pitkiä

Pitkiä is a Finnish inflected form of the adjective pitkä, meaning long. It represents the partitive plural form used when the noun it modifies is in the partitive case or when indicating an indefinite quantity. In Finnish, adjectives decline to agree with the noun in number and case, so pitkiä appears alongside nouns in the partitive plural.

Morphology and related forms: the base adjective is pitkä. Its nominative plural form is pitkät, while its partitive forms include pitkiä (partitive plural) and pitkää (partitive singular). These forms illustrate Finnish adjective inflection, where endings change to signal how the noun is being used in the sentence.

Usage: pitkiä is typically used with plural nouns in the partitive case. Examples include expressions such as pitkiä päiviä (long days), pitkiä tarinoita (long stories), pitkiä matkoja (long journeys), and pitkiä muistoja (long memories). These phrases often describe duration, extent, or characteristics of the modified noun in an indefinite or non-counting sense.

Examples in context:

- Olemme viettäneet pitkiä päiviä rannalla. (We have spent long days at the beach.)

- Hän kertoi pitkiä tarinoita from the trip. (He told long stories from the trip.)

- Meillä on pitkiä muistoja lapsuudesta. (We have long memories of childhood.)

Notes: pitkiä is distinct from pitkiä (partitive plural) and from pitkiä tarinoita in that both pitkiä and tarinoita are plural, whereas the noun form and its case determine the exact meaning. Other related forms include pitkä (singular nominative), pitkät (nominative plural), and pitkää (partitive singular).

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