Learn Hardcore Finnish: Me lopetamme pelin myöhään illalla. - We finish the game late in the evening.

Word

Me lopetamme pelin myöhään illalla.

Meaning

We finish the game late in the evening.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

Lesson

Breakdown of Me lopetamme pelin myöhään illalla.

In the sentence Me lopetamme pelin myöhään illalla, is the subject pronoun me really necessary, since lopetamme already indicates we?

No, me is not strictly necessary here.

The personal ending -mme on lopetamme already shows that the subject is we. So you can also say:

Lopetamme pelin myöhään illalla.
= We (will) finish the game late in the evening.

Adding me usually adds a bit of emphasis or contrast, like:

Me lopetamme pelin myöhään illalla. (…not someone else)
We are the ones who will finish the game late in the evening.

In neutral, everyday speech both versions are correct; omitting the pronoun is very common in Finnish.

How is the verb lopettaa conjugated here, and why does lopetamme look different from the dictionary form?

The dictionary form is lopettaa (to stop/finish something). It’s a type 1 verb. To conjugate it in the present tense, you:

Remove the final -a(a) → lopetta- → effectively lopeta- in the stem.
Add personal endings:

So in lopetamme: