pöytän

Pöytään is a Finnish illative form of the noun pöytä, meaning “to the table” or “onto the table.” It is most often used in imperative sentences to invite someone to join at a meal or to indicate movement toward a dining area. The form illustrates Finnish’s agglutinative case system, where the illative suffix -in (typically written as -n with vowel changes) conveys direction into a place.

In everyday use, phrases such as Tule pöytään (Come to the table) or Tulkaa pöytään (Come to the table, plural) are common. The expression is widely understood in households, restaurants, and public settings where meals are served. The term also appears in literature and children’s songs as a cue to gather at the table.

Linguistically, pöytään demonstrates how Finnish relies on case endings to express location and motion rather than prepositions, with pöytä serving as the base noun. Other inflected forms of pöytä exist to denote different cases and directions, but pöytään is specifically illative.

There is no widely recognized use of Pöytään as a proper noun, place name, or title in standard reference works. When encountered in text, it is typically read as the phrase “to the table” rather than as a standalone name.