“Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
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“Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
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Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#2As a Swedish speaker, I get this deeply rooted feeling of righteous indignation about not understanding spoken Danish. I'm only half-joking.
As a Finnish speaker, I don't get that feeling with Estonian. The written form is different enough to warrant a deeper look before I start whining about how annoying I find language studies in general.
Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#3Wonderful article, exposing some of the oddities of this non-Indo-European language in the middle of Europe, without becoming too technical.
If you're interested in an entertaining overview of all of the world's languages, I can recommend the course Language Families of the World by The Great Courses - 34 byte-sized (half hour) lectures.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/language-families-of...
Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#4My favourite Estonian pun is a pink bench. Pink means bench in English :)
Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#5As a Swedish speaker, I get this deeply rooted feeling of righteous indignation about not understanding spoken Danish. I'm only half-joking. As a Finnish speaker, I don't get that feeling with Estonian. The written form is different enough to warrant a deeper look before I start whining about how annoying I find language studies in general.
As a Finnish speaker, to me Estonian sometimes sounds like I'm having a stroke. Like I'm supposed to understand what is spoken but the words just don't resolve into their meanings.
Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#6I love the list of vowel-heavy words. You can also construct some similar words in Dutch. Or at least you used to before 1996, when a spelling change introduced hyphens into many of these:
zeeëend - sea duck, or Velvet scoter (nowadays "zee-eend")
koeieuier - cow udder (nowadays "koeienuier")
zaaiuien - seed onions (still legal I think)
kraaieëieren - crow eggs (nowadays kraaieneieren, I think)
angstschreeuw - cry of fear
slechtstschrijvend - worst writing
borsjtsjschrokkende - borscht gorging
haaiaaioorkonde - shark petting certificate
weggooiooien - throw-away ewesRe: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#7As a Swedish speaker, I get this deeply rooted feeling of righteous indignation about not understanding spoken Danish. I'm only half-joking. As a Finnish speaker, I don't get that feeling with Estonian. The written form is different enough to warrant a deeper look before I start whining about how annoying I find language studies in general.
As a Finnish speaker, to me Estonian sometimes sounds like I'm having a stroke. Like I'm supposed to understand what is spoken but the words just don't resolve into their meanings.
As an Estonian speaker, I feel the exact same way about Finnish. I guess it's universal :)
Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#8An interesting thing I've noticed is that a lot of the younger generations in Estonia use English a lot when expressing themselves, especially when talking to their peers. I constantly hear everything from single English words in sentences, to fully English sentences used in-between Estonian ones.
I'm sure this is something that's happening everywhere (because of things like Hollywood and most of the internet being in English), but with the population in Estonia decreasing anyway, I wonder if this is an indication that the Estonian language will be dying out relatively soon.
Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#9An interesting thing I've noticed is that a lot of the younger generations in Estonia use English a lot when expressing themselves, especially when talking to their peers. I constantly hear everything from single English words in sentences, to fully English sentences used in-between Estonian ones. I'm sure this is something that's happening everywhere (because of things like Hollywood and most of the internet being i…
I've noticed the same in Finland
Re: “Did You Eat the Whole Cake?” On Learning Estonian
#10An interesting thing I've noticed is that a lot of the younger generations in Estonia use English a lot when expressing themselves, especially when talking to their peers. I constantly hear everything from single English words in sentences, to fully English sentences used in-between Estonian ones. I'm sure this is something that's happening everywhere (because of things like Hollywood and most of the internet being i…
I've noticed the same in Finland
Same for me. It can be fun sitting on a tram and hearing teens/youths speaking in Finnish with English interjected somewhat randomly:
"blah blah blah and then I died blah blah blah good game!"