The Language of Estonia: Three Things To Know

By Sarah-Claire Jordan

The Language of Estonia: Three Things To Know

In Estonia, the official language is Estonian. It shares many things with Finnish, as they are both in the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. There are also Swedish and German influences that can be seen in the Estonian language, as well as Russian influences. Most of this is due to proximity to certain countries, but the German influence comes specifically from a time when Middle Low German was the lingua franca of choice. Nowadays, Estonia has a handful of German communities, which means Standard German has also become an influential language in the country.

Knowing which languages have influenced the language is important, but let’s go a little bit more in depth here and look at three of the most interesting things about Estonian:

1. There are several dialects of Estonian

In general, dialects of Estonian are divided up into two main groups: northern and southern. The northern dialect group is linked to the city of Tallinn and includes the central dialect (keskmurre), the island dialects (saarte murre), the western dialect (läänemurre), and eastern dialect (idamurre). Each dialect is linked to a specific city or area of Northern England, or, in the case of the island dialects, to an Estonian island. The southern dialects are Seto, Tartu, Mulgi, and Võro, and are generally linked historically to the city of Tartu in the south. The curious thing about the southern dialects is that some consider them to be more variants of the Estonian language, specifically Southern Estonian, while others treat them as distinct languages.

2. Estonian syllables have three different lengths

This is something that linguists are fascinated by, as this doesn’t occur very often in linguistics. The three lengths are short, long, and “overlong”, and generally aren’t indicated in the written language except in the case of certain types of sounds, like plosives. The “overlong” length appears only with stressed long syllables, which can either remain as they are or manifest this suprasegmental length trait. There are some other rules, however. For example, if a one-syllable word has a long syllable, that will always be an “overlong” syllable. The same goes for a syllable in that follows one in middle of a word that is syncopated.

3. Some Estonian words aren’t based on anything

Besides vocabulary borrowed from Finnish, Russian, German, and a few other languages, some Estonian vocabulary was actually invented ex nihilo, that is, “out of nothing”. Ado Grenzstein and Johannes Aavik, a language planner and language reformer, respectively, were some of the most notable forces behind these “invented” words. They were active from about the 1870s to the 1890s and created many words that today are part of everyday language. These include kolp, naasma, and ese, which mean “skull”, “to return”, and “object”. Some of the words that Aavik created were clearly influenced at least subconsciously by other languages, but they still are considered ex nihilo, as it is nearly impossible to create a word that doesn’t resemble one from another language in some way or another.

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Category: Foreign Language