kielejä

Kielejä is the Finnish plural form of the noun kieli, which means language or tongue. It is used when referring to multiple languages and the noun is in the partitive case, for example when the languages are the object of an action or described in an indefinite quantity.

In Finnish grammar, nouns inflect for case and number, and the partitive plural form appears in contexts such as discussing several languages without specifying a complete set. The commonly cited use of kielejä is in phrases that denote multiple languages as objects, such as "useita kielejä" or "monia kielejä," signaling an unspecified amount rather than a fixed list.

There is some variation in practice. The standard partitive plural form for kieli in modern Finnish is often given as kieliä, but forms like kielejä are attested in older texts or certain dialects. Both forms may be encountered in written and spoken Finnish, reflecting historical phonology and regional usage.

Semantically, kielejä covers the same broad sense as kieli when used in plural, extending the concept from a single language to several languages. It appears in linguistic discussion, education, language learning, and translation contexts, where multiple languages are implicitly involved.

See also: kieli (language), kielet (nominative plural), kielitoimisto (Finnish language authority), Finnish grammar.