Tänä

Tänä is a Finnish demonstrative form that functions as the determined form of the word tämä (this) when it is used with time-related phrases. It is not a standalone lexical item; rather, it appears before temporal nouns to express “this” in a temporal sense, as in phrases that denote the current period.

In actual use, tömät expressions commonly appear in fixed collocations such as tänä vuonna (this year), tänä päivänä (this day / today, in the sense of on this day), and tänä iltana (this evening). The form tänä signals proximity in time to the moment of speaking and is typically paired with nouns that denote time. Finnish speakers may also use related forms of tämä in other case contexts, but tänä is specialized for temporal expressions.

Morphology and status in Finnish grammar: tänä is one inflected form of the demonstrative tämä and is part of the broader system of Finnish demonstratives, which decline to agree with the noun they modify. Unlike the adverbänänän Tänään (today), which is a separate lexical item, tänä sits directly before a time noun or a time phrase to specify “this” in time. The exact choice of form (tänä vs. tämä, tämän, etc.) depends on the case and the syntactic construction of the phrase.

See also: Finnish language, demonstratives in Finnish, time expressions in Finnish.