Kasvattaa vs lisätä?

[Kenneth]

Moi

Can someone explain to me (in simple terms) what the difference between kasvattaa and lisätä is? Can both be used as "to increase"?


Wiktionary:

Verb
lisätä
1. (transitive) To add.

Verb
kasvattaa
1. (transitive) To let grow.
kasvattaa partaa
to grow a beard
2. (transitive, agriculture) To grow, raise, breed.
3. (transitive, parenting) To rear, bring up, raise.
4. (transitive, figuratively) To educate, school.
5. (transitive, figuratively) To train for a certain duty.
6. (transitive) To increase, increment.


Google Translate:

add: lisätä, liittää, yhdistää
increase: lisätä, kasvaa, nostaa, korottaa, nousta, lisääntyä

[Upphew]

Don't take this as an answer, but rather as an musings of native:
kasvattaa - to increase from A to B without any steps in between
lisätä - to increase from A to B with discrete steps and/or instantly

[AldenG]

What kind of increase are you looking for? Both of these verbs are transitive, meaning you're doing something TO something else. There are a bunch of other possibilities for English 'grow' or 'add' in Finnish.

Also, as in English (if you think about it), when you 'add' something, you're taking something from outside and moving it to the inside. But when you grow something, you're making it grow from within. To me, a non-native, that's the key difference between lisätä and kasvattaa (in the senses where they overlap).

If you're talking about growing an investment fund, kasvattaa doesn't rule out that some of the growth would come from new deposits but the emphasis is on taking this thing and making it grow like a tree. Lisätä could be used to discuss individual or recurring additions.

If you only want to understand how kasvattaa and lisätä differ, then your definitions together with the things Upphew and I have said get you toward that.

But if you're looking for the right word for some context, you really have to tell us the context to avoid concocting something completely inappropriate. For instance, neither would be appropriate for talking about raising prices (though you could add/lisätä something to a specific transaction), entrance requirements, etc.

[Pursuivant]

Kun kasvattaa partaa kutina lisääntyy.

[Kenneth]

Thanks for the replies.

I wasn't looking for a specific context, but both words were in a list of words I am learning, lisätä was described as "to add, to increase" and kasvattaa was described as "to increase". I would be very grateful if you guys could write some more sentences in Finnish where only one or the other could be used (or can these words never substitute eachother?). Like the sentence Pursuivant wrote, I assume that you couldn't use lisätä for "to grow [a beard]", and kasvattaa for "to increase [the itching]"?

[Pursuivant]

Lisätä, if you are talking of a false beard - or drawing a beard. On the other hand, the itching can grow... if you think of it as a physical entity rather than a feeling.. Some things can grow, say like a city... kaupunki kasvaa, liikenne lisääntyy and then turn around and say liikenteen kasvu A thumb rule is, if something "multiplies" you can count them separately, if something grows, its an "entity". So like if you are growing your hair long, yes while the individual hairs lengthen, but you are talking of them as a collective... but if you say about your hair - hiukseni lisääntyvät - that means you were bald and now on rogaine.

[Kenneth]

Very helpful, thank you!