English is famous for its "dummy" subjects: it rains, it's cold, there is a problem. English grammar refuses to leave the subject slot empty, so it stuffs a meaningless it into it. Finnish does the opposite — it simply leaves the slot empty. A whole family of everyday sentences, covering the weather and how you feel, has no subject whatsoever. The verb stands in the 3rd person singular by default, and nothing agrees with it, because there is nothing to agree with. This page covers the two big classes: weather verbs and experiencer (feeling) verbs.
Weather verbs stand completely alone
A Finnish weather verb is a complete sentence on its own. There is no it, no se, no placeholder of any kind — the verb simply describes what the sky is doing.
Sataa.
It's raining.
Ulkona tuulee ja on aika kylmä.
It's windy outside and pretty cold.
Katso, jo hämärtää — pian on pimeää.
Look, it's already getting dark — soon it'll be night.
Notice there is no word for the English it. Sataa on its own is a grammatical, complete Finnish sentence. When you want to say what is falling, you add it in the partitive — as an object, not a subject:
Huomenna sataa lunta, ensi viikolla vettä.
Tomorrow it'll snow, next week it'll rain.
Here lunta (partitive of lumi, "snow") and vettä (partitive of vesi, "water") are objects of sataa, literally "it's raining snow / water". A second common weather pattern is on + partitive adjective — again with no subject:
Tänään on pilvistä, mutta huomenna on aurinkoista.
Today it's cloudy, but tomorrow it'll be sunny.
Feeling verbs: the experiencer is an object, not a subject
This is the construction that feels most alien to an English speaker, so slow down here. To say "I feel tired", "I'm scared", "I'm thirsty", Finnish uses a special class of verbs where the person feeling the emotion is a partitive object and the verb stays in the 3rd person singular. There is, once again, no subject.
Minua väsyttää — mennäänkö jo kotiin?
I feel tired — shall we go home already?
Sinua taitaa janottaa, otetaan tauko.
You seem thirsty, let's take a break.
Look closely at Minua väsyttää. Minua is the partitive form of minä ("I") — the same case you would use for a direct object. The verb väsyttää is 3rd person singular. Literally the sentence means something like "(it) tires me" — but there is no "it". Because the experiencer is an object, the verb never changes to match the person. Compare:
| Experiencer (partitive) | Verb (always 3sg) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minua | väsyttää | I feel tired |
| Sinua | väsyttää | you feel tired |
| Häntä | väsyttää | he/she feels tired |
| Meitä | väsyttää | we feel tired |
The verb väsyttää does not budge. Only the partitive pronoun changes: minua, sinua, häntä, meitä, teitä, heitä. This is the whole system — learn the partitive pronoun set and one verb, and you can produce all six persons.
Häntä pelottaa pimeässä, joten valo jätetään päälle.
She's scared in the dark, so we leave the light on.
Meitä naurattaa, koska tuo koira näyttää niin hassulta.
We feel like laughing, because that dog looks so silly.
Other common members of this class: pelottaa (be scared), janottaa (be thirsty), nukuttaa / väsyttää (be sleepy/tired), paleltaa (feel cold), oksettaa (feel nauseous), itkettää (feel like crying), naurattaa (feel like laughing), hävettää (feel ashamed), harmittaa (be annoyed). The full paradigm and the fuller list live on the experiencer verbs page.
The trap: the transitive twin means the opposite
Many experiencer verbs have a transitive twin that looks identical but flips the meaning. With a nominative subject, pelottaa means "to frighten (someone)". So watch what happens when you accidentally use the nominative:
Hän pelottaa minua.
He frightens me. (he is the scary one)
Häntä pelottaa.
He is scared. (he is the frightened one)
These are near-opposites. Hän pelottaa (nominative hän) makes hän the source of fear; Häntä pelottaa (partitive häntä) makes hän the one who is afraid. This is exactly why the case matters so much: it is the only thing telling you who feels the fear. If a cause is named, it becomes the subject and the experiencer stays the object: Ukkonen pelottaa lapsia ("the thunder scares the children").
Why Finnish leaves the slot empty
The underlying logic is that Finnish treats these events as things that happen to you, not things you do. Raining is not an action performed by an agent; feeling tired is not something you actively do. English papers over this with a fake subject (it), and with feelings it recruits a real subject plus an adjective (I am tired). Finnish is more honest about the semantics: no agent, no subject. Once you accept that a Finnish sentence genuinely does not need a subject, these constructions stop looking broken and start looking elegant. This is a close cousin of Finnish subject-dropping in ordinary clauses — except here there is not even a hidden subject to recover.
Common Mistakes
❌ Se sataa.
Incorrect — no dummy 'it' in Finnish; the verb alone is the sentence.
✅ Sataa.
It's raining.
❌ Minä väsyttää.
Incorrect — the experiencer is a partitive object, not a nominative subject.
✅ Minua väsyttää.
I feel tired.
❌ Minua väsytän.
Incorrect — the verb never agrees with the experiencer; it stays 3sg.
✅ Minua väsyttää.
I feel tired.
❌ Hän janottaa.
Incorrect — nominative makes 'hän' the cause; use the partitive for the thirsty person.
✅ Häntä janottaa.
He's thirsty.
❌ Sää on kylmä tänään.
Incorrect — Finnish doesn't use 'weather' as a subject; the clause is subjectless.
✅ Tänään on kylmä.
It's cold today.
Key Takeaways
- Finnish weather clauses have no subject — no it, no se, no sää. Sataa is a full sentence.
- What is falling goes in the partitive object: sataa lunta, sataa vettä.
- Feeling verbs put the experiencer in the partitive (minua, sinua, häntä) and keep the verb in the 3rd person singular for every person.
- A nominative subject flips the meaning to the transitive twin: Häntä pelottaa ("he's scared") vs Hän pelottaa ("he's scary").
- Get the harmony right on häntä (front -tä), not hänta.
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Start learning Finnish→Related Topics
- Impersonal Feeling Verbs: minua väsyttääB1 — A very Finnish pattern: the person feeling something is a partitive object and the verb sits in bare 3sg with no subject — Minua väsyttää, Päätäni särkee.
- Weather Expressions: sataa, paistaaA2 — Finnish weather clauses have no dummy 'it' — sataa (it's raining), sataa lunta (it's snowing), tuulee, on pakkasta — built on zero-subject verbs and partitive mass objects, with aurinko paistaa the one full-subject exception.
- Feeling Verbs: minua väsyttää, päätä särkeeB1 — Impersonal sensation verbs that take a partitive experiencer and a fixed 3sg verb — minua väsyttää (I feel drowsy), minua pelottaa, minua palelee — plus the body-part frame päätä särkee. In Finnish the feeling acts on you; you are its object, not its subject.
- Dropping the Subject PronounA2 — 1st/2nd person subject pronouns drop because the verb ending shows the person; 3rd person hän/he must stay, and any pronoun kept signals emphasis.