Do people still use plural (even in kirjakieli?)
"Noin 300 000 suomalaista puhuu äidinkielenään ruotsia." (Selkeästi Suomessa, 2018 Merja Björklind et al.)
I guess the singular here can be attributed to the partitive singular, so I cannot use 3rd person plural (puhuvat)?
But:
"Saamelaisia asuu Suomessa noin 6000." (same source)
Why not plural here (asuvat)?
Does partitive (whether singular or plural) exclude plural conjugation for the verb or is the third person plural gradually being merged with third person singular, also in the written language?
And what happens to those verbs when we change the tense to something different than the present?
"he ovat asunneet Suomessa kauan ennen kuin (...) rajat määriteltiin." (same source)
So here we have third person again, and they have finally used the plural; is it because we're don't have a numeral in the sentence anymore, because we always use the corresponding 3rd person plural form of the verb with pronouns, or because we use the appropriate gramatical number in other tenses than present?
Here are some other examples from the same source:
"Suomalaisista yli 70% työskentelee palveluammateissa" (3rd person singular)
"lähes kaikki suomalaiset ovat lukutaitoisia" (3rd person plural)