käänamist

Käänamist is a term used in Estonian linguistics to describe the process of inflection, specifically the modification of a word's ending to indicate grammatical function. This is a core concept in Estonian grammar, which is highly agglutinative, meaning that suffixes are added to word stems to convey a wide range of grammatical information. Käänamist applies to nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals, altering them to show case, number, and sometimes possession or other relationships.

The Estonian language has fourteen grammatical cases, each marked by a specific suffix. These cases include nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative. For example, the noun "maja" (house) changes its ending depending on its role in a sentence. In the genitive case, indicating possession, it becomes "maja," but in the partitive case, often used for an indefinite amount or object of a negative verb, it becomes "maja." The illative case, signifying movement into, transforms it to "majja."

Understanding käänamist is crucial for both learning and correctly using the Estonian language. It allows for precise grammatical expression and contributes to the language's rich morphology. The system of case endings, while extensive, provides a systematic way to express complex grammatical relationships without relying heavily on prepositions, which are more common in analytic languages like English.