käänata

Käänata is a Finnish verb that occurs primarily in historical texts and some regional dialects. In modern standard Finnish, the core meaning of “to turn” is typically expressed with the verb kääntää (transitive: to turn something, or to translate) and kääntyä (intransitive: to turn oneself or to turn in a direction). Because of this, käänata is generally regarded as nonstandard or archaic in contemporary usage.

Semantics and usage: When käänata appears, it is associated with the general sense of turning or rotating. However, its exact usage is not uniform in current Finnish, and most speakers would prefer kääntää or kääntyä in everyday language. In texts where käänata is found, it often reflects older orthography or regional speech patterns rather than a widely adopted modern form. Because it lacks a stable, widely taught conjugation in standard Finnish, its inflection and grammatical behavior are not consistently documented in modern grammar references.

Origins and status: The form käänata is linked etymologically to the same root as kääntää and kääntyä, related to turning. Finnish dictionaries commonly treat it as archaic or dialectal, noting that it does not belong to the normative, widely used vocabulary of present-day Finnish.

See also: kääntää, kääntyä, käännös.