The Estonia Page > CultureEstonian LanguageContents: SpeakersEstonian is not a widely spoken language, as regards the number of speakers who use it as their mother tongue. At present the number is somewhat fewer than one million. Estonian is the official language of the Republic of Estonia. It is used in all spheres of life including higher education and science. Compared to other European languages, Estonian is one of the smallest in respect of the number of its speakers. However, if we take into account that 95% of languages (from around 4500 languages spoken in the world today) have less than 100 000 speakers, Estonian is a relatively widely spoken language. Unlike most European languages such as Russian, German, French, English and many others, Estonian does not belong to the Indo-European family of languages, but is a Finno-Ugric language (the members of one language family have evolved from one single parent language, and have therefore a number of word roots and structural properties common). The Finno-Ugric language family includes about a dozen languages spoken in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Russia and Siberia. The largest Finno-Ugric languages are Hungarian (14 million speakers), Finnish (5 million speakers), Estonian and Mordvin (both around 900 000 speakers). The distribution of Finno-Ugric languages is shown on the map above. Note that Estonian is not related to the other two languages spoken in Baltic countries — Latvian and Lithuanian — which belong to the Indo-European family, being thus related to Slavonic, Germanic and Romance languages. Opinions on Estonian LanguageEvery language has its own melody, every language is in fact itself music. In a strange way, the music of Estonian is at the same time exoticism and intimacy, mysterious song and motherly whisper, inexplicable longing for a remote and unknown country and tender voice of a lost childhood. It's music which, heard for the first time, feels as if it hasn't in fact never been forgotten. Fulvio Meguschar (Italy)
Estonian language sounds very nice and comfortable. Even if people say the same thing in Estonian and English, the Estonian phrase sounds softer than the English one. I think that if some man said something sweet to me in Estonian, I would immediately fall in love with him. Kozue Kuriyama (Japan)
The first time I heard Estonian spoken was, naturally enough, in Estonia, and I think I was almost instantly aware that I was encountering a language unlike any I already knew and that I was quite unequipped to deal with it. My second distinct impression was that Estonians seemed to breathe a lot, and to use no part of the body below the chin when speaking — my training as a language teacher told me that this indicated a highly aspirated language, and that body language would probably be my first and easiest new language acquisition! Miriam McIlfatrick (Ireland) ^ back to topHistoryThe first recorded mention of Estonians occurs in the travel notes of the Roman explorer Tacitus from 1st century A.D. He mentions a people called the Aesti living on the Baltic littoral from whom the Estonians derive their name. The first words written in the Estonian language occur in an extant chronicle written in 13th century by a missionary who followed German knights in their crusade to Estonia. From the time of the German conquest until the beginning of the 20th century Estonian has been under the influence of several languages — Low and High German, Swedish and Russian — depending on who happened to dominate Estonia politically and economically. During this period Estonian borrowed a large amount of its vocabulary from these languages. It is estimated that as much as three quarters of Estonian word stems are of foreign origin. However, this is hardly unusual for a language: even English has borrowed more than half of its vocabulary from other languages such as Latin, French and Danish. The 17th century German clergymen and scholars were also the first to write Estonian grammars and to translate Biblical texts into Estonian. They also worked out the first systematic orthography for Estonian. This was based on German spelling and was used until late 19th century when it was replaced by a new system which has been in use ever since. The translation of Bible took more than a half of a century and was completed in 1739 by a pastor, Anton Thor Helle. This translation was a turning point in the formation of the Estonian literary language. It became a force uniting the two main dialects of Estonian to become the single literary language, which helped to create a new all-Estonian identity so important for the formation of a nation. Since the national awakening in the mid-19th century, Estonian started to be used more extensively in literature. It became the language of culture. This inevitably necessitated its refinement and purification from foreign influences. This work started in the beginning of 20th century in a language renewal campaign launched by a linguist Johannes Aavik (more information can be found on p.7). When Estonia became independent in 1918, Estonian language started to be used in all spheres of public life including the army and navy, higher education and public administration. A long-lasting elaboration of terminology was started in all fields where Estonian was needed to serve as the means of communication. In the forefront of this work was Johannes Voldemar Veski — author of many dictionaries. During the Soviet period, the language remained one of the most powerful tokens of Estonian identity. Neither the scientific study of Estonian, nor the use of Estonian in most of the spheres of public life including higher education, were prohibited by the Soviet authorities, and this enabled Estonians and their language to survive both Russification and colonialisation. Since 1988 Estonian is again the official language in Estonia. ^ back to topStructureStructurally, Estonian is quite different from the Indo-European languages. One of the most apparent differences is that Estonian nouns can take fourteen different cases. For comparison, Russian has six cases, German four, and English only two. This, however, does not mean that Estonian is a much harder language to learn: the same meanings which in Estonian are expressed by different case endings, are expressed by prepositions in English and many other languages. Languages have complexities in different parts of their grammar, but the average complexity is more or less the same. Another vivid difference of Estonian compared to Indo-European languages is its lack of grammatical gender. Estonian even does not differentiate between natural gender in its use of personal pronouns — there is only one form which is used both for women, men and sometimes even for things. This is why Estonians do not share the Indo-Europeans' obsession of how to use pronouns in a politically correct way. There are also some interesting structural features in the Estonian syntax. First, Estonian uses mostly postpositions. This means that instead of saying under the table, Estonians say the table under. This feature is common to all Finno-Ugric languages, whereas Indo-European languages use prepositions, The other major difference is that Estonian has a comparatively free word order: the words in a sentence can be fairly easily rearranged without the sentence becoming ungrammatical. In English, this would be almost impossible. The reason for this difference is that in Estonian, grammatical relations between words are signalled by case endings, but in English, which has no such endings, by the relative position of words. If grammatical relations are signalled by suffixes, the position of words in the sentence is not important, but if there are no case endings available, the only means of indicating these relations is word order. This is why English has a rigid word order, but Estonian a free one. Estonian sentences have relatively free word order Besides the dominant word order, as in the following sentence:
there may be as many as 32 modifications which still have the same meaning and are easily
comprehended:
Estonian cases:
^ back to topThe evolution of the Finno-Ugric language familyThe ancestor of the modern Finno-Ugric languages, the so-called Proto Finno-Ugric was spoken about 5000 years ago on the western side of the Ural mountains. First to leave the common home were the predecessors of the Hungarians. After three thousand years of migration through the steppe they finally arrived at their present home in Hungary. Because of this early separation of Hungarian from the rest of the Finno-Ugric languages, Estonian and Hungarian are not mutually intelligible. The other Finno-Ugric tribes migrated slowly westwards up to the coast of the Baltic Sea and to the Scandi-navian Peninsula. There is evidence that before the arrival of Slavonic tribes to their present territory in Russia, a sprinkling of Finno-Ugrians inhabited the whole territory from the Urals to the Baltic Sea. The relative separateness of Finno-Ugric tribes also led to the different evolution of their common language. As a consequence, several smaller sub-families emerged which further evolved to become the modern Finno-Ugric languages. The separation of Estonian and Finnish into different languages began in the first centuries A.D. Despite the more than a thousand years of different evolution, Estonian and Finnish are still quite closely related, being almost mutually intelligible. It is interesting to note that the speakers of Proto Finno-Ugric are believed to have been genetically related to the Mongolitic race, whereas the modern Estonians (as well as Finns) are genetically closer to Baltic people (Latvians and Lithuanians) and Scandinavians. This change has happened due to extensive contacts and intermarriages with Indo-European tribes. ^ back to topJohannes Aavik's language renewalThough many societies take care of their language by looking after linguistic norms and the creation of terminology, most of them have not tried to induce more complex changes to its structure. Extensive language reforms are rare and even more seldom have they been successful. Considering the number of changes induced during the Estonian language renewal campaign, and their complexity, Aavik's achievement is quite unique in the world. The language renewal started in 1905 as an answer to the demand of the young radical Estonian intelligentsia for greater expressive means in language, and it showed signs of growth until the mid-twenties. Having numerous supporters amongst writers and other intellectuals, Aavik's reform was very popular in Estonia. During the reform, Aavik (and others) proposed a number of innovations concerning orthography, vocabulary, phonology, morphology and syntax. Very many of them, some quite radical, were successful and are in everyday usage today. For example, more than 800 new words purposely borrowed during the reform have come into usage. Aavik himself artificially created many new words, about 16 of which are now in everyday usage. In morphology, Aavik introduced a number of new means of expressing different grammatical meanings. Some of them were utterly artificial, some borrowed from Estonian dialects. One of the most remarkable changes induced during the reform was the change of Estonian word order which in the beginning of the century was identical to the word order of German. Within 20 years the German word order was almost completely replaced. Useful links:
^ back to topThe Estonia Page > CultureThis fact sheet is published by the Estonian Institute and is intended to be used for reference purposes. It may be freely used in preparing articles, speeches, broadcasts, etc. No acknowledgement is necessary. |
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