lentäviltä

Lentäviltä is a Finnish grammatical form, specifically the ablative plural form of the present active participle lentävä, meaning “flying.” It combines the participle lentävä with the ablative plural suffix -ltä/-iltä, yielding lentäviltä. The form signals origin or source from a group described by the participle.

In Finnish, participles can be declined like adjectives, and their affixes follow the same case patterns as nouns and adjectives. The ablative plural suffix -iltä is used to indicate “from those/that which are …” when referring to a plural group. Therefore lentäviltä literally conveys “from the flying ones” or “from those that are flying.” The expression is most often found in written or descriptive contexts rather than everyday speech.

Usage and examples:

- Lentäviltä saatiin raportti. (A report was obtained from the flying ones.)

- Huhut levisi lentäviltä kuulopuheilta. (Rumors spread from the flying ones, i.e., from those described as flying.)

In practice, lentäviltä is relatively uncommon; speakers more often choose more specific descriptors or use other constructions, such as specifying a concrete group (for example, lentäjiltä, from pilots) or using a different syntactic phrase to express origin.

Relation to other forms: lentäviltä demonstrates how Finnish adjectives and participles agree in case and number with the nouns they describe, here in the ablative plural. It is part of the broader system of Finnish inflection that marks source and relationship through case endings.

See also: Finnish grammar, participles, ablative case, illative and other locative cases.