sõnu

Sõnu is the Estonian term used to refer to words in general. Words are the basic units of language that convey meaning and combine to form phrases and sentences. In Estonian linguistic discussions, sõnu is used when talking about words in various contexts, including their meanings, usage, and grammatical behavior. They can be categorized into content words, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and function words, such as pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and particles.

Word formation and inflection: Estonian words are highly inflected. They change form to indicate grammatical categories such as case and number, and they can be modified by derivation or by joining with other words to form compounds. This morphology allows a single root to yield many related words and meanings, for example by combining with affixes or with other stems to create new words, such as sõnavara (vocabulary) or sõnaraamat (dictionary).

Usage and study: Words are central to lexicons, dictionaries, and language analysis. Researchers study word frequency, collocations, and semantic relationships to understand how language works. In language teaching and learning, focus on common sõnu and their grammatical patterns helps learners acquire Estonian more efficiently. Tools for natural language processing and computational linguistics also operate on word forms and tokenization of sõnu in texts.

Orthography: Estonian uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics. The word sõnu includes the letter õ, illustrating how orthography encodes pronunciation. Accurate spelling and attention to inflection are important for clear written communication in Estonian.