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55-511: Estonians or Estonian people ( Estonian : eestlased ) are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group who speak the Estonian language . Their nation state is Estonia . The Estonian language is spoken as the first language by the vast majority of Estonians; it is closely related to other Finnic languages , e.g. Finnish , Karelian and Livonian . The Finnic languages are a subgroup of the larger Uralic family of languages , which also includes e.g.

110-455: 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

165-694: A high sharing of IBD ( identity-by-descent ) segments with other studied Balto-Finnic groups (Finns, Karelians and Vepsians ) and the Sami people, as well as with the Polish people. 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

220-737: 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

275-792: Is associated with being Finno-Ugric and their close relationship with the Finnish people and does not exclude being Baltic. In Estonian foreign ministry reports from the early 2000s Nordic identity was preferred over Baltic one. After the Treaty of Tartu (1920) recognised Estonia's 1918 independence from Russia, ethnic Estonians residing in Russia gained the option of opting for Estonian citizenship (those who opted were called optandid – 'optants') and returning to their fatherland. An estimated 40,000 Estonians lived in Russia in 1920. In sum, 37,578 people moved from Soviet Russia to Estonia (1920–1923). During

330-734: 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

385-523: Is commonly carried by modern Uralic-speaking groups but also other North Eurasians, including Estonians' Baltic-speaking neighbors Latvians and Lithuanians . Compared to the Balts, Estonians have been noticed to have differences in allelic variances of N1c haplotypes, showing more similarity with other Finno-Ugric-speakers. When looking at maternal lineages , nearly half (45 %) of the Estonians have

440-457: 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 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

495-462: Is found also in the Balts, Finns and Mordvins , for example. Uralic peoples typically carry a Siberian -related component, which is also present in Estonians and makes up about five percent of their ancestry on average. Although they have a smaller share of it than other Balto-Finns, it is one factor that distinguishes them from the Balts. Estonians can also be modelled to have considerably more Finnish-like ancestry than Baltic-speakers. Estonians have

550-703: 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

605-492: 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

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660-531: Is typically subclassified as 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

715-757: 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

770-497: 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 the reader and was destroyed immediately after publication. The first extant Estonian book

825-553: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English: Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (26 December [ O.S. 14 December] 1803 – 25 August [ O.S. 13 August] 1882) was an Estonian writer who is considered to be the father of the national literature for the country. He is the author of Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg . Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's parents were serfs at

880-712: 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

935-477: The Iron Age at the latest. This lead into the formation of Baltic Finnic peoples , who would later become such groups as Estonians and Finns . The oldest known endonym of the Estonians is maarahvas , literally meaning "land people" or "country folk". It was used until the mid-19th century, when it was gradually replaced by Eesti rahvas "Estonian people" during the Estonian national awakening . Eesti ,

990-696: The Jömper estate, Governorate of Estonia , Russian Empire (in present-day Jõepere, Lääne-Viru County ). His father Juhan worked as a shoemaker and granary keeper and his mother Anne was a chambermaid. After liberation from serfdom in 1815, the family was able to send their son to school at the Wesenberg (present-day Rakvere) district school. In 1820, he graduated from secondary school in Dorpat (present-day Tartu, Tartu County , Estonia ) and worked as an elementary school teacher. In 1833, Kreutzwald graduated from

1045-581: 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

1100-536: 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

1155-573: The Sami languages . These languages are markedly different from most other native languages spoken in Europe , most of which have been assigned to the Indo-European family of languages . Estonians can also be classified into subgroups according to dialects (e.g. Võros , Setos ), although such divisions have become less pronounced due to internal migration and rapid urbanisation in Estonia in

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1210-406: The 1820s. The ruling elites had remained predominantly German in language and culture since the conquest of the early 13th century. Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850), a Baltic-German Estophile , became the first author to treat the Estonians as a nationality equal to others; he became a source of inspiration for the Estonian national movement, modelled on Baltic German cultural world before the middle of

1265-485: 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

1320-543: The 1880s, their view of Imperial Russia remained positive. Estonians have strong ties to the Nordic countries stemming from important cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during Scandinavian and German rule and settlement. According to a poll done in 2013, about half of the young Estonians considered themselves Nordic , and about the same number viewed Baltic identity as important. The Nordic identity among Estonians can ovelap with other identities, as it

1375-553: 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 the Finnic languages date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in

1430-926: 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 ,

1485-524: 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

1540-451: The 19th century. However, in the middle of the century, the Estonians became more ambitious and started leaning toward the Finns as a successful model of national movement and, to some extent, toward the neighbouring Latvian national movement . By the end of 1860 the Estonians became unwilling to reconcile with German cultural and political hegemony. Before the attempts at Russification in

1595-490: 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

1650-751: The 20th century. There are approximately 1 million ethnic Estonians worldwide, with the vast majority of them residing in their native Estonia. Estonian diaspora communities formed primarily in Finland, the United States, Sweden, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Estonia was first inhabited about 10,000 years ago, soon after the ice from the Baltic Ice Lake had melted. Living in the same area for more than 5,000 years would put Estonians' ancestors among Europe's oldest permanent inhabitants. On

1705-546: 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

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1760-823: The Faculty of Medicine at the Imperial University of Dorpat . Kreutzwald married Marie Elisabeth Saedler on 18 August the same year. From 1833 to 1877, he worked as the municipal physician in Werro (present-day Võru). He was the member of numerous scientific societies in Europe and received honorary doctorates from a number of universities. Kreutzwald is the author of several moralistic folk books, most of them translated into German: Plague of Wine 1840, The World and Some Things One Can Find in It 1848–49, Reynard

1815-463: The Fox 1850, and Wise Men of Gotham 1857. In addition to these works, he composed the national epic Kalevipoeg (Kalev's Son), using material initially gathered by his friend Friedrich Robert Faehlmann ; and wrote many other works based on Estonian folklore , such as Old Estonian Fairy-Tales (1866), collections of verses, and the poem Lembitu (1885), published after his death. Kreutzwald

1870-410: 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

1925-441: 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 a Finnic language rather than a variety of Estonian. Modern standard Estonian evolved in

1980-413: 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

2035-422: 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

2090-419: The first known book in Estonian, was printed in 1525, while the oldest known examples of written Estonian originate in 13th-century chronicles. Although Estonian national consciousness spread in the course of the 19th century during the Estonian national awakening , some degree of ethnic awareness preceded this development. By the 18th century the self-denomination eestlane spread among Estonians along with

2145-589: 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

2200-623: The haplogroup H . About one in four (24.2 %) carry the haplogroup U , and the majority of them belong to its subclade U5 . Autosomally Estonians are close with Latvians and Lithuanians. However, they are shifted towards the Finns , who are isolated from most European populations. Northeastern Estonians are particularly close to Finns, while Southeastern Estonians are close to the Balts; other Estonians plot between these two extremes. Estonians have high steppe -like admixture, and less farmer -related and more hunter-gatherer -related admixture than Western and Central Europeans. The same pattern

2255-456: 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

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2310-524: The modern endonym of Estonia, is thought to have similar origins to Aesti , the name used by the Germanic peoples for the neighbouring people living northeast of the mouth of the Vistula . The Roman historian Tacitus in 98 CE was the first to mention the " Aesti " in writing. In Old Norse , the land south of the Gulf of Finland was called Eistland and the people eistr . The Wanradt–Koell Catechism ,

2365-572: The older maarahvas . Anton thor Helle 's translation of the Bible into Estonian appeared in 1739, and the number of books and brochures published in Estonian increased from 18 in the 1750s to 54 in the 1790s. By the end of the century more than a half of adult peasants could read. The first university-educated intellectuals identifying themselves as Estonians, including Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850), Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822) and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882), appeared in

2420-689: The other hand, some recent linguistic estimations suggest that Finno-Ugric speakers arrived around the Baltic Sea considerably later, perhaps during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BCE). It has also been argued that Western Uralic tribes reached Fennoscandia first, leading into the development of the Sámi peoples , and arrived in the Baltic region later in the Bronze Age or the transition to

2475-645: The period of Tsarist rule of Estonia (1710-1917), over 100,000 Estonians migrated to the neighbouring areas of the Russian Empire , especially to the then capital city Saint Petersburg . According to the 1897 census, 6,852 native Estonian-speakers also lived in the Russian Partition of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , in what is now Poland , Lithuania , Belarus , Latvia and western Ukraine , of which over 4,360 lived in territories of today's Poland. During World War II , when Estonia

2530-552: The return of Estonians who have particular skills needed in Estonia. One of the largest permanent Estonian communities outside Estonia is in Canada, with about 24,000 people (according to some sources up to 50,000 people). In the late 1940s and early 1950s, about 17,000 arrived in Canada, initially in Montreal . Toronto is currently the city with the largest population of Estonians outside of Estonia. The first Estonian World Festival

2585-492: 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

2640-419: 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

2695-405: 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

2750-514: 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

2805-464: 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,

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2860-555: The years of independence, many Estonians have chosen to work abroad, primarily in Finland , but also in the UK, Benelux , Sweden , and Germany . Recognising the problems arising from low birth rate and emigration, the Estonian government has launched various measures to increase the birth rate and to lure migrant Estonians back to Estonia. For example, a campaign Talendid koju! ("Bringing talents home!") has aimed to coordinate and promote

2915-613: Was invaded by the Soviet Army in 1944, large numbers of Estonians fled their homeland on ships or smaller boats over the Baltic Sea . Many refugees who survived the risky sea voyage to Sweden or Germany later moved from there to Canada , the United Kingdom , the United States or Australia . Some of these refugees and their descendants returned to Estonia after the nation regained its independence in 1991. Over

2970-525: 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

3025-681: Was held in Toronto in 1972. Y-chromosome haplogroups among Estonians include N1c (35.7%), R1a (33.5%) and I1 (15%). R1a, common in Eastern Europe, was the dominant Y-DNA haplogroup among the pre-Uralic inhabitants of Estonia, as it is the only one found in the local samples from the time of the Corded Ware culture and Bronze Age. Appearance of N1c is linked to the arrival of Uralic-speakers. It originated in East Eurasia and

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