tauteja

Tauteja is a Finnish noun used to refer to diseases in a non-specific or collective sense. It is the partitive plural form of tauti, the common word for disease. In Finnish, the partitive plural tauteja is used in statements about diseases without specifying a precise number, or when discussing diseases in general. Common expressions include erilaisia tauteja (various diseases) and tauteja esiintyy ympäri maailmaa (diseases occur around the world). The term appears in medical writing, health education, and everyday language.

Etymology and usage notes: tauteja derives from tauti and exemplifies how Finnish uses the partitive plural to indicate indefiniteness or a non-countable quantity when talking about illness in general. It contrasts with the nominative plural taudit, which refers to diseases as discrete items, and with other inflected forms used in counting or specifying particular illnesses.

See also: tauti (disease), taudit (diseases, nominative plural).