pieniä

Pieniä is the partitive plural form of the Finnish adjective pieni, meaning "small" or "little." In Finnish, adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in number and case, and the form pieniä is used specifically with plural nouns in the partitive case. This form is used to indicate an indefinite amount or a portion of small items, rather than a definite set.

Common usages include describing an unspecified quantity of small objects, for example: Löysin pieniä kolikoita lattialta. ("I found some small coins on the floor.") En nähnyt pieniä taloja. ("I did not see any small houses.") In both examples, the partitive plural pieniä marks that the exact number is not specified or is being negated.

Declension and related forms: The base adjective pieni has several inflected forms. Nominative singular is pieni, nominative plural is pienet. Partitive singular is pientä, and partitive plural is pieniä. Finnish adjectives do not have gender, and their endings reflect number and case rather than gender.

Usage notes: Pieniä commonly appears with plural nouns in contexts that emphasize indefiniteness, imperfection, or partial quantity. It contrasts with pienet talot (the small houses, a definite plural) and with pienen (genitive singular) in different syntactic roles. The adjective’s comparative and superlative forms are pienempi and pienin, used to compare sizes rather than to form the partitive.

In summary, pieniä functions as the grammatical form used to describe “small” things in the plural partitive, signaling an indeterminate or non-specified subset of small items in Finnish.