lyhentävät

Lyhentävät is the present tense, third-person plural form of the Finnish verb lyhentää, meaning to shorten or to abbreviate. The form is used when the subject of the sentence is plural, for example when referring to multiple people or entities performing the action. It is built from the verb root lyhent- with the standard third-person plural ending -vät, following Finnish vowel harmony.

In Finnish, lyhentää typically implies reducing length by removing parts or trimming excess, rather than merely summarizing content. It is commonly used in contexts such as editing text, shortening durations, or limiting data. The word is often contrasted with tiivistää, which more specifically means to condense or summarize content rather than to shorten in a literal sense.

Usage notes and grammar:

- Lyhentävät requires a plural subject, for example: Käyttäjät lyhentävät artikkelia. (The users shorten the article.)

- The object is usually in partitive (e.g., artikkelia, tekstiä) or genitive when specifying what is being shortened.

- Related forms include lyhentää (the infinitive), lyhentävä (a present participle form meaning “shortening”), and lyhennys or lyhentäminen as nouns referring to the act or result of shortening.

Related concepts:

- Lyhentäminen: act of shortening

- Lyhennys: abbreviation or shortening, often used in technical contexts

- Tiivistäminen: condensing or summarizing, a related but distinct process

Lyhentävät thus functions as a straightforward grammatical form signaling that multiple subjects are performing the action of shortening.