keittävät

Keittävät is a Finnish verb form meaning they boil or they are boiling. It is the present indicative third-person plural form of the verb keittää, which means to boil or to cook by boiling in water. The form is used when the subject is a plural group performing the action of boiling in the present.

Morphology and syntax: In Finnish, present tense plural forms typically end in -vat or -vät, depending on vowel harmony and the verb stem. For keittää, the 3rd person plural present is keittävät, built from the stem keit- with the appropriate thematic vowel and the suffix -vät. The doubling of the t in keitt- reflects a phonological pattern that helps preserve the stem’s consonant structure in the conjugated form. Keittävät, like other present-tense forms, agrees with a plural subject and is used with a direct object in the partitive or in a transitive construction when an object is being boiled.

Usage: Keittävät is commonly found in cooking contexts where multiple people are performing the boiling action, such as in recipes, instructions, or descriptions of group activities. Examples: He keittävät vettä. They boil water. Naiset keittävät ruokaa. The women boil food.

Related forms: The verb keittää has other present forms (keitän, keität, keittää, keitämme, keitätte) and the corresponding past and conditional forms follow regular Finnish conjugation patterns. Keittää belongs to the native Finnish verb classes that take consonant-stem alternations and harmonize with surrounding vowels.

See also: Finnish grammar, verb conjugation, Finnish verbs, present indicative.