niiltä

Niiltä is a Finnish grammatical form that functions as the elative plural of the demonstrative pronoun ne, meaning “those” or “them” in reference to a plural set mentioned earlier. The elative case marks origin or source, so niiltä translates roughly as “from those.” It is used when the antecedent of the pronoun is plural and the sentence concerns the source of objects, information, or actions.

In standard Finnish, niiltä appears in contexts where the speaker refers to items or people that come from or originate with the previously mentioned group. For example, niiltä can introduce information received or observed from that group, or indicate where something was found or obtained. Typical constructions involve verbs that take a source complement, such as finding, asking, or reporting about the source. For instance, niiltä löytyi vanhoja valokuvia means “from those (people/objects) came old photographs,” and en ole kuullut niiltä mitään means “I haven’t heard anything from them.” The exact choice of pronoun (ne vs. he) and the surrounding verb can affect nuance and register.

Niiltä forms part of the broader demonstrative-pronoun inflection in Finnish. Other related forms reflect different cases, numbers, or demonstrative bases, providing a range of ways to specify reference and source. In most everyday contexts, niiltä is most common when the speaker wants to emphasize origin from a known plural group or collection and contrast it with other potential sources.