Gender

The concept of a grammatical gender does not exist in Finnish. In Finnish there is no masculine, feminine, or neuter article, such as el or la (Spanish), or der, die, or das (German), nor do any nouns or adjectives undergo gender changes in Finnish. Also, the Finnish word hän means she, he, or they (singular). For example:

Hän meni pankkiin … means more than one thing:

• She went to the bank …
• He went to the bank …
• They (singular) went to the bank …

Note

For certain terms, the suffix or ending -tar / -tär¹ is used to create the female counterpart of a person. For example, kuningas (king) has the counterpart term kuningatar (queen). In modern Finnish and aside from the terms kuningatar and tytär (daughter), it is uncommon to use the -tar / -tär ending; if you use this suffix, you will likely sound old-fashioned.