Tuntevat

Tuntevat is the third-person plural present tense form of the Finnish verb tuntea, meaning to feel or to know. In Finnish, tuntea is used for both physical sensations and more abstract forms of knowledge or acquaintance. Therefore tuntevat translates to “they feel” or “they know” depending on the context. The form is used when the subject of the sentence is plural.

Formation and usage: The verb stem is tunte-, and the present tense suffix -vat marks the third-person plural. In sentences describing sensations, objects are often in the partitive case, for example kipua (pain). In other contexts, tuntea can express knowledge or familiarity, with the exact meaning determined by surrounding words.

Examples: He tuntevat kipua. They feel pain. He tuntevat epävarmuutta. They feel uncertainty.

Notes: Tuntevat belongs to a family of verbs that cover both physical sensations and experiential knowledge. The precise translation—whether “to feel” or “to know”—depends on context, including what noun or clause follows the verb and how the sentence is constructed. Related forms include tuntua, an intransitive verb with a somewhat different emphasis, typically used to express appearance or seeming states.