Vocab: mainima

to mention

to mention, to note

Building blocks

• maini- mention

• -ma - infinitive ending

It’s borrowed from Finnish mainita, which ultimately comes from a Germanic stem. So all of these words are actually related:

• English: “to mean”

• Finnish: “mainita” - “to mention”

• German: “meinen” - “to mean, to think”

How to use it

Who or what you mention is in the Partitive case (third base form).

Mainima is commonly used as a compound verb, which consist of an adverb (“ära - away”) and a regular verb (“mainima - to mention”).

The meaning of this compound verb is to mention/to bring out/to note briefly or in passing.

Examples

Kas sa mainisid mu nime

Literally: “Did you mention my name?”

Kas - Adverb , "Did"
sa - Pronoun - Nom Sg, "you"
mainisid - Verb - 2P Past Sg, "mention"
mu - Pronoun - Gen Sg, "my"
nime - Noun - Part Sg, "name"

Mainin ära, et masin nüüd töötab

Literally: “I mention away that machine now works”

Idiomatically: “I will briefly mention that the machine is working now”

Mainin ära - Compound Verb - 1P Present Sg, "I mention away"
et - Conjunction, "that"
masin - Noun - Nom Sg, "machine"
nüüd - Adverb, "now"
töötab - Verb - 3P Present Sg, "works"