those. In speech it covers people as well as things, where writing would use he.

  • The verb changes with it. He ovat becomes ne on, because the third person plural ending largely drops out of ordinary speech.
  • That double change is why the clause can be unrecognisable even when you know every word in it.

What ne means

Ne points at a group both speakers already have in mind, and in speech it does not care whether that group is people, cats or parcels. They, or those, depending on what is standing there.

Which is the joke inside Finland's most successful language export. In 2019 the Ministry for Foreign Affairs put hän, the third person pronoun with no gender in it, on billboards in London, Brussels and Berlin and offered it to the world as an idea. Hän is older than the first printed Finnish book of 1543. In daily conversation you will hardly hear it, and you will hear its plural he even less.

Why he became ne

Written Finnish splits the job: he for people, ne for everything else. Speech merges them and uses ne throughout.

The verb changes too, and that is what people miss. Written he ovat jo lähteneet becomes spoken ne on jo lähteny. The plural ending on the verb goes, the singular form stands in for it, and the participle sheds its ending too.

So of the six personal endings a course drills, ordinary speech has stopped using the third person plural. There is no plural ending to catch, so stop waiting for one.

The possessive goes the same way. Heidän autonsa in writing, niiden auto or niitten auto in speech.

The rule behind ne

The change in ne is not a one-off. It is one of the regular changes between written and spoken Finnish, and it applies well beyond this word.

Written Spoken What changed
Writtenhe Spokenne What changedA different word entirely, not a contraction. The demonstrative takes over.
Writtenhe ovat Spokenne on What changedThe plural verb ending goes and the singular form stands in.
Writtenhe ovat lähteneet Spokenne on lähteny What changedTwo losses in one clause: the plural verb and the plural participle ending.
Writtenheidän Spokenniiden What changedThe possessive follows the pronoun. Niitten is equally common.
Writtenheille Spokenniille What changedEvery case form is rebuilt on the demonstrative stem.

How Finns actually use ne

About any group at all: colleagues, a couple, a family, a company, a football team. Ne asuu Tampereella.

As the vague they that every language seems to need. Ne sanoo et hinnat nousee. They say prices are going up, with nobody in particular being blamed.

The campaign was not wrong about that. Hän is what Finnish writes, and Finnish does get through an entire conversation about two colleagues without revealing whether either is a man or a woman. It just happens with ne.

ne in a sentence

  • Ne on jo lähteny. They've already left. · written: He ovat jo lähteneet.
  • Ne asuu Tampereella. They live in Tampere. · written: He asuvat Tampereella.
  • Niiden auto on toi punanen. Their car is that red one. · written: Heidän autonsa on tuo punainen.
ne - two women at an office window looking down at a group in the yard below and talking about them
In speech ne is they for people too, not only for things.

ne, in the forms you will actually hear

ne in the shapes it actually turns up in
Form Means
ne they, those (subject). Written he for people.
niiden, niitten their. Both are ordinary; written heidän.
niille to them. Written heille.
niitä them, partitive. Written heitä.
niillä on they have. Written heillä on.

ne in a conversation

Tuleeks ne huomenna?
Ne sano et tulee.
Monelt?
En tiiä. Kysytään.

The mistake everyone makes with ne

Waiting for ovat. Ne on jo lähteny has no plural marker anywhere in it, so an ear set to catch one loses the whole clause while the sentence moves on.

Producing he in conversation. It is correct, and it sounds like a written text being spoken aloud.

Assuming ne about people must be dismissive because it is the same word as the one for objects. Finnish has no grammatical gender and this pronoun carries no judgement with it.

Questions people ask about ne

What does ne mean in Finnish?

They, or those. In speech it is used for people as well as things.

What is the difference between ne and he?

Register. He is the written form for people; ne covers both people and things in speech.

Why is it ne on and not ne ovat?

The third person plural verb ending largely disappears in spoken Finnish, so the singular form stands in for the plural.

How do you say their in spoken Finnish?

Niiden, or niitten. The written form for people is heidän.

Is it rude to call people ne?

Not about a group who are elsewhere, which is ordinary speech. About people who are present it can sound pointed.

Didn't Finland promote hän as a gender-neutral pronoun?

Yes, in a 2019 Ministry for Foreign Affairs campaign with billboards in London, Brussels and Berlin. Hän is real and it is what Finnish writes. Everyday speech across most of the country still reaches for se and ne.

Is ne correct Finnish?

Yes. Ne is the spoken form; he is the written one. Both are standard Finnish - they belong to different registers, and neither is a degraded version of the other.

se - two women talking by a bar table, one tipping her chin towards someone off to the side while she talks about them
se written hän Finns call people "it", and no course will tell you
oon - a young woman on the phone in an office kitchen doorway saying where she is, coffee cup already in hand, melting snow on the ledge outside
oon written olen Someone rings to say where they are. This is the word you will miss
mä - two people talking on the shore of an autumn lake beside a wooden jetty
mä written minä The word every textbook spells with three more letters
sä - an older woman behind a Finnish kiosk counter leaning forward and asking a young customer something directly, pointing with an open hand
sä written sinä The polite version you are looking for does not exist
mun - a woman lifting her coat off the back of a café chair as an older man reaches for the same one, melting snow outside
mun written minun Say the phrase your textbook drilled and a Finn hears you arguing over whose book it is
ei oo - a shop assistant and a customer both shrugging in front of a half-empty shelf in a Finnish supermarket
ei oo written ei ole The sentence a shop assistant says to you, in the shape they say it
onks - a man leaning on a Finnish kiosk counter asking whether something is in, the older vendor already reaching under the counter
onks written onko Move the question letter one word to the left and you have asked something else
meen - a woman pulling her coat on in a dim Finnish hallway, half out of the door and calling back into the flat, snow outside
meen written menen In Finnish you do not get married - you go into marriages, and it is plural

Sources for ne

  1. Spreading the word about equality, with the Finnish pronoun hän thisisFINLAND, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland - The 2019 campaign itself: the single gender-neutral third person pronoun, its age in the language, and the countries the advertising ran in.
  2. VISK § 717 - grammatical properties vs. reference to people Iso suomen kielioppi, Kotimaisten kielten keskus - Demonstratives used for human reference in most spoken varieties, of which this is the plural.
  3. VISK § 720 - tämä, tuo, se, nämä, nuo, ne Iso suomen kielioppi, Kotimaisten kielten keskus - The demonstrative system ne belongs to.
  4. VISK § 716 - minä, sinä, hän, me, te, he Iso suomen kielioppi, Kotimaisten kielten keskus - The personal pronoun he that written Finnish uses here, and the paradigm it sits in.
  5. VISK § 1289 - examples of the negative word failing to agree Iso suomen kielioppi, Kotimaisten kielten keskus - The wider loss of plural agreement in speech that produces ne on.
  6. Kielitoimiston sanakirja: ne, he Kotimaisten kielten keskus

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