Gradation

I was having a conversation about the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie with a friend of mine when I noticed about the weird conjugation pattern of the Finnish word 'vuosi' (=year). 'Vuosi' has two or three weak grades and usually nouns only have one. I have used that word for a million times and still haven't ever thought about it. 

Many nouns in Uralic languages have a 'strong grade' and a 'weak grade'. This means that the noun root reacts to suffixes and different noun forms. There are a huge amount of nouns like these e.g. 'márfi' (the Sami word for 'sausage') becomes 'márffi-' in some cases.

vuosi (=year)

nominative VUOSI strong grade

genitive VUODEN (s --> d)

partitive VUOTTA (s --> t(t) - the other 't' might be a part of the partitive suffix so I put it between brackets)

essive VUOTENA (s --> t)

translative VUODEKSI (s --> d)

inessive VUODESSA

elative VUODESTA

illative VUOTEEN (s --> t)

adessive VUODELLA

ablative VUODELTA

allative VUODELLE

(exessive VUODENTA)

abessive VUODETTA

All the plural forms are in the strong grade except the nominative which is VUODET (s --> d). Including instructive and comitative which I didn't mention here because they don't have singular forms.

Why did I say two or three weak grades? Because the commonly used essive is VUONNA (s --> n)

Btw, also verbs have strong and weak grades.

Are there any grade mutations (gradations) in your language?

- Väinölä

PS, The Uralic Breeze has a new 'summery' look.