Case / Suffix Sticker
What sign sticks to the word?
Maana
A visible marker attached to a word that shows role, relation, number, tense, person, case, direction, or other grammatical function.
Jinsi ya kuitambua
Look for small endings that change the word's role or meaning.
Mifano
-s|-ed|-ing|case endings|plural endings
dogs|walked|house's
The teacher corrected the students' essays.
Visual guide
word + suffix sticker --------------------- dog + -s -> dogs walk + -ed -> walked house + 's -> house's ending = grammar signal
Same job, different coding no ending: dog (context) word: plural marker + dog suffix: dog + -s -> dogs many endings can encode: role, number, time, person
Mtazamo wa lugha
Katika lugha yako ya kwanza
English has very little case marking, mainly in pronouns and possessive forms.
She saw him.
he/him = limited case marking in pronouns
Katika lugha unayojifunza
Spanish does not have productive noun case suffixes, but pronouns show case-like forms and prepositions carry many relations.
yo / mí / me; tú / ti / te
I / me / me; you / you / you
Learners from case-rich languages may look for noun case endings that Spanish does not use.
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.