Questions & Answers about Hän auttaa minua.
Hän is gender‑neutral: it can mean he, she, or even they (singular, when you mean “that person”). The pronoun itself does not tell you the gender.
If you need to specify gender, you add extra words, for example:
- hän, se mies – he, that man
- hän, se nainen – she, that woman
But in normal Finnish, hän alone is enough whenever the context already makes it clear who you are talking about.
Minua is the partitive case of minä (I, me).
Minut is the accusative form.
The verb auttaa (to help) usually takes its “person” object in the partitive case in a simple sentence like this, so you say:
- Hän auttaa minua. – He/She helps me.
If you used minut, the meaning would change and you’d normally need some extra element, for example a direction or result:
- Hän auttoi minut ylös. – He/She helped me up.
- Hän auttoi minut perille. – He/She helped me (get) to the destination.
So:
- auttaa + partitive (minua) = helping in general / ongoing, not focusing on a final “completed” result
- auttaa + accusative (minut) = help to achieve a clear outcome (up, through, to somewhere, etc.), usually with another word showing that result
The forms of minä (I) that you’ll see a lot are:
- minä – I (nominative, subject form)
- minua – me (partitive)
- minut – me (accusative)
- minun – my (genitive/possessive stem)
In Hän auttaa minua, minua is:
- 1st person singular pronoun (minä)
- in the partitive case
- used as the object of the verb auttaa
Finnish doesn’t use a separate continuous tense like English does. The present tense verb form auttaa can mean both:
- He/She helps me. (habitually, generally)
- He/She is helping me. (right now)
Which one is meant comes from context, not from a different verb form.
So Hän auttaa minua. can be translated as either He/She helps me or He/She is helping me, depending on the situation.
Auttaa here is:
- present tense
- 3rd person singular
- indicative mood
For this verb, the infinitive (dictionary form) and the 3rd person singular present look the same:
- infinitive: auttaa – to help
- 1st sg: autan – I help
- 2nd sg: autat – you help
- 3rd sg: auttaa – he/she helps
- 1st pl: autamme – we help
- 2nd pl: autatte – you (pl) help
- 3rd pl: auttavat – they help
So in Hän auttaa minua, you recognize 3rd person singular from the subject hän, not from a special ending.
In normal speech and writing, you would not drop hän here. You say:
- Hän auttaa minua.
Finnish can drop subject pronouns sometimes, but much less often than many learners expect. You can drop them when:
- the subject is obvious from context, and
- the subject is not a 3rd person pronoun referring to some specific person you’re talking about.
Examples where dropping is natural:
- Autan. – I help / I’ll help. (subject minä is clear from the verb form)
- Autatko minua? – Will you help me? (subject sinä is clear from autatko)
For a 3rd person like hän, the form auttaa by itself doesn’t clearly tell you who is helping, so you normally keep hän:
- Hän auttaa. – He/She helps. ✅
- Auttaa. – Could be read as “(someone) helps”, but feels incomplete or like a fragment.
Yes, Finnish word order is fairly flexible, but changes in word order usually change emphasis.
Neutral, unmarked statement:
- Hän auttaa minua. – He/She helps me. (no special emphasis)
Other orders with typical nuances:
Minua hän auttaa.
Emphasis on minua: It’s *me that he/she helps (as opposed to someone else).*Hän minua auttaa.
Also puts more stress on hän vs. someone else, often used in contrast:
He/She is the one who helps me (not the others).
All of these are grammatically correct, but Hän auttaa minua. is the default, neutral version.
Replace:
- hän (he/she) → he (they)
- auttaa (3rd person singular) → auttavat (3rd person plural)
You get:
- He auttavat minua. – They help me / They are helping me.
Note:
- hän = he/she (singular)
- he = they (plural)
Finnish does not have articles like a, an, or the at all. The sentence:
- Hän auttaa minua.
already fully expresses He/She helps me; there is no need to add anything for definiteness or indefiniteness.
Whether English uses a, the, or nothing is decided when you translate, based on context—not by any specific Finnish word.
To make it negative, you use the negative verb ei plus the main verb in its special negative form:
- Hän ei auta minua. – He/She does not help me / He/She is not helping me.
Changes:
- auttaa → auta (negative form)
- add ei in front: ei auta
- minua stays the same
So the pattern is:
- Hän auttaa minua. – He/She helps me.
- Hän ei auta minua. – He/She doesn’t help me.
Standard written Finnish:
- hän = he / she (for people)
- se = it (for things, animals, etc.)
Colloquial spoken Finnish is different:
- People very often use se for people in everyday speech, where standard Finnish would use hän.
Examples:
- Standard: Hän auttaa minua.
- Spoken: Se auttaa mua.
As a learner, it’s safe to:
- use hän for people in writing and in careful speech
- recognize that native speakers often say se instead in casual conversation
Yes, it can. Finnish usually uses the present tense to talk about future actions when the context makes the future meaning clear.
So Hän auttaa minua can mean:
- He/She helps me (generally)
- He/She is helping me (right now)
- He/She will help me (in the future)
To be very explicitly future, Finns might add a time expression:
- Hän auttaa minua huomenna. – He/She will help me tomorrow.