Tietystä

Tietystä is the elative singular form of the Finnish adjective tietty, meaning "certain" or "specific." In Finnish, adjectives decline to agree with the noun they modify in case and number, so tietty appears in different endings depending on grammatical role. The elative case, marked by -stä/-st, expresses origin or source, and tietystä is used when something comes from or is associated with “a certain” thing or reason.

Usage and nuance

Tietystä is most often found in phrases that indicate origin, cause, or source with a definite but not fully specified reference. Common examples include:

- tietystä syystä (for a certain reason)

- tietystä ihmisestä (from a certain person)

- tietystä tilanteesta (from a certain situation)

Grammatical notes

Tietty has several inflected forms to match nouns in various cases. Besides elative tietystä, you may encounter other forms such as tietyn (genitive), tiettyä (partitive), and tiettynä (essive). The choice of ending depends on the noun it modifies and the function in the sentence.

Relation to related terms

Tietty forms a closer semantic field with other Finnish words derived from tietäminen or tieto, such as tieto (knowledge) and tietää (to know). The core meaning revolves around specificity or a defined subset of something rather than broad generality. The adverbial counterpart tietysti means “of course,” which is unrelated morphologically but often appears in discussions of words derived from tietty.

See also

Tietty, tietoa, tieto. Finnish grammar resources discussing adjectives and case endings provide fuller detail on how tietty declines across cases.