äänteitään

äänteitään is a Finnish word that translates to "their sounds" or "their speech." It is the partitive plural form of the possessive suffix -ään, which indicates possession by the third person plural subject ("they"). This suffix is attached to the noun "äänne," meaning "sound" or "phoneme." Therefore, "äänteitään" literally means "their sounds" or "their phonemes."

The word is commonly used in linguistics and phonetics when discussing the sound systems of languages spoken by multiple people. For example, one might say "Tutkijat analysoivat äänteitään" which means "The researchers are analyzing their sounds." This could refer to the phonetic features characteristic of a particular group of speakers or the specific sounds produced by individuals within that group. The partitive case is used here because it refers to an indefinite or partial quantity of their sounds, rather than all of their sounds as a whole. The grammatical structure emphasizes the possession of sounds by a plural subject.