Estonian (Eesti)
"Welcome!"
"Welcome!"
Introduction The oldest recorded Estonian word dates from the 8th century AD. The first complete texts in Estonian, the Kullamaa prayers, appeared in the 1520s, followed by other religious texts. The The modern written form of the language began to take shape in the first half of the 19th century. The first Estonian newspapers appeared in the second half of the 19th century. Russia, which ruled Estonia at the time, declared Russian the official language of instruction. Estonian endured another period of russification from 1940 until independence in 1990, when it became the national language. Estonian is spoken by 1.1 million people, mostly in the Republic of Estonia with small pockets of speakers in Australia, Canada, Finland, Latvia, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and USA (Ethnologue). It is the official Estonian is closely related to Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Bay of Finland, and more distantly to Hungarian, spoken in central Europe. Finnish and Estonian are mutually intelligible and share over 80% of their vocabulary. Estonian has two major dialects, North Estonian, based on the dialect of Tallin, the capital of Estonia, and South Estonian, based on the dialect of Tartu, the second-largest city in Estonia. At present, Standard Estonian is used and accepted at all levels of society. Under Soviet rule, however, Russian was declared the official language, and systematic, albeit unsuccessful attempts were made to suppress the Estonian language and culture. After the dissolution of the USSR, Estonia became an independent republic. While Russian is still a widely used second language, Estonian is taught in schools, and competency in it is required for citizenship. |
first grammars appeared in the early 17th century during Swedish rule. Folk songs and oral poetry were first recorded in the 18th century. 
language of the Republic of Estonia.
Structure
Sound System |
Estonian has a relatively small number of consonants, but they can appear in three lengths: short, long, or overlong, e.g., lina "linen", linna "city", and lin:na "into the city". Vowels have a three-way distinction in length as well. Stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word, but loanwords and foreign words usually retain their original stress. Click here to listen to the pronunciation of some common phrases in Estonian. Your ear should readily pick up vowel length. |
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Noun phrase Despite the large number of cases, Estonian lacks the accusative case, common among Indo-European languages for denoting the direct object of a transitive verb. The direct object in Estonian is expressed by the nominative, genitive or partitive, in the singular, and by the nominative or the partitive in the plural. Using the genitive case for the object in the singular and the nominative case in the plural, indicates the completeness of the action. Use of the partitive case expresses the unfinished nature of the action. Click here for a detailed description of Estonian cases. Verb phrase Word order |
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Throughout its modern history, Estonia has been ruled by foreign powers, most notably Germany, Sweden, and Russia. As a result, Estonian has a large number of loanwords from these languages. Other borrowings come from Finnish, French and English. Below are some common phrases in Estonian. As you can see, they bear no resemblance to their Indo-European equivalents.
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Writing |
Estonian is written in the Roman script. The alphabet lacks the letters c, q, w, x, y which are used only for writing foreign words. The Estonian orthography is quite regular, meaning that each phoneme is represented by one letter. There are a few exceptions due to historical reasons. Throughout most of its history, Estonian has used the Roman alphabet. It was first written by German scholars. As a result, its spelling was heavily influenced by German until the 1850s when the orthography underwent a reform aimed to bring it closer tothe spoken language. The present-day alphabet has seventeen consonants and nine vowels. Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian.
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Resources
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How difficult is it to learn Estonian? Estonian is considered to be a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. |
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