Jäävat

Jäävat is a Finnish verb form derived from jäädä, meaning to stay or to remain. It is the third-person plural present indicative form, so it translates to “they stay” or “they remain.” The form is used when the subject of the sentence is plural and the action describes staying in a place, remaining in a situation, or continuing to exist in a given state.

In Finnish, the present tense frequently covers near-future meaning as well, so jäävät can convey either a current staying action or a planned/expected stay depending on context. The full conjugation of jäädä in the present tense shows the personal forms: minä jään, sinä jäät, hän jää, me jäämme, te jäätte, he jäävät. The past tense is jäivät, used for “they stayed.”

Examples:

- He jäävät kaupunkiin seuraavaksi viikoksi. They will stay in the city for the next week.

- Lapset jäävät kotiin illalla. The children stay at home in the evening.

- Jäävätkö he tänne? Are they staying here?

Jäädä belongs to a family of intransitive verbs with several common idiomatic expressions, such as jäädä kiinni (to get caught) or jäädä paitsi (to miss out). The form jäävät is distinct from these idioms by its literal sense of staying or remaining, though context can shift nuance toward persistence or consequence rather than movement alone.

Etymologically, jäädä is a core Finnish verb with a basic meaning of remaining, and jäävat reflects its regular present-tense paradigm in the third-person plural.