Kaupungista

Kaupungista is the elative singular form of the Finnish noun kaupungi (city). It expresses origin or source, meaning “from the city” or “out of the city.” As a grammatical case, elative marks movement away from a place or the starting point of an action, and kaupunki in this form is used with verbs of coming, leaving, arriving, obtaining, or selecting things from that place.

Formation and usage: The elative suffix -sta/-stä is added directly to the noun stem. For kaupungi, the result is kaupungista. It answers questions like mistä? “from where?” In everyday Finnish, kaupungista often appears with verbs of movement or transfer, such as tulla (to come), mennä (to go), lähteä (to leave), ostaa (to buy from), and viedä (to take from).

Examples:

- Hän tuli kaupungista. (He came from the city.)

- Ostin kaupungista tuoretta leipää. (I bought fresh bread from the city.)

- Lähden kaupungista aikaisin aamulla. (I am leaving the city early in the morning.)

Plural form and related uses: The plural elative is kaupungista in singular, and kaupungeista for multiple cities (from the cities). Finnish grammar encompasses many cases, and elative is commonly used to indicate origin, source, or starting point in spatial and figurative expressions.

See also: Finnish case system, elative case, kaupungin (genitive of city), kaupungissa (inessive: in the city).