tämä / tuo / se

Finnish demonstrative pronouns function as both pronouns and determiners. When they describe a noun, they must agree in case and number.

1. Tämä / Nämä (This / These)
Used for objects the speaker is holding, touching, or that are within immediate reach. In spoken Finnish, these often become tää and nää. In written reference to two people, tämä commonly picks out the latter-mentioned person, while hän often refers to the foregrounded person, usually mentioned first. This is a contextual tendency, not an automatic translation of every 'latter/former' pair.

2. Tuo / Nuo (That / Those)
Used to direct attention to something somewhat separate from the speaker’s immediate focus, often visible or pointable. It can also point back to something mentioned in a text. In speech, these often become toi and noi.

3. Se / Ne (It / They)
This is the most versatile pronoun set (plural ne). In ordinary written reference to a previously mentioned person, use hän/he. However, se/ne can refer to people in generalizing relative constructions: Se, joka ehtii, auttaa (Whoever has time helps). It is used in several main ways:

• Distant/Out of Sight: Something distant from both speaker and listener, or not visible.
• Anaphoric: Referring back to something already mentioned or abstract.
• Definite Marker: In spoken Finnish, se is widely used like the word 'the' to specify a particular item.
• People in Speech: In spoken Finnish, se and ne are the standard ways to refer to people instead of hän or he. Note that when using ne as a subject in spoken Finnish, it takes a third-person singular verb (e.g., ne asuu, ne on). Unlike tämä and tuo, se and ne remain the same in the spoken nominative.

4. Case Agreement
If the noun is in a case like the inessive, the pronoun must also be in that case. Highly frequent and essential forms include the partitive (tätä, tuota, sitä) and the genitive (tämän, tuon, sen). The pronoun sitä is especially critical due to its irregularity and constant use with partitive verbs. The stems vary by case: tä- appears in tässä, but the illative is tähän. Frequent singular illatives are tähän, tuohon, siihen; plural illatives include näihin, noihin, niihin: tähän taloon, noihin kirjoihin. For se, the stem lengthens to sii- for interior locative cases (siinä, siitä, siihen), while si- is used for outer locative cases (sillä, siltä, sille). The pronoun tuo keeps its stem (tuossa). For plurals, the stems shift to näi- (näissä), noi- (noissa), and nii- (niissä).
Example: tässä talossa (in this house), noissa kirjoissa (in those books).

People and Text Reference
Tämä and tuo can also refer to people, as in Tämä on ystäväni (This is my friend). They can express closeness or distance in context. Do not memorize tuo as a required equivalent of “the former”: for two people, the ordinary written contrast is often hän/tämä; repeat a name when needed for clarity.