kypsyessään

Kypsyessään is a Finnish adverbial participle form derived from the verb kypsyä, meaning "to ripen" or "to mature." It is commonly translated as "when it ripens," "as it matures," or "while ripening" and is used to express temporal relations in subordinate clauses where one action occurs simultaneously with or as a result of another.

Usage is frequent in descriptions of food, agriculture and biology, where processes of maturation are described, and in general narrative contexts: for example, "Hedelmä muuttuu pehmeäksi kypsyessään" ("The fruit becomes soft when it ripens"). Kypsyessään typically refers to a third-person subject (it/he/she/they) and functions like a temporal clause without an explicit conjunction.

Formally, kypsyessään arises from the verb stem kypsy- combined with an adverbial participle suffix and a possessive ending that indicates the subject. Related forms include kypsyessäni, kypsyessäsi and kypsyessämme, which indicate first, second and first-person plural perspectives respectively.

The form can also convey causal or consequential nuance depending on context (e.g., "Kuori irtoaa kypsyessään" — "The skin comes off as it ripens"). It appears in both spoken and written Finnish and is a standard tool for compactly linking temporal or conditional events.