Estonian language - Wikipedia

Estonian language - Wikipedia
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Finnic language
Estonian
eesti keel
Pronunciation
[ˈeːsʲti
ˈkeːl]
Native to
Estonia
Region
Northern Europe
Ethnicity
Estonians
Native speakers
1.2 million (2022)
Language family
Uralic
Finnic
Southern Finnic
Estonian
Dialects
North (Standard) Estonian
Northeastern coastal Estonian
South Estonian
Writing system
Latin
Estonian alphabet
Estonian Braille
Official status
Official language in
Estonia
European Union
Regulated by
Institute of the Estonian Language
Eesti Keele Instituut
Language codes
ISO 639-1
et
ISO 639-2
est
ISO 639-3
est
– inclusive code
Individual code:
ekk
– (Northern/Standard) Estonian
Glottolog
esto1258
Linguasphere
41-AAA-d
Estonian is official in Estonia (dark green) and in the
European Union
(light green)
This article contains
IPA
phonetic symbols.
Without proper
rendering support
, you may see
question marks, boxes, or other symbols
instead of
Unicode
characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see
Help:IPA
Estonian
eesti keel
[ˈeːsʲti
ˈkeːl]
) is a
Finnic language
and the official language of
Estonia
. It is written in the
Latin script
and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the
European Union
. Estonian is spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 elsewhere.
Classification
edit
Estonian belongs to the
Finnic
(a.k.a. Baltic Finnic) branch of the
Uralic
(a.k.a. Uralian, or
Finno-Ugric
language family
. Other Finnic languages include
Finnish
and several
endangered languages
spoken around the
Baltic Sea
and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages.
Alongside Finnish,
Hungarian
and
Maltese
, Estonian is one of the only four (out of 24)
official languages of the European Union
that are not
Indo-European languages
In terms of
linguistic morphology
, Estonian is a predominantly
agglutinative language
. The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more
fusional
, especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection.
The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system.
Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is
subject–verb–object
History
edit
The speakers of the two major historical languages spoken in Estonia, North and
South Estonian
, are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernacular.
Some linguists have classified South Estonian as another, separate Finnic language, rather than a variety of Estonian. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries based on the dialects of northern Estonia.
During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from
Germanic languages
, mainly from
Middle Low German
(Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant
Reformation
, from the
Standard German
language.
Estonian Grammar
by
Heinrich Stahl
, published in
Tallinn
(Reval) in 1637
In 1857, editor
Johann Voldemar Jannsen
of the first Estonian-language
weekly newspaper
Perno Postimees
welcomed readers with
"Terre, armas Eesti rahwas!"
("Hello, dear Estonian people!")
According to the
1897 census
96.1% of the native Estonian-speaking population (age 10 and older, roughly equally for males and females) was
literate
Geographic distribution of Estonian in the Russian Empire according to the
1897 census
Oldest written records of Estonian language date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in the
Livonian Chronicle of Henry
contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences.
Estonian literature
edit
Main article:
Estonian literature
The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian have been found in the
Kullamaa Manuscript
("Kullamaa prayers") dating from 1524 and 1528.
In 1525, the first Estonian language book was printed. It contained a religious
Lutheran
text which, however, never reached its intended readers, as it was immediately censored and all printed copies were destroyed.
The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the
Lutheran catechism
by S.
Wanradt and J.
Koell dating to 1535, during the
Protestant Reformation
period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637.
10
The
New Testament
was translated into the variety of South Estonian called
Võro
in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on Northern Estonian by
Anton thor Helle
Writings in Estonian became more significant in the 19th century during the
Estophile Enlightenment Period
(1750–1840).
The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by
Kristjan Jaak Peterson
were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-language
University of Dorpat
, is commonly regarded as a herald of
Estonian national literature
and considered the founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in
Estonia
as
Mother Tongue
Day.
11
A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language:
Kas siis selle maa keel
Laulutuules ei või
Taevani tõustes üles
Igavikku omale otsida?
In English:
Can the language of this land
In the wind of incantation
Rising up to the heavens
Not seek for eternity?
Kristjan Jaak Peterson
In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published.
12
In modern times
A. H. Tammsaare
Jaan Kross
13
and
Andrus Kivirähk
are Estonia's best-known and most translated writers.
Estonians lead the world in book ownership, owning on average 218 books per house, and 35% of Estonians owning 350 books or more (as of 2018).
14
Official language
edit
Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the
Age of Enlightenment
, during the
Estophile Enlightenment Period
(1750–1840). Although
Baltic Germans
at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves, the Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century.
15
When the
Republic of Estonia
was established in 1918, Estonian became the
official language
of the newly independent country. Immediately after
World War II
, in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians
and spoke the language.
When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of Estonian effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one).
16
Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement.
In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of Estonian by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities.
In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's
independence
, Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia.
17
When Estonia joined the EU in 2004, Estonian became one of its now 24
official languages
The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at the end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first- and second-generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted Estonian (over 50% as of the 2022 census).
Dialects
edit
North Estonian dialects at the beginning of the 20th century
18
19
South Estonian dialects at the beginning of the 20th century
18
19
Road sign in Estonian and Võro
An 1885 ABC-book in
Võro
written by Johann Hurt: "Wastne Võro keeli ABD raamat"
The Estonian dialects
20
21
are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of
Tallinn
in the north and
Tartu
in the south, in addition to a distinct
kirderanniku
dialect,
Northeastern coastal Estonian
The northern group consists of the
keskmurre
or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the
läänemurre
or western dialect, roughly corresponding to
Lääne County
and
Pärnu County
, the
saarte murre
(islands' dialect) of
Saaremaa
Hiiumaa
Muhu
and
Kihnu
, and the
idamurre
or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of
Lake Peipus
One of the pronunciation features of the Saaremaa dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-metre monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact.
22
South Estonian
consists of the
Tartu
Mulgi
Võro
and
Seto
varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether.
23
Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession.
24
Writing system
edit
Main article:
Estonian orthography
Alphabet
edit
Estonian employs the
Latin script
as the basis for
its alphabet
. The script adds the letters
, and
, plus the later additions
and
. The letters
and
are limited to
proper names
of foreign origin, and
, and
appear in loanwords and foreign names only.
and
are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish,
is pronounced [æ], as in English
mat
. The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate
phonemes
and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter
denotes
/ɤ/
, unrounded
/o/
, or a
close-mid back unrounded vowel
. It is almost identical to the
Bulgarian
/ɤ̞/
and the
Vietnamese
, and is also used to transcribe the Russian
Additionally
, and
are used in writing foreign
proper names
. They do not occur in
Estonian words
, and are not officially part of the alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:
Letter
IPA
Name
Notes
Letter
IPA
Name
Notes
[ɑ]
aa
[ɑːː]
kuu
[kuːː]
[b]
bee
[beːː]
[r]
err
[erːː]
or
ärr
[ærːː]
tsee
[tseːː]
[s]
ess
[esːː]
[d]
dee
[deːː]
[ʃ]
or
[ʃː]
šaa
[ʃɑːː]
[e]
ee
[eːː]
[s]
zett
[setːː]
[f]
or
[fː]
eff
[efːː]
[ʃ]
žee
[ʃeːː]
[ɡ]
gee
[ɡeːː]
[t]
or
[tː]
tee
[teːː]
[h]
haa
[hɑːː]
[u]
uu
[uːː]
[i]
ii
[iːː]
[v]
vee
[veːː]
[j]
jott
[jotʲːː]
kaksisvee
[kɑk.sisˈveːː]
[k]
or
[kː]
kaa
[kɑːː]
[ɤ]
õõ
[ɤːː]
[l]
ell
[elːː]
[æ]
ää
[æːː]
[m]
emm
[emːː]
[ø]
öö
[øːː]
[n]
enn
[enːː]
[y]
üü
[yːː]
[o]
oo
[oːː]
iks
[iksː]
[p]
or
[pː]
pee
[peːː]
igrek
[ˈiɡ.rek]
or
üpsilon
[ˈyp.si.lon]
Not officially part of the alphabet; only used in foreign proper names and citations, pronounced according to their source language. Occasionally,
is used instead of
in Estonian surnames (e. g.
Wõrk
), as a remnant of older spelling.
Only used in loanwords.
Orthography
edit
Although the Estonian
orthography
is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each
grapheme
corresponding to one
phoneme
, there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example 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'.
clarification needed
Where it is very impractical or impossible to type
and
, they are replaced by
sh
and
zh
in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the
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 Low German
orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into the 1930s.
Phonology
edit
A sample of Estonian spoken natively
This article
should include a summary of
Estonian phonology
See
Wikipedia:Summary style
for information on how to incorporate it into this article's main text.
March 2015
Main article:
Estonian phonology
Vowels
edit
There are 9 vowels and 36
diphthongs
, 28 of which are native to the Estonian language.
[1]
All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be
close-mid back
close back
, or
close-mid central
Monophthongs of Estonian
25
Front
Back
unrounded
rounded
unrounded
rounded
Close
Mid
Open
Consonants
edit
Consonant phonemes of Estonian
25
Labial
Alveolar
Post-
alveolar
Velar
palatal
Glottal
plain
palatalized
Nasal
nʲ
Plosive
short
tʲ
geminated
pː
tː
tʲː
kː
Fricative
voiced
voiceless short
sʲ
geminated
fː
sː
sʲː
ʃː
hː
Approximant
lʲ
Trill
Word-initial
b, d, g
occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with
p, t, k
instead of etymological
b, d, g
pank
'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally,
b, d, g
represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants),
p, t, k
represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and
pp, tt, kk
represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example:
kabi
/kɑpi/ 'hoof' —
kapi
/kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [
gen
sg
] —
kappi
/kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [
ptv
sg
]'.
Before and after
b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž
, the sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as
p, t, k
, with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology.
Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated.
] is an allophone of /n/ before /k/.
While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of
vowel harmony
, central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts.
26
Grammar
edit
Main article:
Estonian grammar
Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an
agglutinating language
to a
fusional language
. The canonical word order is
SVO
(subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists.
27
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 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
kollane maja
("a yellow house") is
kollasesse majja
("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is
kollase majani
("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to the
Proto-Finnic language
, elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf.
maja – majja
and the
Ostrobothnia dialect
of Finnish
maja – majahan
The verbal system has no distinct future tense
28
(the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined
subject
(the "impersonal").
Vocabulary
edit
Main article:
Estonian vocabulary
Although Estonian and the
Germanic languages
have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family,
one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because Estonian has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon (
Middle Low German
) during the period of
German rule
, and
High German
(including
standard German
). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent.
29
Prior to the wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent.
30
In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'.
Ex nihilo
lexical enrichment
edit
Estonian
language planners
such as
Ado Grenzstein
(a journalist active in Estonia from the 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation
ex nihilo
Urschöpfung
);
31
i.e. they created new words out of nothing.
The most well-known reformer of Estonian,
Johannes Aavik
(1880–1973), used creations
ex nihilo
(cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf.
Saareste
and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of the 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly
ex nihilo
are in common use today. Examples are
ese
'object',
kolp
'skull',
liibuma
'to cling',
naasma
'to return, come back',
nõme
'stupid, dull'.
31
32
Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted
ex nihilo
could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from
Russian
German
French
Finnish
and
Swedish
. Aavik had a broad classical education and knew
Ancient Greek
Latin
and
French
. Consider
roim
'crime' versus
crime
or
taunima
'to condemn, disapprove' versus
Finnish
tuomita
'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item.
33
Example text
edit
Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
in Estonian and English:
Kõik inimesed sünnivad vabadena ja võrdsetena oma väärikuselt ja õigustelt. Neile on antud mõistus ja südametunnistus ja nende suhtumist üksteisesse peab kandma vendluse vaim.
34
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
35
See also
edit
The BABEL Speech Corpus
References
edit
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at
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(25th ed., 2022)
(Northern/Standard) Estonian
at
Ethnologue
(25th ed., 2022)
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26 September
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15 October
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ISBN
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– via Tartu University's Estonian Dialect Corpus.
see
Tartu University's Estonian Dialect Corpus website
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– via Siksali.
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:367)
Prillop, Külli et al. 2020.
Eesti keele ajalugu
. Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus. p. 133.
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on 2007-07-21.
"Eesti keele käsiraamat 2007"
Eesti Keele Instituut
(in Estonian)
. Retrieved
2020-09-30
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad
(2003).
Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew
. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.
149
ISBN
978-1-4039-1723-2
"Eesti entsüklopeedia"
[Aavik, Johannes] (in Estonian).
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003).
Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew
. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.
150
ISBN
978-1-4039-1723-2
Estonian Human Rights Institute, Estonia.
"Universal Declaration of Human Rights – Estonian (Eesti)"
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
. Retrieved
13 September
2021
"Universal Declaration of Human Rights"
un.org
Further reading
edit
Asu, Eva Liina; Teras, Pire (2009).
"Estonian"
Journal of the International Phonetic Association
39
(3):
367–
372.
doi
10.1017/s002510030999017x
Ross, Jaan; Lehiste, Ilse (2001).
The Temporal Structure of Estonian Runic Songs
. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
ISBN
3-11-017032-9
Soosaar, Sven-Erik (2013).
"The Origins of Stems of Standard Estonian – a Statistical Overview"
TRAMES: A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences
17
(3):
273–
300.
doi
10.3176/tr.2013.3.04
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