Estonian language

The Estonian language (eesti keel) or Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language spoken by around 1 100 000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Estonia. There are also small Estonian-speaking communities in Latvia and in Russia.

Classification

Estonian is not related to the autochthonous languages of the other two Baltic states, Latvian (Latvia) and Lithuanian (Lithuania), which are Baltic (also called proto-Baltic) languages, but to the languages of the Phinnic group, mainly with Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland, or to a lesser extent with the Saami languages of Lapland, Komi, Udmurt or the autochthonous languages of Mordovia, as well as, very distantly, with the Ugaric group, whose main member it is hungarian

Phonology

The vowel inventory is given by:

The Estonian vowel system has 9 phonemes with short or long quantity (i.e. 9×2=18 vowel phonemes), corresponding to the following spellings: a, ä, e, i, o, ö, u, ü, õ.

õ is a low, back, unrounded vowel sound. (To the Spanish speaker, it sounds like an o in which the lips are not rounded. It is similar to the Vietnamese o-horn.)

The consonant inventory is given by:

• Consonants /f, ≤/ only appear in language loans.
• One of the distinguishing features of the Estonian is that its consonant system has three degrees of extension: short, long and extralarious seals. The difference between long fonemas and extralarges lies both in their accentuation and in their duration. The lengths and extralarges do not distinguish orthographically.

In certain words, the consonants ln, n, s, and t are palatized, giving a sort of slight i to the sound of the consonant. Examples: palk (trunk), tund (time), kott (bag), katt (cat). Thus, katt sounds to a Spanish speaker almost like kait.

General characteristics of the writing system

Estonian uses the characters of the Latin alphabet. However, its alphabet lacks the letters c, q, w, x and y (they are only used to write names and crude foreign words) and contains the letters š, ž, õ, ä, ö and ü. The letters f, š, z and ž are used only in loanwords.

Morphology

Noun

Both nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender. However, both nouns and adjectives are declined with 14 cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adhesive, ablative, translative, terminative, esive, abesive, and commitative. One of the peculiarities of the Estonian inflectional system is the absence of the accusative, which is replaced either by the genitive (for whole objects) or by the partitive (for partial objects). Even the absence of the dative is noted, which occurs in both Estonian and Finnish

Traditionally fourteen nominal cases are counted in Estonian:

The locative cases represent six or eight of the fourteen cases, depending on the interpretation given to them.

Case differences with Finnish

It is also worth noting the great kinship between the Finnish and Estonian languages, in terms of declension and their use of grammatical cases. The main difference is that while Estonian uses the terminative case but not the instructive case, Finnish uses the instructive case but not the terminative. The accusative in Estonian almost always coincides with the genitive form.

Adjective

The adjective agrees in case and number with the noun it accompanies. For example: nominative: väike kollane maja (‘a yellow house’) illative (place into which): väikesesse kollasesse majja (Note that majja has the extra-long degree of the consonant j, even though it is orthographically rendered as a double consonant.) The adjective in predicative function also agrees in number and case with the antecedent noun. For example: Uus maja on kollane. (‘The new house is yellow’) Uued majad on kollased. (‘New houses are yellow’)

Verb phrase

General characteristics of the verb phrase

Estonian is not a subject-obligatory language in the unmarked affirmative sentence (i.e., the presence or absence of the subject is more or less as in English, although the presence of the subject is much more frequent than in Spanish). However, Estonian (like Finnish) lacks a negative adverb and constructs the negation with an auxiliary verb (ei) and the verb stem. The negative auxiliary (unlike Finnish) has the same form in all persons, so the negative sentence requires the presence of the subject. For example: Lähen. (‘I am going’). But: Ma ei lähe ('I'm not going'. Literally: "I'm not going".). Kui me ei leia, siis saame alati üksteisele ka helistada ('If we don't meet, we can always call each other'. Literally: «If we don't find, then we can always call each other too call." Note the presence of "we" (me) in the negative sentence and its non-presence in the affirmative).

The unmarked order of the declarative sentence is SVO: Mina elan Pärnus. (‘I live in Pärnu’)

The unmarked order of the subordinate clause is SOV, as, for example, in German: English: If you are interested, we could meet some day. Estonian: Kui Sul huvi on, siis võiksime millalgi kokku saada. (Literally: "If it's interesting to you, then we might meet together someday"). German: Wenn du Interesse hast, dann könnten wir uns irgendwann mal zusammen treffen. (Literally: "If you are interested, then we might one day meet together").

The full interrogative sentence is marked by the presence of a particle (kas) at the beginning of the sentence. The intonation does not change with respect to the affirmative intonation. Oled kodus. (‘You are at home’) Kas oled kodus? (‘Are you home?’) Among others, Finnish (albeit with an enclitic particle, -ko/-kö) and Latvian (vai) share this characteristic.

Peculiarities of the verbal paradigm

One of its peculiarities is the absence of future tense. When an event has not yet occurred, the timeless present is used. The verb has several noun forms ("infinitives" for the Western grammatical tradition) and several adjective forms ("participles" for the Western grammatical tradition).

Conjugation paradigm

Historical, social and cultural aspects

History of the language

The earliest known transcription of a word in the Estonian language probably dates back to the 8th century. In the work Cosmography, the protagonist (Aethicus Ister) mentions an island called Taraconta (Tharaconta). Some authors think that it could refer to Estonia or its largest island, Saaremaa. Originally, Taraconta can come from the words Taara and kond. According to some authors, Taara was one of the main gods of the ancient Estonians. The suffix –kond can refer to a community of people, as in the word perekond (family), or to a territorial entity, as in maakond (province). Taraconta could refer to the Estonians as worshipers of Taara.

Starting in the 13th century, a large number of written sources have allowed us to have a better understanding of the development of language. Around this time, German and Scandinavian crusaders reached Estonia, one of the last pagan lands in Europe. The Crusades against the Estonians have been narrated during the first half of the XIII century in the Latin Chronicle of Henry of Livonia (Latin: Heinrici Chronicon Livoniae), the text of which contains words and fragments of phrases in Estonian or Estonian.

After the Crusades, a part of the German nobility and bourgeoisie settled in the territory of former Livonia that covered present-day Estonia and Latvia. Although Estonia has, over the course of seven centuries, been occupied by various foreign nations (Denmark, Poland, Sweden and Russia), the Estonian language was mostly influenced by Low German and High German, as well as the German dialect of Estonian. Baltic that developed from these. Specifically, the Estonian vocabulary related to the city and modernity is heavily inspired by German.

The earliest preserved text in Estonian is the Kullamaa manuscript, dated to the years 1524-1528. It is a translation of the main Catholic prayers such as the Our Father or the Credo. When the Reformation established itself in Estonia, preaching in the vernacular made necessary the translation of religious texts into North Estonian and South Estonian.

The first grammars and dictionaries were written in the 17th century. From that moment there is a large number of preserved texts.

During the nationalist 'awakening' of the mid-19th century, the Estonian language, which until then It was only the language of the peasants, it quickly became a language of culture, especially thanks to the University of Tartu, one of the main intellectual centers. It began to be used in literature and science. At the same time the first linguistic studies in Estonian were published. In 1884, Karl August Hermann published the first Estonian grammar in Estonian, a fact that made an important contribution to the standardization of the language.

In the second half of the 20th century, Estonian intellectuals set themselves the goal of developing their language to suit the modern European culture. The linguist Johannes Aavik played an important role in this process, striving to enrich and embellish the literary language. He made abundant use of the resources provided by the Finnish language and dialects, and also created artificial words and grammatical morphemes. Parallel to this «linguistic renewal» (keeleuuendus) promoted by Aavik, another current, led by Johannes Voldemar Veski, concentrated on the elaboration of norms and the development of terminology. Several thousand terms, in all areas of knowledge and life, were created during this period. Throughout the XX century, normative dictionaries played an important role in establishing the standard language. The first of them appeared in 1918.

During the Soviet regime (1940-1991), language standardization and strict adherence to norms became a form of national resistance. It was a way of opposing Soviet ideology, symbolized by the Russian language. Language was one of the fundamental elements of Estonian identity. Neither the scientific study of Estonian nor its use in most areas of public life (including education) were prohibited by the authorities, thus enabling Estonians and their language to resist Russification and colonization.

On May 1, 2004, Estonian became one of the twenty official languages of the European Union.

Use and geographic distribution

Estonian has around 1,000,000 speakers. The largest communities are in Estonia itself, with 920,000, and in Finland, with 40,000. There are a few thousand more speakers among Estonian diaspora communities in the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Australia mainly.

Dialectology and variants

The Estonian language has traditionally been divided into two groups with their respective dialects:

The northern or Tallinn group, base of the literary language (tallinna keel) which has three dialects:

• Pärnu and Läne countieslänemurre), similar to the lyvonio
• The insular (saarte murre), in Saaremaa, influenced by Swedish
• The northwest shore of Lake Peipus (idamurre)

The southern group or Tartu (tartu keel), which maintains the vowel harmony that has three dialects:

• The võru (võro), on the northern coast, more similar to the Finnish
• Setu (seto), spoken in Setomaa and in Pskov's oblast, very rusified and generally considered a variant of võru
• The mulgi, sometimes considered, with the previous two, as a variant of southern Estonian

It is estimated that 95% of Estonians speak Estonian as their mother tongue.