piirtävät

Piirtävät is a Finnish verb form meaning “they draw” or “they are drawing.” It is the third-person plural present indicative form of the verb piirtää, which means to draw or sketch.

In Finnish, verbs are conjugated for person and number using endings. For the present tense, the third-person plural suffix is typically -vat or -vät, chosen according to vowel harmony. Because the stem of piirtää contains a front vowel (ä), the ending here is -vät, yielding piirtävät. The form is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, following Finnish phonology: PIIR-tä-vät.

Usage and meaning: Piirtävät is used with plural subjects to describe an action occurring in the present. It does not encode a continuous aspect in the same way as some languages; Finnish present tense expresses current or general action, with context providing temporal nuance. The verb can appear in sentences describing what multiple subjects are doing, such as in descriptions of a group drawing.

Examples:

- He piirtävät karttoja. (They draw maps.)

- Lapset piirtävät kuvia yhdessä. (The children are drawing pictures together.)

Related forms include the infinitive piirtää (to draw) and the third-person singular present piirtää (he/she draws), which can be identical in spelling to the infinitive in Finnish, requiring context to distinguish meaning. Piirtävät is a standard example of Finnish present-tense conjugation for a plural subject.