Tarkastelevaan

Tarkastelevaan is a Finnish grammatical form derived from the verb tarkastella, meaning to examine or to look at. It is the illative singular form of the present active participle tarkasteleva, which functions as an adjective or participle describing a noun.

As a participial adjective, tarkastelevaan is used when the noun it modifies is in the illative case, indicating movement toward or into something related to looking, examining, or scrutinizing. In enough contexts it conveys the sense of approaching something from a particular perspective or stance, rather than describing a static state. The form is most common in formal, literary, or rhetorical Finnish, and can appear in phrases that frame how something is viewed or assessed.

A well-known example is tarkastelevaan silmään, which translates roughly as “to the scrutinizing eye.” In translation, the illative form signals direction toward the noun, while the adjective tarkasteleva describes the nature of the gaze or perspective. The use of tarkastelevaan thus emphasizes the viewpoint or method of examination rather than a simple attribute.

Tarkastelevaan is part of the broader Finnish system in which adjectives and participles inflect for case and number. While it may not appear in everyday spoken language, it is encountered in written Finnish, particularly in analytical, evaluative, or descriptive contexts.