Estonian language

Estonian (; IPA: ) is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and by some ten thousands in various émigré communities. It is a Finno-Ugric language and is related to Finnish and distantly to Hungarian. It has been influenced by German — initially Middle Saxon, later also standard German, Russian, Swedish and Latvian, though it is not related to them genetically.

One distinctive feature that has caused a great amount of interest in linguists is that Estonian has what is traditionally seen as three degrees of phoneme length: short, long, and "overlong", such that IPA , and are distinct, as are , , and . In actuality, the distinction isn't purely in the phoneme length, and the underlying phonological mechanism is still disputed.

Another feature that sets Estonian apart from most languages is the vowel õ (), a close-mid near-back unrounded vowel, which is farther back than the schwa (), but fronter than .

Classification

Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. Estonian is thus related to Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland, and is one of the few languages of Europe that is not Indo-European. Despite some minor overlaps in the vocabulary due to loaning, in terms of its origin, Estonian is not related to its nearest neighbours, Swedish, Latvian and Russian, which are all Indo-European languages.

Like Finnish and Hungarian, Estonian is an agglutinative language, but unlike them, it has lost the vowel harmony of Proto-Finno-Ugric. Furthermore, the syncope of word-final sounds is extensive and has caused a shift from a purely agglutinative to an inflected language. The basic word order is Subject Verb Object.

Dialects

The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups - the northern and southern dialects, usually associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in the south, in addition to a distinct dialect in the northeastern coast of Estonia, the kirderanniku dialect.

The northern group consists of the kesk or middle dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the lääne or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Läänemaa and Pärnumaa, the saarte (islands') dialect of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa and the ida or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipsi.

The southern group consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võru and Seto dialects. These are sometimes considered either dialects of a South Estonian language, or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto is not usually considered a dialect of Estonian, but rather a variant of Võru.

Writing system

Alphabet

Like Finnish, Estonian employs the Latin alphabet, in addition to which the Estonian alphabet contains letters š, ž, ä, ö, ü, and õ. The letters c, q, w, x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f, z, š, and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö, and ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in German. Unlike in German, Ä is pronounced ^*, as in English mat. The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are, unlike in German, clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes IPA , unrounded , or a mid, back, unrounded vowel. (It has a different sound from the same letter in Portuguese. It is similar to the Russian ы and the Vietnamese ơ.)

Orthography

Estonian orthography is essentially phonemic with each phoneme of the language represented by exactly one grapheme. Exceptions to this derive from historical agreements: for example the initial letter 'h' in words, preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž, they are substituted with sh and zh in some written texts. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative, as in pasha (pas-'ha); this also applies to some foreign names.

Modern Estonian orthography is based on the Newer Orthography created by Eduard Ahrens in the second half of the 19th century based on Finnish Orthography. The Older Orthography it replaced was created in the 17th century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had by and large used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Saxon orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography — for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' persisted well into the 1930s.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close
Mid¹
Open

The mid vowels are not close-mid or open-mid; the usual IPA notation uses these symbols.

There are nine phonemic monophthongs, with three phonetic lengths. Of these, simple and long are segmentally phonemic, and the third length level is suprasegmentally phonemic and aided by a distinctive tonal contour. The script distinguishes only short and long, marked by vowel doubling, e.g. öö "night". There are 19 segmental diphthongs (Hint 1978), and polysyllablic vowel clusters are also found. There are very few instances of vowel allophony: 'ä' may have pronunciations and , and the phoneme is pronounced as the diphthong .

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive
Nasal						()
Fricative		()		()
Approximant
Trill

Notes:

only appears as an allophone of before
and are considered foreign sounds and they only appear in loanwords.

There is one series of stops, unvoiced unaspirated, with three phonemic lengths, written b d g, p t k and pp tt kk. The rest of the consonants also have distinctive length, but only short and long are distinguished in writing. As with vowels, two segmental length levels are phonemic, and the third level is suprasegmentally phonemic. For example, for 'n', short 'n' in lina "sheet", half-long 'n' in linna "town's", over-long 'n' in linna "to the town". The latter addition of length is traceable to a grammatical marker *-han that has elided.

The fricatives are s h, added with f š ž z for loans. The other consonants are j l m n r v, plus the allophonic velar nasal in nk and ng. Consonants may be palatalized; but this is not written in the orthography, as palatalization generally occurs before front vowels. About 0.15% of the vocabulary features fully phonemic palatalization, where palatalization occurs without the front vowel. The process is similar to that found in Eastern Finnish dialects, where word-final 'i' is elided, leaving the palatalization on the consonant. Thus, palatalization does not necessarily need a front vowel, and palatalized vs. plain continuants can be articulated.

Proto-Finnic, the ancestor of the Estonian language, lost palatalization, but Estonian is one of those languages which reacquired it from Slavic. Yet, it underwent further modification, which makes Estonian palatalization is different from Russian palatalization. In Russian, palatalization causes some affrication and necessarily features a palatal approximant/fricative offglide, which is not the case in Estonian, where the consonant is otherwise unaffected.

The stress is on the first syllable; however, international loanwords and over-long consonants may alter this pattern. The stress is weak, and as length levels already control an aspect of "articulation intensity", most words appear evenly stressed.

Grammar

Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to an inflected language. Over the course of Estonian history, German has exercised a strong influence on Estonian, both in vocabulary and syntax.

In Estonian nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative, with the case and number of the adjective(s) always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for "a yellow house" (kollane maja) — "into a yellow house" is (kollasesse majja).

The direct object of the verb appears either in the accusative (for total objects) or in the partitive (for partial objects). The case accusative looks exactly like the genitive. Genitive vs. partitive case opposition of object used with transitive verbs creates a telicity contrast, just as in Finnish. This is a rough equivalent of the perfect vs. imperfect aspect opposition.

The verbal system lacks a distinctive future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal").

Vocabulary

Although the Estonian and Germanic languages are of completely different origins (leaving out the highly controversial Nostratic and Proto-World language theories), one can identify many similar words in the two languages. This is primarily due to the fact that the Estonian language has borrowed nearly one third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Middle Saxon (Middle Low German) during the period of German rule, and standard German. The percentage of Low Saxon and standard German loanwords can be estimated at 22-25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent.

Proposed origin	No. of word roots	Period	Examples
Nostratic (hypothetical)	130?	15 000 – 10 000 BC	m(in)a 'I', s(in)a 'thou', vesi 'water', tabama 'to catch, seize, capture, hit', arbuma 'to magic, charm', puur 'auger', poeg 'son', päkk 'ball of the foot', keel 'tongue', pelgama 'to be afraid, fear', süva 'deep-seated, profound', vedama 'to pull, draw, drag, carry, drive', üks 'one'
Uralic	120	5000-4000 BC	ala 'under, sub', üla 'upper, top', esi 'front', taga 'behind'; see 'this, it', too 'that', kes 'who', mis 'what', ei 'no'; minema 'to go', tulema 'to come', tundma 'to feel', ujuma 'to swim', pelgama 'to be afraid, fear', kaduma 'to disappear', mõskma; puu, kuusk, kõiv, murakas, suvi, päev, kaja, kuu, lumi, soo, juga, kala, küü, sisalik; keel, kõrv, luu, maks, põlv, põsk, silm, muna, neelama, pala, sulg, kõrv; tuli, süsi, suusk, nool, sõudma, punuma, vask, vöö; elama, koolma, vägi, nimi, sala, naine; kaks, viis
Finno-Ugric	270	4000 -3000 BC	aju, üdi, hing, pea, pii, sapp, vats; aru, jää, koit, voor, paju, pihl, kask, mari, pohl, kamar, rebane, nugis, siil, utt, hiir, püü, mõtus, vares, pääsuke, säga, säinas, särg, täi, kusilane, koi; koda, küla; põlema, küdema, pada, leem, või, väits, vestma, sau; sõba; kolm, neli, kuus; nõid, ise, ilm; talv, sügis, iga; isa, poeg, küdi, kond; valge, hahk, uus, sepp
Finno-Permic	50-140	2500 -1500 BC	kõht; kõri; säär; koobas, põrm, sõnnik; peda(jas), kuslapuu, oks, pähkel, kiud, peni, orav, kotkas; rehi, kuduma, amb, mõla, õng; äi, äike; parem, vana; lõuna; meel
Finno-Volgaic	100-150	1500 -1000 BC	selg, koon, käpp, vaim; kevad, täht, järv, haab, saar, tamm, vaher, sarapuu, õlg, lehm, siga, pett, jahvatama, kurg, kurvits, parm, sääsk; keema, hiilgama, käis, piir; vene; lell; jumal; aher, jahe, kõva, süva; kargama, pesema, püsima, lüpsma
Finno-Lappic	130 - 150	1000 – 500 BC	vihm, sammal, org, vili, põõsas, põud, õnn, veli, ime, luule, taga, tõsi, nälg, küll
Baltic-Finnic	600 - 800	500 BC – 800 AD	põder, oja, udu, hobu, mänd; kõne, sõna; aeg, eile; laps, rahvas, linn; nuga, king; julge
Estonian and unknown	appr. 1000		räni, roie, salk, videvik, jäärak, ila, aas, lubi, lõhn, kaan, kesv, ürp + numerous onomatopoetic-descriptive words
Artificial	50-60		veenma, roim, laip, kolp, relv, ese, süüme, mõrv, ulm, siiras, range, sulnis, nõme, taunima, naasma, reetma, embama; eirama, eramu, etlema, kõlar, külmik, meetmed, meene, siirdama, teave, teismeline, teler, üllitis, ärandama, levima, süva(muusika), taies, rula
Proto-European loans (hypothetical)	appr. 50	5000 – 3000 BC	higi, huul, koib, kõrv, kube, külg, liha, lõug, nahk, rind, selg; mägi, mets, neem, nõmm, oja, org, saar, soo; ahven, haug, koger, koha, rääbis, siig, vimb; jänes, konn; helmes
Indo-European and Indo-Iranic loans	20 - 45	3000 – 1000 BC	mesi, sool, osa, sada, põrsas, varss, sarv, puhas, vasar
Proto-Baltic and Baltic loans	100 - 150	1500 – 500 BC	hammas, hani, hein, hernes, hõim, oinas, puder, põrgu, ratas, seeme, sein, mets, luht, sõber, tuhat, vagu, regi, vill, veel, kael, kirves, laisk
Proto-Germanic and Germanic loans	380	2000 BC – 13th century	agan, ader, humal, kana, kaer, rukis, lammas, leib, põld; aer, mõrd, laev, noot, puri; : kuld, raud, tina; sukk, katel, küünal, taigen; kuningas, laen, luna, raha, rikas, vald; kalju, kallas, rand; armas, taud, kaunis, ja
Old Slavic loans	50-75	10th – 13th century	aken, sahk, sirp, turg, teng(elpung), pagan, papp, raamat, rist, kasukas
Proto-Latvian loans	40	6th- 7th century	kanep, lääts, magun, udras, kõuts, palakas, lupard, harima, kukkel, vanik, laabuma, kauss, mulk, pastel
Low Saxon loans	750	12th – 16th century	kool, neer, ribi; kruus, torm; kõrvits, peet, salat, petersell, münt, köömen, loorber, palm, tamm, roos, ploom; hunt, köök, kruubid, kringel, pannkook, pekk, prantssai, sült, vorst, õli, tärklis, pruukost, kruus, pann, pütt, korv, lähker, toober, tiik, tuli, lamp, lühter; käärid, teljed, vokk, lõuend, samet, siid, vilt, kuub, kört, loor, müts, muda, mantel, püksid, vammus, nööp; hoov, häärber, kelder, kemmerg, korsten, ruum, saal, tall, haamer, hing, höövel, kellu, kapp, pink, tool, trepp, vall, võlv; jaht, jääger, kants, kütt, laager, lahing, piir, püss, poiss, tääk, vaht; altar, ingel, jünger, psalm, prohvet, salm, preester, troost, pihtima, vöörmünder, piiskop, sant; preili, memm, mats, härra, proua, kelm, narr, naaber, kuller, laat, selts, krahv, saks, arst, plaaster; hangeldama, küürima, tingima, kortel, matt, toll, vaagima, viht, üür, paar, piik, tosin, veerand; näärid, reede, tund, vastlad; ankur, kiil, tüür, praam, madrus, pootsman, kotermann, loots, kipper; kaart, kool, kunst, maaler, maalima, paber, trükkima, uurima, trumm, tantsima, piip, vilepill, pasun; just, topelt, väärt
Swedish loans	140	13th – 17th century	kratt, kroonu, kuunar, julla, pagar, näkk, plasku, plika, solk, tasku, räim, tünder, moor, puldan, tont
Russian loans	350	14th – 20th century	kapsas, tatar, puravik, riisikas, sihvka, kiisu, suslik, kulu, prussakas, tarakan, naarits, soobel, uss; noos, moiva, vobla, mutt; kamorka, putka, sara, lobudik, trahter, koiku, nari, pruss, tökat; hõlst, kamass, kirsa, kombinesoon, kott, puhvaika, marli, pintsak, retuusid, trussikud; kiisel, pontšik, rosolje, rupskid, borš, uhhaa, morss, samagon; batoon, kissell, plombiir, povidlo, šašlõkk, uhhaa; plotski, mahorka, pabeross; mannerg, kopsik; nuut, kantsik, piits, tupik, relss, jaam; kabi, knopka; kasakas, kasarmu, karauul, katelok, kiiver, munder, nekrut, pagun, polk, ranits, sinel, tentsik, utsitama, timukas, rajoon, türm, pops, artell; palakas, haltuura, parseldama, parisnik, siva, tolk, tots, pujään, kitt, tuur, ladna, prosta, sutike; kaanima, kostitama, kruttima, kupeldama
(High) German loans	500	16th – 20th century	larhv, lokk, seitel; kastan, pappel, kirss, jasmiin, jorjen, kartul, tulp, vihk; ahv, auster, kalkun, siisike, miisu, mops, taks, kits, vau, viidikas, nepp, pistrik; klimp, klops, kotlet, kompvek, supp, tort, viiner, soust, vahvel, vürts, vein; jope, kittel, kampsun, kleit, vest, lips, värvel, sall, pluus; kamin, pliit, käär(kamber), sahver, latter, kabel, palat; pult, sohva, leen, kummut, kardin, sahtel; uur, klade, klamber, latern, sihverplaat, silt; opman, oober, tisler, tudeng, velsker, virtin, antvärk, aadlik, kärner, kilter, kutsar, lärm, oksjon, krempel, klatš; krehvtine, hull, liiderlik, napp, noobel, ontlik, plass, tumm, trammis; kleepima, klantsima, mehkeldama, sehkendama, rehkendama, trimpama, pummeldama, praalima, turnima; ahoi, proosit, hurraa, hopp, hallo
Finnish loans	90	19th – 20th century	aare, sangar, harras, jenka, julm, jäik, sünge, tehas, uljas, vaist, vihjama, säilima, kuvama, haihtuma, anastama
Hebrew loans	< 5		jaana(lind), tohuvabohu
Roma loans	<5		manguma

Language example

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian:

Kõik inimesed sünnivad vabadena ja võrdsetena oma väärikuselt ja õigustelt. Neile on antud mõistus ja südametunnistus ja nende suhtumist üksteisesse peab kandma vendluse vaim.

References

Mati Hint. Häälikutest sõnadeni. Valgus 1978, Tallinn.

External links

Estonica.org article
Estonian literary magazine
Maps of dialect areas from the Institute of the Estonian Language
Learn and listen to useful expressions in Estonian
Finnish and Estonian language with Japanese translation

Dictionaries

Agglutinative languages | Estonian language | Finno-Ugric languages | Languages of Finland | Languages of Estonia

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