Näköisiä

Näköisiä is the plural partitive form of the Finnish adjective näköinen, meaning related to appearance or looks. In Finnish, adjectives decline to match the noun in number and case, and the partitive plural form -isia/-isiä (here -isiä) is used with plural nouns when the object is indefinite, or after negation, or when the speaker refers to “some” of a kind.

Grammatical details: Näköinen forms näköisiä in the partitive plural. This form accompanies nouns in contexts where the reference is not definite or is partially considered. For example, näköisiä asioita means “appearance-related things” or “things that look a certain way,” with an indefinite scope. The adjective primarily describes outward appearance or visual characteristics rather than internal qualities.

Usage and nuance: Näköisiä is used broadly to talk about how something appears visually, not about its essential nature. It can describe people, buildings, objects, or scenes that share a particular look or aesthetic. Because it is a partitive plural, it often appears in statements about multiple items or in statements that emphasize an indefinite quantity, such as “There are many things that look a certain way.”

Etymology and related terms: The word is built from the noun näkö, meaning sight or appearance, with the affix -inen forming an adjective. A related noun is näköisyys (likelihood) or probability, which is etymologically related but semantically distinct from näköinen/näköisiä.

In summary, näköisiä is a common Finnish inflection used to describe multiple items by their outward appearance in an indefinite or non-specified sense.