kestän

Kestän is the first person singular present form of the Finnish verb kestää, commonly translated as "to last," "to endure," "to bear," or "to withstand." As a conjugated form, kestän means "I endure," "I last," or "I can bear," depending on context. It appears in both spoken and standard Finnish and follows regular inflection patterns for verbs of its class.

Pronunciation is approximately [ˈkestæn]. The verb kestää serves several related semantic roles: indicating durational persistence (e.g., Se kestää tunnin — "It lasts an hour"), expressing the ability to tolerate (e.g., Kestän kipua — "I can endure pain"), and describing structural or moral bearing (e.g., Tämä materiaali kestää — "This material holds up"). The verb commonly appears in derivations and compounds such as kestävä ("durable") and kestävyys ("endurance").

Syntactically, kestää can govern temporal expressions and often takes objects in the partitive case when indicating an ongoing or partial action. Negation and mood interact with the form in typical Finnish ways (for example, the negative present first person is en kestä). The verb has participial and past forms (kestänyt, kesti) used to express completed or past endurance.

Etymologically, kestää is inherited within the Finnic linguistic family and has cognates and reflexes in related languages. As a common everyday verb, its various forms are central to expressions about durability, time, and tolerance in Finnish.