Talk:Estonian language

message: Ladefoged in SOWL describes Estonian as only having two phonemic lengths for vowels or consonants, with the third length being predictable, though he gives Mixe as an example of a 3-way lexical/phonemic distinction. The refs he mentions are:
*Lehiste, Ilse. 1966. Consonant Quantity and Phonological Units in Estonian. Indiana University, Bloominton. 
*Lehist, Ilse. 1970. Suprasegmentals. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 
kwami 23:40, 2005 August 22 (UTC)
:The killer is that there are minimal pairs, even if it is suprasegmental. It is not an effect of stress, either; the stress is on the first syllable in native words; rather, it may modify the placement of the secondary stress, not vice versa. (A tonal pattern (which is suprasegmental) is observed with the third length level, but this is a secondary cue. For the opposite, consider "standard" English tense-lax distinction, where the length is a secondary cue, and thus English-speakers pronounce kilo as *<keeloh> with incorrect length rather than *<killa> with different vowel quality.) Similarly, you could say that "Swedish does not distinguish vowel length at all". But, Swedish vowel length suprasegmental: a short vowel is always followed by a geminate, and a long vowel by a simple consonant. A view like this about Estonian would be too narrow and ignore the obviously minimal pairs or how the third length level has a grammatical function. In Estonian, deletion of the morphemes which cause an allophonic variation of vowel length makes the variation phonemic. For example, /kooli/ "of the school", /koo:li/ from */koolit/ "of the schools". See, for example, here:  --Vuo 21:39, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Length levels

message: I think all of these examples of the Estonian language isn't very helpful, when it doesn't provide a translation in English. The word examples should include the Estonian meaning, as well as the word and meaning borrowed, I am taking a guess here on some examples to show what I mean : "toll from Low German toll (toll)", "kroonu from Swedish krona (crown, name of currency)"  "kunst from Low German kunst (art)", also, it should be noted if the original borrowed word meant something else than it does in current Estonian. 惑乱 分からん 15:04, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How could I know? Anyway, this does only strengthen my conviction that this page needs a lot of rewriting and clarification for the general audience. 惑乱 分からん 13:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Estonian translations

message: I removed the reference to Hungarian in the opening paragraph. Hungarian and Estonian are related very distantly, about as distantly as English to Greek, and claiming their relation in the begnning could be misleading. Rain74 17:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hungarian 

message: why is the term 'overlong' used here in the article? The direct translation of 'ülipikk' is 'ultralong'.--Constanz - Talk 08:39, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which means exactly the same. (ultra (lat.) = over) -- megA (talk) 15:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 'Overlong'

message: Hi, I just remembered that I created an Estonian language course just after high school a month or so after I got back from Estonia. I knew that I wouldn't be able to find many places to use the language for the next few years (and still haven't) and so I wrote it out with as much as I could remember and got some Estonian people I knew to check it. The page vanished but I found it later on waybackmachine.org and just put it up here: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dc93rc8z_31hkcngq
I made the page but the page doesn't exist anymore, nor is my name on the page so maybe it doesn't count as self-promotion. What should I do with this? Anybody want to make use of it? It has more than the average intro but it's still incomplete. It could also make a good beginning for a Wikibooks text. Any ideas? Mithridates 12:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikibook would be a good idea --Constanz - Talk 15:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Estonian language course 

message: Hello,
:: Estonian differs from Finnish, where consonant gradation is a weakening process only (nouns: sg nom - strong grade, sg gen - weak grade; verbs: supine - strong grade, ind pres - weak grade), in also having some noun inflection types with strengthening quantitative consonant gradation.
I think the statement about Finnish gradation is wrong, as there are nouns types with nom. sing. in weak grade and gen. sing. in strong grade(raide => raiteen, tiede => tieteen) as well as verb types with weak grade first infinitive and strong grade otherwise (tavata => minä tapaan, pelätä => minä pelkään).
I don't want to change anything yet, because I feel this observation would render the paragraph unnecessary and I don't want to delete it without feedback.
Oliver Uwira 15:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, that description of Finnish gradation is flat-out wrong,just go ahead and delete it. --AAikio 10:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, I have just removed it. Oliver Uwira 08:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gradation 

message: The genitive in Estonian is marked by adding a vowel after the end of the word. For example kass (cat) -> kassi (cat's), linn (city) -> linna (city's). How do Estonians know which vowel to add? How do they know it shouldn't be *kassa or *linni? JIP | Talk 08:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: By using analogy probably. And one has to know by heart, just like Germans know, which gender a noun has. Constanz - Talk 08:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Suur tänu sulle ku vastasid mu arvutukse, or something. JIP | Talk 09:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

text:  I disagree. In Estonian, genitive is the root word itself and nominative is just genitive minus trailing wowel. In old grammar , still present in Finnish, linna is the nominative and linnan genitive.  For newer loan words where genitive is really derived from nominative, there is almost no variation and genitive always ends with 'i': printer, printeri. Warbola 18:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

text: The "how do they know" problem is actually there with plural partitive. (kivi-> kive, linn -> linnu, kass -> kasse, konn -> konni, ... ) People make many mistakes here, but almost never with genitive. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.40.9.3 (talk) 16:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually there is not problem, there is a simple rule which I can look up if anyone's interested. I remember it vaguely. 195.50.205.141 21:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Estonian genitive 

message: "kirderanniku dialect" and other such expressions seem a bit strange. I'd suggest something like this:
 northeastern dialect (kirderannikumurre)
 eastern dialect (idamurre)
 etc
Lebatsnok 13:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: kirderannikumurre = north eastern coast dialect 71.102.74.156 03:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dialects 

message: I suggest merging of the sections "Revived language" and "Estonian literature" into a single section "History", written anew. Articles about other languages are usually organized in this way. I don't have sufficient knowledge about the subject, so perhaps someone else could do it. Greg-si (talk) 15:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging of "Revived language" and "Estonian literature" 

message: I think that those lines written by Kristjan Jaak Peterson should also be mentioned in estonian. Someone should fit them into the article.
:Kas siis selle maa keel
:laulutuules ei või
:taevani tõustes üles
:igavikku omale otsida?
Iffcool 19:59, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lines by Kristjan Jaak Peterson 

message: I removed Finland, Sweden, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, USA, Candada, UK, Ireland, Germany, Costa Rica and Australia from "spoken in" in the infobox. They were all reverted,
with the exception of Costa Rica, because, allegedly, it is "usual to include many countries". They had originally been added by user "Sixest" on 31 December 2008, without citations or edit summary. 
I think wikipedia should include factual and cited information. It is unfortunately true that the articles of many languages have a long list of countries
in which the language is allegedly spoken. I find this very unhelpful. The infobox should state where there is a permanent community of speakers of the language.
If any country that has immigrant speakers of the language are included, the list would just grow and grow, and the infobox would not, in fact, be informative.
I suggest the solution that is now in place on Russian language, and which I have now tried here. If other countries have a permanent Estonian-speaking community,
this should be cited.--Barend (talk) 17:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense! 'Spoken in' should include only places where the language has an official status. Otherwise for example I've heard people speaking Estonian in Copenhagen Central Station and at the Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok etc., it doesn't mean it should be therefor part of 'Spoken in' section of this infobox.--Termer (talk) 18:39, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Spoken in" in infobox. 

message: Currently the IPA in the header links to Finnish phonology. This is temporary; eventually we should have an IPA key that covers both Finnish and Estonian, rather than covering Finnish only and leaving Estonian personal and place names for the generic IPA key. If this is problematic, please comment at Template_talk:Usage_of_IPA_templates. kwami (talk) 20:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA link 

message: What's going on in this section?  Seems as if there was some markup which went wrong somehow. -- Deville (Talk) 18:00, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Estonian_language#Grammar]] 

message: Where's the information on Estonian phonotactics? We're missing an entire part of the phonology of Estonian haha 128.192.98.201 (talk) 16:39, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonotactics 

message: What does "segmental diphthongs" mean? That these are allowed vowel sequences which are not actually diphthongs, or that they're single segments, which is the definition of a diphthong? — kwami (talk) 20:11, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "segmental diphthongs"? 

message: I removed the statement, that the estonian õ is similar to "the Kazakh ұ, the Turkish ı and the Russian ы". The estonian õ is a close-mid back unrounded vowel /ɤ/, which is most close to the Vietnamese ơ (which is practically the same sound) and the bulgarian ъ - a mid back unrounded vowel /ɤ̞/, which is just a bit more open. The Kazakh ұ is a near-close near-back vowel /ʊ/ is both more close and more fronted, the Turkish ı is a close back unrounded vowel /ɯ/, which is even more close; the russian ы is a close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/. It's neither back, nor close-mid or mid, so there isn't even the smallest similarity to the estonian õ. Kreuzkümmel (talk) 23:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  ɤ 

message: 1. It would be nice to have all 'grades' of all phonemes in IPA and supplied with sound files. Now you need to go for a site like Forvo to get the idea that e.g. a long & overlong 'a' or 't' is really 1,5* & 2* as long as a short one, but an overlong 'l' or 'n' sounds rather like a sequence of two l's or n's. The descriptions used now are too vague to be interpreted in only one way. Also, it isn't absolutely clear now that the long grade shares its orthographic representation (where it does) with the overlong rather than the short grade.
2. The gradation section is a mess--it should be either moved to the grammar section (and perhaps the historical phonetic changes section, too) or at least brought into factual and terminological conformity with the rest of the article (e.g. use 'short, long, overlong' instead of 'weak, short long' for stops, decide if 's' has two or three grades in pronunciation). 46.186.37.98 (talk) 02:04, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology 

message: What is the correct IPA for the Estonian pronunciation of Tallinn? --Espoo (talk) 20:32, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA for Tallinn 

message: Is anyone still watching this page and editing it? It appears that the external links section has grown into a list of pay-for summer courses, etc., all using Wikipedia for advertising (which would probably enhance their credibility as a reputable service provider). There is no mention of credentials for any of the courses and Wikipedia is not an advertising space. I'll await a response before I remove all links to non-free language learning materials. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:18, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've cleaned up the External links. Are there problems elsewhere in the article? --Ronz (talk) 16:55, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Greatly appreciated, Ronz. I soon became entrenched in recent Eastern European events related articles and couldn't remember which article I'd noted the spam in. Thanks for picking up on and cleaning it up! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:22, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concerns about blatant advertising 

message: I'm wonder how the "overlong" syllables should be indicated in IPA. If the syllable contains a long vowel or consonant, it's easy enough, because you can put an overlong mark after that. But this doesn't work as easily for diphthongs like või, let alone for words that have a short vowel plus a cluster like jalg. Which sound is the actual longer one that would receive the length mark in IPA? My understanding is that it's the syllable as a whole that lengthens, not so much the individual phonemes. But there is no way to indicate syllable-wide lengthening in IPA that I know of. CodeCat (talk) 02:38, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Denoting the suprasegmental/third length in IPA 

message: The one photograph of modern printed Estonian - the road sign - doesn't include even one of the typically Estonian letters, especially õ, and largely consists of borrowings from other languages ('meteoriidikraater'). What's the point of a photograph that doesn't tell us anything about what makes Estonian so different, even from Finnish? Perhaps someone can provide something more useful. I'm not in Estonia (and don't have a camera anyway), but I've just googled 'Road signs in Tallinn' on Wikicommons and it provides several better examples, including a sign to the Õismäe district of Tallinn - you don't get much more Estonian-looking than that!92.111.250.34 (talk) 16:29, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Or look at the category Signs in Estonia, :commons:Category:Signs_in_Estonia. Help yourself! —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Removed as redundant and misleading per WP:PERTINENCE. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:19, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pointless photograph 

message: "Along with Finnish, Hungarian, and Maltese, Estonian is one of the four official languages of European Union that is not of an Indo-European origin." This reads as if the EU has 4 official languages.  It should read "Estonian is one of the four official languages of European Union that are not of an Indo-European origin."--2607:FEA8:FF01:4A86:5D14:7304:D92C:B7CB (talk) 22:31, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "official languages of the EU" 

message: Compared to other Finno-Ugric languages, such as Hungarian and Finnish, it is somewhat easier for a foreigner to learn Estonian. In the case of Hungarian, it takes 5.4 years for a native English speaker to achieve full fluency, in the case of Finnish it takes 5.3 years, and in the case of Estonian it takes 4.7 years. Also, learning Estonian is easier for a native English speaker than learning an Indo-European language such as Albanian or Icelandic. There is a video about it on Youtube, author: WatchData, 10 April 2021, Comparison: Hardest Languages to Learn, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfRQe3P5Vvg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.82.32.199 (talk) 12:33, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allegedly Estonian is easier to learn than Finnish and Hungarian languages