Difference between täällä and tällä?

[ABR]

Hi,

I've seen both täällä and tällä used on different occasions, and täältä and tältä as well. I'm an intermediate Finnish learner and haven't come across an explanation of this in any of my textbooks. Most seem to use the "2-ä" forms, though I swear I've seen 1-ä in textbooks as well.

Here is what http://google.fi tells me in terms of millions of hits for the word itself in double-quotes (e.g., "täällä"), and what Wiktionary (http://en.wiktionary.org) says in its definitions:

Code: Select all

Form    Google  Wiktionary
täällä  5.2     suppressive case of tämä
tällä   6.6     adessive singular form of tämä

täältä  3.5     delative singular form of tämä
tältä   2.5     ablative singular form of tämä

Google seems to call them roughly even, and while I don't know how reliable Wiktionary is as a source, I know both "adessive" and "ablative" cases but have never heard of "suppressive" or "delative". I guess maybe they are some cases one learns in 7th-year Finnish. :-} But before I get there, is there any simple explanation anyone can give?

Many thanks.

[PvZ2]

The first means here and the second means with this.

[Upphew]

Maybe the examples would open the difference: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/t%C3%A4ll%C3%A4 vs. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/t%C3%A4%C3%A4ll%C3%A4

[Pursuivant]

täällä = here (it doesn't help "to here" has one ä, tänne)
tällä = with this, or "owned by this" (tämä)
täältä = from here
tältä = from this

[AldenG]

That should be "superessive" rather than suppressive -- not that it makes any of us the wiser about it.

As long as you understand:

täällä (at here)
täältä (from here)

kaikkialla (at everywhere)
kaikkialta (from everywhere)

...you can forget about the names for the defunct superessive and delative cases that formed these adverbs. They're only useful to know if your interest is more in comparing Finnish to other languages like Hungarian than in reading, writing, and speaking Finnish. Learning a few model sentences using these words will move you much farther along the latter road than any amount of studying their case names or etymologies.

[ABR]

Thanks for all the responses. I guess I've considered -la (the adessive case) to subsume both of the "here" / täällä and "with" / tällä type meanings. For example "Olen asemalla" is like "täällä" while "Tulen autolla" (or, better, kirjoitan kynällä) is like "tällä". So maybe the former cases WERE superessive at one point but because it came to sound the same as adessive it just got merged everywhere except in the vestigial täällä / täältä.

(And yes I realize that this stuff is not necessarily helpful to getting that "working" knowledge of the language into the tongue, but my mind just likes to know these things..)

[jahasjahas]

I think it's worth mentioning that "superessive" and "delative" aren't usually considered Finnish cases, and they're not used productively. In fact, I had never even heard of those words. Seems to be one of those "we can use Latin grammar terms to describe any language" situations.

[AldenG]

Thanks for all the responses. I guess I've considered -la (the adessive case) to subsume both of the "here" / täällä and "with" / tällä type meanings. For example "Olen asemalla" is like "täällä" while "Tulen autolla" (or, better, kirjoitan kynällä) is like "tällä". So maybe the former cases WERE superessive at one point but because it came to sound the same as adessive it just got merged everywhere except in the vestigial täällä / täältä.

(And yes I realize that this stuff is not necessarily helpful to getting that "working" knowledge of the language into the tongue, but my mind just likes to know these things..)

When you go that route, you have to apply the "longest meaningful suffix" principle. The ending for adessive is -lla but for superessive it is -alla; for ablative it is -lta but for delative it is -alta. If you see -alta attached to a stem, you have to recognize that instead of -lta. Of course doing that is not necessarily easy. For instance, it requires the prior knowledge to know that tä- and not tää- is the stem. (Are you seeing tä/ällä or tää/llä?) And the first letter of the -alla can change by being next to a different letter, as in siellä. It can be fun stuff to look at these things like adverbial cases but it probably confuses more than it enlightens. If you delve into grammar, at least try to banish the names of the cases from your consciousness while you are making sentences. Just think the endings directly, and later in your education the full words directly. The extra steps of naming things and constructing things delay you in creating the necessary direct neural reflexes. Because language is all about reflex. Understanding what to do (or why) is only a stepping stone (and not a necessary one in all situations) to reaching the stage of reflex.

And as jahasjahas says, it's misleading from a beginner perspective to call these "cases" at all. "They're not used productively" means you can't apply them to any word that doesn't already come with them. (Words that come with them) And actually all named cases are after-the-fact inventions that grammarians came up with to explain what people had done for hundreds or thousands of years by herd instinct/consensus alone.

I should have mentioned muualla and muualta (*elsewhere) in my original response, as they're equally or more common and useful to kaikkialla and kaikkialta (*everywhere). On the other hand, it's almost confusing to think of toisaalta in that context, since it has migrated to the specialized adverbial meaning of . . . "on the other hand" (a different form of "from elsewhere" than muualta, sort of "from another perspective").