In many languages you have literally 3/4 of the word carry the meaning of the actual word and the remaining 1/4 sounds or letters devoted to grammatical markers for the gender/case/number/etc.

Using a classic Latin example from Monty Python, Romani ite domum / Romanes eunt domus;

the "Roman" part of of Romanes/Romani actually carries very much meaning and the -es/-i has information that's largely orthogonal to that.