ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Finnish verb conjugation

Okay kiddo, so verbs are words that tell you what someone or something is doing, like "run" or "jump". In Finnish, when you use a verb, you have to change the ending of the verb to match who is doing the action and when they're doing it.

For example, to say "I run" in Finnish, you would use the verb "juosta", but you have to add an "n" to the end to match with "I". So it becomes "juoksen". To say "you run", you don't need to add anything to "juosta", because it already matches up with "you" (which is "sinä" in Finnish).

But it's not just who is doing the action that you need to match up with the verb ending. You also need to match up with when the action is happening. Like if you wanted to say "I ran" in Finnish, you still use "juosta", but now you have to add a different ending to match with the past tense. So it becomes "juoksin".

There are different rules for different verb endings, and some verbs are irregular and don't follow any pattern. But that's the basic idea of Finnish verb conjugation. It's just changing the ending of the verb to match who's doing the action and when they're doing it.