Estonian (eesti keel[ˈeːsʲtiˈkeːl]ⓘ) is aFinnic language and the official language ofEstonia. It is written in theLatin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of theEuropean Union. Estonian is spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 elsewhere.[2][3]
Byconventions ofhistorical linguistics, Estonian is classified as a part of theFinnic (a.k.a. Baltic Finnic) branch of theUralic (a.k.a. Uralian, orFinno-Ugric)[4]language family. Other Finnic languages includeFinnish and severalendangered languages spoken around theBaltic 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.
In terms oflinguistic morphology, Estonian is a predominantlyagglutinative language. The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly morefusional, especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection.[5] 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.[6]
Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order issubject–verb–object.
The speakers of the two major historical languages spoken in Estonia, North andSouth 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.[7] 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.
Estonian Grammar byHeinrich Stahl, published inTallinn (Reval) in 1637In 1857, the first Estonian weekly newspaperPerno Postimees welcomed readers with"Terre, armas Eesti rahwas!" ("Hello, dear Estonian people!")According to the1897 census 96.1% of the native Estonian-speaking population (age 10 and older, roughly equally for males and females) wasliterate.Geographic distribution of Estonian in the Russian Empire according to the1897 census
Oldest written records of Estonian language date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in theLivonian Chronicle of Henry contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences.
The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian have been found in theKullamaa Manuscript ("Kullamaa prayers") dating from 1524 and 1528.[8] In 1525, the first Estonian language book was printed. It contained a religiousLutheran 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 theLutheran catechism by S.Wanradt and J.Koell dating to 1535, during theProtestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637.[9] TheNew Testament was translated into the variety of South Estonian calledVõro in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on Northern Estonian byAnton thor Helle.
The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems byKristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-languageUniversity of Dorpat, is commonly regarded as a herald ofEstonian national literature and considered the founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated inEstonia asMother Tongue Day.[10] 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.[11]
Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of theAge of Enlightenment, during theEstophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). AlthoughBaltic 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.[14]
When theRepublic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became theofficial language of the newly independent country. Immediately afterWorld War II, in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians[7] 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).[15] Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement.[7] 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.[7]In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia'sindependence, Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia.[16] Since 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, Estonian is also one of the (now 24)official languages of the EU.
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).[7]
North Estonian dialects at the beginning of the 20th century[17][18]South Estonian dialects at the beginning of the 20th century[17][18]Road sign in Estonian and VõroAn 1885 ABC-book inVõro written by Johann Hurt: "Wastne Võro keeli ABD raamat"
The Estonian dialects[19][20] are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities ofTallinn in the north andTartu in the south, in addition to a distinctkirderanniku dialect,Northeastern coastal Estonian.
The northern group consists of thekeskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, theläänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding toLääne County andPärnu County, thesaarte murre (islands' dialect) ofSaaremaa,Hiiumaa,Muhu andKihnu, and theidamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore ofLake 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.[21]
South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi,Võro andSeto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether.[22] Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession.[7][23]
Estonian employs theLatin script as the basis forits alphabet. The script adds the lettersä,ö,ü, andõ, plus the later additionsš andž. The lettersc,q,w,x andy are limited toproper names of foreign origin, andf,z,š, andž appear in loanwords and foreign names only.Ö andÜ are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish,Ä is pronounced [æ], as in Englishmat. The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separatephonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letterõ denotes/ɤ/, unrounded/o/, or aclose-mid back unrounded vowel. It is almost identical to theBulgarianъ/ɤ̞/ and theVietnameseơ, and is also used to transcribe the Russianы.AdditionallyC,Q,W,X, andY are used in writing foreignproper names. They do not occur inEstonian words, and are not officially part of the alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:
^abcdeNot officially part of the alphabet; only used in foreign proper names and citations, pronounced according to their source language. Occasionally,w is used instead ofv in Estonian surnames (e. g.Wõrk), as a remnant of older spelling.
Although the Estonianorthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with eachgrapheme corresponding to onephoneme, there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme indeclension 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 typeš andž, they are replaced bysh andzh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, theh insh represents avoiceless glottal fricative, as inPasha (pas-ha); this also applies to some foreign names.
Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created byEduard Ahrens in the second half of the 19thcentury based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17thcentury byBengt Gottfried Forselius andJohann Hornung based onstandard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used anad hoc orthography based onLatin andMiddle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into the 1930s.
This articleshould include a summary ofEstonian phonology. SeeWikipedia:Summary style for information on how to incorporate it into this article's main text.(March 2015)
There are 9 vowels and 36diphthongs, 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 beclose-mid back,close back, orclose-mid central.
Word-initialb, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled withp, t, k instead of etymologicalb, 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/, andpp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example:kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' —kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [gensg] —kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ptvsg]'.
Before and afterb, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž, the sounds [p], [t], [k] are written asp, t, k, with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology.
Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated.
While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees ofvowel 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.[25]
Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from anagglutinating language to afusional language. The canonical word order isSVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists.[26]
In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not havegrammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases:nominative,genitive,partitive,illative,inessive,elative,allative,adessive,ablative,translative,terminative,essive,abessive, andcomitative, 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 forkollane maja ("a yellow house") iskollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative iskollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to theProto-Finnic language, elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf.maja – majja and theOstrobothnia dialect of Finnishmaja – majahan.
The verbal system has no distinct future tense[27] (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undeterminedsubject (the "impersonal").
Although Estonian and theGermanic languages have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family,[6] 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 ofGerman rule, andHigh German (includingstandard 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.[28] 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.[29] 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'.
Estonianlanguage planners such asAdo Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from the 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formationex nihilo (Urschöpfung);[30] i.e. they created new words out of nothing.
The most well-known reformer of Estonian,Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creationsex 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 allegedlyex nihilo are in common use today. Examples areese 'object',kolp 'skull',liibuma 'to cling',naasma 'to return, come back',nõme 'stupid, dull'.[30][31]
Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concoctedex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words fromRussian,German,French,Finnish,English andSwedish. Aavik had a broad classical education and knewAncient Greek,Latin andFrench. Considerroim 'crime' versusEnglishcrime ortaunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versusFinnishtuomita '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.[32]
Kõik inimesed sünnivad vabadena ja võrdsetena oma väärikuselt ja õigustelt. Neile on antud mõistus ja südametunnistus ja nende suhtumist üksteisesse peab kandma vendluse vaim.[33]
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.[34]
^Ehala, Martin (2009). "Linguistic Strategies and Markedness in Estonian Morphology".STUF – Language Typology and Universals.62 (1–2):29–48.doi:10.1524/stuf.2009.0003.S2CID121233571.
^abRehm, Georg; Uszkoreit, Hans (2012). "Language Technology Support for Estonian".The Estonian Language in the Digital Age. White Paper Series. Berlin: Springer. pp. 47–64.doi:10.1007/978-3-642-30785-0_9.ISBN978-3-642-30784-3.
^abcdefRannut, Mart (2004)."Language Policy in Estonia".Noves SL.: Revista de sociolingüística (in Spanish) (1–2 (primavera – estiu)): 4.
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