kättään

Kättään is not a standard standalone entry in modern Finnish dictionaries. In most contemporary contexts it appears not as a headword but as a form that may arise from inflection of the noun käsi (hand) or from a manuscript or dialectal spelling. Because Finnish morphology is highly regular, “kättään” is not widely recognized as a separate lexical item in standard language, and its exact reading depends on context.

Linguistic interpretation of the sequence kättään is uncertain without surrounding text. It resembles a combination of inflectional patterns that occur with the noun käsi, such as partitive or possessive forms, but the precise function of this particular form in Finnish is unclear in standard usage. In many cases where such a form appears, editors interpret it as a misspelling, a typographical error, or a nonstandard regional/archaic variant rather than a productive, contemporary form.

In practice, encountering kättään in modern Finnish text should prompt attention to context. If it appears in quoted dialect, historical documents, or manuscript witnesses, it may reflect nonstandard orthography or older grammatical conventions. If it appears in contemporary prose or formal writing, it is most often treated as a likely error to be corrected to a standard form such as käden (genitive) or kättä (partitive), depending on the intended meaning.

Related topics include standard inflection of käsi, common possessive forms, and Finnish dialect variation. For clarification, consult Finnish grammars or a reliable dictionary with dialect notes, especially when encountering unusual forms in non-standard texts.