siirtäessä

Siirtäessä is a Finnish verb form belonging to the category of adverbial participles, or converbs. It is derived from the verb siirtää, meaning to transfer, move, or relocate, and it expresses that another action occurs at the same time as the main verb, roughly translating to “while moving/transferring.”

The base form siirtäessä is the present adverbial participle. It can be used without additional suffixes when the subject is understood from context, for example in a sentence like: Siirtäessä laatikkoa, kannattaa pitää selkä suorana, meaning “While moving the box, one should keep the back straight.” The form can also take possessive suffixes to indicate the subject of the subordinate clause, such as siirtäessäsi (as you are moving) or siirtäessäni (as I am moving). This makes it possible to create clauses whose subject is clearly specified, for instance: Siirtäessäsi laatikkoa, muista olla varovainen (“As you move the box, remember to be careful”) and Siirtäessäni kirjoja hyllyyn, huomasin pöydän olevan epäjärjestyksessä (“While I was moving the books onto the shelf, I noticed the table was cluttered.”).

Usage and style notes: siirtäessä is primarily a written or formal construct and is common in manuals, instructions, and descriptive prose where simultaneous action needs to be expressed succinctly. In everyday spoken Finnish, speakers may opt for simpler constructions to convey the same meaning. The form is part of Finnish grammar as a converb that allows time-related or circumstantial clauses without introducing a new finite verb form.

Related forms include other present adverbial participles formed with -essa/-essä, such as kirjoittaessa (while writing) or laittaessa (while putting).