Learn Hardcore Finnish: Me tapaamme ystävän torilla. - We meet a friend at the market square.

With me: adds a bit of emphasis to we, like “we (as opposed to someone else) will meet the friend…”
Without me: a bit more neutral, and very typical in everyday Finnish.

In spoken and informal Finnish, dropping the pronoun is extremely common whenever the person is clear from the verb ending.

What exactly does tapaamme tell us? Which tense and person is it?

Tapaamme is:

Verb: tavata (to meet)
Tense: present
Person/number: 1st person plural (we)
Mood: indicative

So tapaamme = “we meet / we will meet”.

Finnish usually uses the present tense for future events too:

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla huomenna.
= We will meet the friend at the market (square) tomorrow.

There is no separate “will meet” form; context (like huomenna = tomorrow) shows it’s about the future.

The dictionary form is tavata. Why is it tapaamme and not tavaamme?

This is a case of consonant gradation and a slightly irregular verb type.

The infinitive is tavata. In the present tense, the stem changes:

minä tapaan
sinä tapaat
hän tapaa
me tapaamme
te tapaatte
he tapaavat

Notice:

v changes to p (tav- → tap-)
then the personal endings are added to the stem tapaa-:
- tapaa
  - mme → tapaamme

So tapaamme is the regular 1st person plural form of tavata in the present tense, even though the consonant change makes it look less similar to tavata.

Why is it ystävän and not just ystävä? What is that -n doing?

Ystävän is the genitive singular form of ystävä (friend).

ystävä = friend (nominative)
ystävän = friend’s / the friend (genitive)
ystävää = some friend / friend (in partitive; used in other contexts)

In this sentence, ystävän functions as the direct object of tapaamme. For many positive, complete actions with a transitive verb (meet the friend as one whole event), Finnish uses:

Genitive object → ystävän

So:

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla.
Literally: We meet (the) friend at the market.
(The action is seen as a whole, completed meeting.)

Using bare ystävä here (Me tapaamme ystävä torilla) is ungrammatical in standard Finnish.

Could I use ystävää instead of ystävän? What’s the difference?

In this exact positive sentence, you normally do not use ystävää. You use ystävän.

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla. ✅ (normal)
Me tapaamme ystävää torilla. ❌ (sounds wrong in standard Finnish here)

Why? Because ystävän is a genitive (total) object: the meeting is a single, complete event.

Ystävää is the partitive form. With tavata, partitive objects appear mainly in:

Negation
- Emme tapaa ystävää torilla.
  → Because of negation (emme), the object must be in the partitive: ystävää.
  (We do not meet the friend at the market.)
Some other aspectual/“incomplete” meanings, which are more advanced and much less common with tavata.

So, as a learner, remember:

Positive sentence, normal “we (will) meet the friend” → ystävän
Negative sentence “we do not meet the friend” → ystävää

Does ystävän mean “the friend” or “a friend”? There’s no article word in Finnish.

Finnish has no articles (no “a” / “the”).
So ystävän can mean:

the friend
a friend
just friend (without specifying)

The exact interpretation depends on context:

If both speakers know which friend is meant (you talked about him/her before), English would usually use “the friend”.
If it’s just some friend, not previously mentioned, English might say “a friend”.

Finnish itself doesn’t mark this difference in the form of the noun; it’s all ystävän here. Context and extra words (like tämän ystävän = this friend, sen ystävän = that friend, meidän ystävämme = our friend) provide clarity when needed.

Why is it torilla and not torille? What does the ending -lla mean?

Torilla is adessive case (ending -lla / -llä), usually meaning “on / at” a place.

tori = market square, marketplace
torilla = at the market (square), on the market square

You choose between -lla and -lle like this:

-lla / -llä = static location: at/on something
- Me tapaamme ystävän torilla.
  → We meet the friend at the market (no movement implied).
-lle (allative) = movement towards: to onto something
- Me menemme torille.
  → We go to the market (movement).

So in your sentence, you’re just stating where the meeting takes place, not expressing motion to the market; hence torilla.

What’s the difference between torilla and torissa?

Both are location cases, but they have different typical uses:

torilla = adessive (-lla) → usually on / at the square
Used for open places, surfaces, general “at that place” ideas.
torissa = inessive (-ssa) → in the square / inside the market (building)
More literally “inside” a space.

For a typical open market square, Finns almost always say torilla:

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla.
→ At/on the market square.

Torissa might be used if you’re clearly talking about being inside an enclosed market building (like an indoor market hall), but in everyday talk for a town square, torilla is the normal choice.

Can I change the word order? For example, can I say Torilla tapaamme ystävän?

Yes. Finnish word order is much more flexible than English. The basic, neutral order is:

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla.
(Subject – Verb – Object – Place)

But you can change the order to emphasize a certain part:

Torilla me tapaamme ystävän.
→ Emphasis on where: It’s at the market that we meet the friend (not somewhere else).
Ystävän me tapaamme torilla.
→ Emphasis on whom: It’s the friend (not someone else) that we meet at the market.
Torilla tapaamme ystävän.
→ Still correct; slightly more literary/formal, emphasizes torilla.

What does not change much is the function of the words: regardless of order, ystävän is still the object, torilla is still the location, and tapaamme is still the verb. Case endings carry the grammatical roles.

Can I leave out ystävän and just say Me tapaamme torilla to mean “We meet each other at the market”?

Yes, that’s possible.

Me tapaamme torilla.
Literally: We meet at the market.

In many contexts, this will be naturally understood as “we (the people in ‘we’) meet each other at the market”.

Finnish often omits obvious objects, especially when:

the object would be ourselves / each other, and
the meaning is clear from context.

If you do include ystävän, though, the meaning is specifically “we meet (a/the) friend” (a third person), not just each other.

Is there any difference between Me tapaamme ystävän torilla and Tapaamme ystävän torilla?

Grammatically, both are correct and basically mean the same thing:

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla.
Tapaamme ystävän torilla.

Differences:

With me: slight emphasis on we. It can sound a bit more personal, contrastive, or formal, depending on context.
Without me: very neutral and common in both written and spoken Finnish.

In everyday speech, many natives would naturally say Tapaamme ystävän torilla unless they specifically want to stress we.

How would I say “We will meet the friend at the market” in Finnish? Do I need a special future tense?

You use exactly the same form:

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla.

Finnish does not have a separate future tense. Instead, it uses the present tense to talk about:

present time: We (usually) meet the friend at the market.
future time: We will meet the friend at the market.

The future meaning is clear from context or from time expressions, for example:

Me tapaamme ystävän torilla huomenna.
→ We will meet the friend at the market tomorrow.

If I want to say “We will meet our friend at the market”, how do I show “our”? Is Me tapaamme ystävämme torilla correct?

Yes, that’s correct:

Me tapaamme ystävämme torilla.
→ We (will) meet our friend at the market.

Here:

ystävä = friend
-mme at the end of ystävä = our (possessive suffix)
So: ystävämme = our friend

You can also express “our friend” with a separate pronoun:

Me tapaamme meidän ystävämme torilla.
(literally “we meet our friend at the market”)

Both are correct. The possessive suffix alone (ystävämme) is often enough, especially in written Finnish. The full meidän ystävämme adds extra clarity or emphasis on “our”.