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54-517: The president of the Republic of Estonia ( Estonian : Eesti Vabariigi President ) is the head of state of the Republic of Estonia . The current president is Alar Karis , elected by Parliament on 31 August 2021, replacing Kersti Kaljulaid . Estonia is one of the few parliamentary republics in which the president is a ceremonial figurehead without even nominal executive powers. The president

108-566: A Finnic language rather than a variety of Estonian. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries based on the dialects of northern Estonia. During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages , mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation , from the Standard German language. Estonia's oldest written records of

162-693: A Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian , and Maltese , Estonian is one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not Indo-European languages . In terms of linguistic morphology , Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language . The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional , especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to

216-658: A balancing role in the event of conflict between the Parliament and the Government. The State Elder and the Government were completely dependent on the Parliament and could be sacked by it at any time. The functions that are usually vested on a president in parliamentary systems were divided among the speaker of the Riigikogu, the State Elder and the Government. Estonia's constitution was amended in 1933, instituting

270-455: A broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek , Latin and French . Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item. Article 1 of

324-671: A fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system. Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is subject–verb–object . The speakers of the two major historical languages spoken in Estonia, North and South Estonian , are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernacular; South Estonian might be

378-675: A lawyer. Tief was elected to parliament (third Riigikogu ) in 1926 and served as the Minister of Social Affairs from 1926 to 1927. In 1928, he was the Minister of Justice. In 1932, he was elected to the fifth Riigikogu. During the turbulent days in September 1944, between the retreat of the German occupation forces in Estonia and the advancement of the Red Army , the acting President of

432-485: A strongly presidential system. The head of state, according to the new constitution, was also called the State Elder, but this time was vested with sweeping executive powers. However, it never came into effect as a result of Konstantin Päts 's self-coup in 1934. In 1938, another constitution was enacted, and the head of state's title was changed to "President of the Republic." He was given very broad executive power, though he

486-734: Is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts. Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language . The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists. In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender , but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative , genitive , partitive , illative , inessive , elative , allative , adessive , ablative , translative , terminative , essive , abessive , and comitative , with

540-464: Is obliged to suspend their membership in any political party for the term in office. Upon assuming office, the authority and duties of the president in all other elected or appointed offices terminate automatically. These measures should theoretically help the president to function in a more independent and impartial manner. The president holds office for five years. They may be elected any number of times, but not more than twice consecutively. In Estonia,

594-814: Is pronounced [æ], as in English mat . The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/ , unrounded /o/ , or a close-mid back unrounded vowel . It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/ and the Vietnamese ơ , and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы . Additionally C , Q , W , X , and Y are used in writing foreign proper names . They do not occur in Estonian words , and are not officially part of

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648-492: Is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž , they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative , as in Pasha ( pas-ha ); this also applies to some foreign names. Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created by Eduard Ahrens in

702-853: Is regarded by many of his fellow countrymen as a symbol of national resistance. Tief studied law in St Petersburg between 1910 and 1916. During the Estonian War of Independence , Tief was a commander in the Kalevlaste Maleva battalion formed in 1918 by members of the Kalev sports society . Following the war, he graduated in law from the University of Tartu in 1921. He served as legal counsel to Eesti Maapank (the Estonian Land-Bank) and also worked in private practice as

756-757: The idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus . One of the pronunciation features of the Saaremaa dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-metre monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact. South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession. Estonian employs

810-590: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English: Otto Tief Otto Tief (14 August [ O.S. 2 August] 1889 – 5 March 1976) was an Estonian politician, military commander, and a lawyer. Tief was the acting prime minister of the last government of Estonia before Soviet troops occupied Estonia in the Second World War in September 1944. Due to his commitment to his country, Tief

864-712: The Germanic languages have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because Estonian has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon ( Middle Low German ) during the period of German rule , and High German (including standard German ). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to

918-581: The Latin script as the basis for its alphabet . The script adds the letters ä , ö , ü , and õ , plus the later additions š and ž . The letters c , q , w , x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f , z , š , and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä

972-536: The Proto-Finnic language , elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan . The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal"). Although Estonian and

1026-409: The Republic of Estonia Jüri Uluots appointed Tief Prime Minister and asked him to form a government on 18 September 1944. Tief then published a proclamation, re-establishing the independence of the Republic of Estonia on the basis of legal continuity, and attempted to organise the defence of Tallinn against the invading Red Army , which pushed into the capital on 22 September 1944. Members of

1080-572: The Russian emperors ' abuses of power, tried to avoid concentrating too much power in one person's hands by all means possible. This eventually led to a creation of an ultra-parliamentary system. The power of the Parliament (Riigikogu) was practically unlimited. Until 1934, the nominal head of state was the State Elder , ( riigivanem ), who also served as de jure chairman of the cabinet—officially known as "the Government." However, he could not play

1134-485: The 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo ( Urschöpfung ); i.e. they created new words out of nothing. The most well-known reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of

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1188-926: The 1930s. There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs , 28 of which are native to Estonian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back , close back , or close-mid central . Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g : pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [ gen sg ] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ ptv sg ]'. Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž ,

1242-524: The 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-language University of Dorpat , is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered

1296-490: The 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly ex nihilo are in common use today. Examples are * ese 'object', * kolp 'skull', * liibuma 'to cling', * naasma 'to return, come back', * nõme 'stupid, dull'. Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian , German , French , Finnish , English and Swedish . Aavik had

1350-548: The Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century. When the Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II , in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke

1404-482: The Finnic languages date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences. The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in Estonian was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached

1458-686: The Presidential palace. The Vares government had actually been chosen by Soviet official Andrei Zhdanov . Following the sham elections in July, president Päts was dismissed from office. Later in July Päts, along with his son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons, was deported to Ufa in Russia. According to the 1938 constitution, in case the president was ever incapacitated, or was otherwise unable to carry out his functions, his duties were to be assumed by

1512-427: The Republic of Estonia. In February 2007, the Estonian parliament decided to commemorate the actions of Tief's government by proclaiming 22 September the annual "Day of Resistance". 22 September 1944 was the day, several days after the departure of Nazi Germany 's occupying forces, that Stalin´s invading Red Army took over the administrative centre of Tallinn, tore down the Estonian national flag , and replaced it with

1566-682: The Tief's government: Otto Tief was arrested by the Soviet NKVD on 10 October 1944. In 1945, the Soviet occupation authorities sentenced him to ten years of imprisonment in the Siberian Gulag . While in imprisonment, in January 1953, he was removed in absentia from the Estonian government-in-exile by August Rei . After being able to return briefly to Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1955, Tief

1620-416: The adoption of the 1992 constitution, seven presidential elections have taken place (in 1992, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2021). Lennart Meri was elected in 1992 (this election, unlike later ones, had a public round) and re-elected in 1996, defeating Arnold Rüütel both times. Rüütel himself became the next president in 2001. In 2006, Toomas Hendrik Ilves won the election in the electoral assembly, and he

1674-410: The alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters: Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme , there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t

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1728-413: The case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to

1782-541: The election of an acting president by the Electoral Council. In a secret meeting on 20 April 1944, the Electoral Council determined that the appointment of Vares as prime minister in 1940 had been unlawful according to the 1938 constitution. The council elected Jüri Uluots as acting president on 21 April. Uluots appointed Otto Tief as prime minister. Tief was subsequently arrested by the re-occupying Soviet forces in September 1944. In September 1944, Uluots and

1836-422: The end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first- and second-generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted Estonian (over 50% as of the 2022 census). The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in

1890-535: The founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language: In English: In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published. In modern times A. H. Tammsaare , Jaan Kross , and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia 's best-known and most translated writers. Estonians lead

1944-403: The language. When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of Estonian effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools

1998-488: The national cemetery in Tallinn , in 1993. Tief held power for only a brief period of time (18–22 September 1944), and his efforts were rapidly undone by the invading Red Army . However, Tief's actions have immense symbolic and legal significance, as his proclaiming of the restoration of the Republic of Estonia , as well as the accompanying raising of the Estonian flag atop the tower of Pikk Hermann high above Tallinn at

2052-428: The number of citizens with voting rights residing in the municipality). This body chooses between the two candidates with the largest percentage of votes. While this election process has been criticised, the idea of direct elections does not have enough support in parliament, with only Estonian Centre Party and Conservative People's Party defending it. The authors of the first Estonian constitution, with memories of

2106-488: The president is elected by the Riigikogu ; a candidate must win a two-thirds supermajority to be elected. If no candidate achieves two-thirds support in the Riigikogu after three rounds of balloting, a special electoral body is convened comprising all members of the Riigikogu and elected representatives of all municipalities (at least one representative per each municipality, but not more than 10 representatives depending on

2160-626: The president is not even the nominal chief executive. Rather, the Constitution explicitly vests executive power in the Government. Estonian language Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family . Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as

2214-577: The prime minister under the title "Prime Minister in duties of the President." Following this provision, Vares nominally took over the functions of the president for a few weeks during the Soviet occupation until Estonia was annexed and formally incorporated into the Soviet Union in August 1940. However, during times of war or incapacitation lasting longer than six months, the constitution provides for

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2268-774: The reader and was destroyed immediately after publication. The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S.   Wanradt and J.   Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into the variety of South Estonian called Võro in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on Northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle . Writings in Estonian became more significant in

2322-422: The restored republic, Lennart Meri . After Estonia regained independence, a new constitution was adopted in 1992 that was based on a mixture of the 1920 and 1938 documents. During the drafting of the new constitution, it was initially planned to use the older, more traditional title, State Elder, for the head of state. However, the more modern term "president" was eventually chosen after public consultations. Since

2376-520: The seat of power in the Toompea quarter negates Soviet historiography 's claims, according to which the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet Red Army in September 1944 constituted "the liberation of Estonia". Although the attempt to restore Estonian independence in September 1944 did not succeed, the Tief government proved to be an integral and indispensable part of the de jure continuity of

2430-492: The second half of the 19th   century based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17th   century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into

2484-419: The sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k , with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology. Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated. ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/. While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony , central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language

2538-405: The south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian . The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County , the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa , Hiiumaa , Muhu and Kihnu , and

2592-407: The surviving members of the Tief government escaped to Sweden . The day before Uluots died in January 1945, a successor, August Rei , was named to assume the position of acting president. Following Rei's death in 1963, the role passed to Aleksander Warma , then to Tõnis Kint in 1971, then to Heinrich Mark in 1990. In October 1992, Mark handed over his credentials to the newly elected president of

2646-514: The wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'. Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from

2700-464: The world in book ownership, owning on average 218 books per house, and 35% of Estonians owning 350 books or more (as of 2018). Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment , during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves,

2754-570: Was again forced to live in exile in Soviet Ukraine until 1965, when he was permitted to relocate closer to home, and he could then reside just on the other side of the Estonian border in Latvia . When Tief died on 5 March 1976, the Soviet security services would not allow his burial in Estonia. After Estonia regained independence in 1991, Tief was reinterred and reburied in his home country, in

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2808-525: Was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of Estonian by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence , Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Since 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, Estonian is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU . The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at

2862-399: Was reelected by the parliament in 2011. In 2016, Kersti Kaljulaid was elected president only after the parliament, and then the electoral assembly too, had failed to elect one, and the election had passed back to the parliament. Alar Karis was elected president by the parliament in 2021. The president of the Republic of Estonia: Unlike their counterparts in other parliamentary republics,

2916-490: Was somewhat less powerful than the State Elder of the 1933 constitution. Konstantin Päts became the first person to bear this title. His term was to last for six years. Within days after the Soviet military occupation of Estonia in June 1940, Päts was forced to appoint a Communist-dominated puppet government headed by Johannes Vares , following the arrival of demonstrators accompanied by Red Army troops with armored vehicles to

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