Kertojaan

Kertojaan is a Finnish grammatical form derived from the noun kertoja, which means narrator or storyteller. In linguistic and descriptive grammar, kertojaan is the illative singular form, used to express movement toward or into the role of the narrator. The illative case answers questions about direction or destination, such as “into what” or “to where,” and kertojaan illustrates this pattern for nouns ending in -ja.

In ordinary everyday Finnish, illative forms of -ja nouns are not commonly used outside specialized contexts. Kertojaan therefore appears primarily in linguistic descriptions, older or more literary text, or in frame-narrative devices where the narrator is being summoned, addressed, or invoked as a character. Its usage is more about illustrating case patterns than about frequent practical speech.

Etymologically, kert-oja- is related to telling or recounting, with the -ja suffix forming a noun meaning “narrator,” and the illative suffix transforming the whole word to indicate direction toward that role. As with other Finnish inflectional forms, pronunciation and spelling adapt to phonological harmony within a sentence.

While kertojaan is mainly of interest to students of Finnish grammar and historical usage, it helps illustrate how the illative case functions for -ja nouns and how frame narratives can employ grammatical forms to evoke the narrator as a participant in the discourse.

See also: Finnish grammar, Illative case, Kertomus, Kertoja.