This week's language of the week: Estonian!
Overview
Estonian is one of the rare European languages that are not Indo-European. Estonian is a Uralic language, in the Finnic branch. It is spoken in Estonia by about 1.1 to 1.3 million people, most of them natively. It is the official language of Estonia and therefore one of the official languages of the European Union.
History
Estonian has a long history like many others. It is not fully clear how it came about but it seems that it is mostly a combination of different Baltic Sea Finnic languages that were around. These formed over time the Northern and Southern Estonian languages. But it is important to point out that nobody is fully sure what tribal languages influenced which. We do know that these tribes migrated to the region in multiple waves so it took a while. Northern Estonian later developed into the Estonian language of today, though some southern elements remain and there is a specific dialect as well. Võro is a still existing dialect that is spoken in the most Southern part of Estonia.
Estonians did not develop writing in time so the first records we have were from the Chronicles of Henry of Livonia who accompanied the Germanic knights in conquering the lands. This time is also thought to be the era of biggest developments in the language. Still, there was no writing as the locals were subjugated to serfdom and German was the main language (along with Latin). When the land was conquered by the post-reformation Swedes in the 16th century, this triggered more focus on the language and the first proper language examples in writing are also from that era. During the Swedish era, the two Estonian languages were also brought together and literature started developing.
Proper language development into a modern language with literature, authors and ideas was during the 18th-19th century when Estonians started focusing on identity and possible independence. Language has continued to develop during the 20th century as it has moved away from the Germanic writing style and incorporated more international elements.
Phonology and orthography
Estonian uses the Latin alphabet but with some additions, mostly umlauts of varying kinds.
Estonian has nine different vowels and a complicated set of diphthongs, 28 are native Estonian. The vowel sounds a, e, i, o, u, ö and ü are similar mostly to their Swedish or German counterparts. Ä is similar to Swedish ä. All umlauts are separate phonemes. There is also the letter õ which denotes /ɤ/, unrounded /o/. Most similar is the Russian ы.
Consonants are typical Latin letters with some additions and this is where some of the confusion happens. Estonian uses multiple alphabet lists, one fully local, one foreign and sometimes one in between. Letters like c, q, w, x and y are only in proper names of foreign origin. Letters like f, z, š and ž are in loanwords and foreign names. These are considered to be foreign letters. The umlaut consonants are mostly due to Russian influence as Russian utilizes so many similar ones.
Estonian orthography is phonemically based, graphemes and phonemes matching. There are some exceptions to that, the bdg-kpt pronunciation is often misleading. Sometimes š and ž are replaced by sh and zh if needed but that would be incorrect.
A speaking example (a very casual interview from the news)
Grammar
No sex-no future!
Nouns
Estonian nouns do not have grammatical gender and also have no articles. But on the other hand, they decline in 14 cases! This includes the usual (nominative, genitive, partitive) but also six different locative cases (interior and exterior) and five other (translative, terminative, essive, abessive, comitative). Each case comes in both singular and plural and affects both nouns and adjectives. Cases usually present in suffixes but sometimes also change the core of the word (nom: uks (door), gen: ukse, par: ust). There are of course rules to the core word changes but there are over 100 word types so mastering all the cases is difficult.
Pronouns
Like nouns, Estonian pronouns have no gender. He and she are both tema (or ta for short). There is no indication of gender anywhere else in the pronounce either.
There are six personal pronouns, each also declining. There are also reflective, demonstrative, interrogative, existential, free choice and universal pronouns, each also declining.
Verbs
Verbs have multiple moods and voices but to make it simple, let’s focus on the basics.
Estonian verbs conjugate in 6 persons (i, you singular, he/she, we, you plural, they) and verbs have a present, past and perfect form. The perfect form does not conjugate. There are multiple infinitives (- da and - ma infinitive) and many other forms. There is no future tense (no sex, no future!).
The verb conjugation is mostly rule-based but there are extreme cases where the whole word changes. The verb minema (to go) is possibly the worst example.
Minema – ma infinitive
Minna – da infinitive
Ma lähen – I go; sa lähed – you go, ta läheb – he/she goes, me läheme – we go, te lähete – you go, nad lähevad – they go.
And then the past: ma läksin, sa läksid, ta läks, me läksime, te läksite, nad läksid
But don’t worry, other ones are not as bad.
More on grammar for those who are interested
Well, this looks difficult...
Yes, Estonian is one of those languages that are difficult to master for the outsider as there is a lot of grammar. I am a native speaker but I study Finnish and now I see the problem. On the upside, Estonians are welcoming when people try to learn their language and there are some simple things as well, word order is very forgiving, no gendered words and the suffixes are doable. And the language is quite pretty (if I do say so myself)
If you want to get started on learning, here is a good link.
Feel free to ask more questions in the comments and if something seems off, let me know!
[link] [comments]
from Aloha | Languagelearning https://ift.tt/2MG3Ahq
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment