Estonian Language Blog

No. I’d have to learn it first. O.O

It’s hard to properly convey my relationship with my languages. I know them, but I don’t speak them. I can’t just converse in them. I can’t come up with sentences spontaneously. I can’t use them the way that a fluent speaker can use their language (i.e. off the cuff in all situations). Unless I happen to have the words memorized, I can only do translations on paper with my dictionary open—and that’s on paper. Speech is much quicker. You can’t stop and think: You just have to do it. I’m nowhere close to that with any of my languages.

I could probably learn them and get to that point, but I’ve got other things to do—or, rather, other languages to learn (specifically, Finnish).

Hey, random Finnish fact. Check out how crazy this is:

yksi = one

kaksi = two

Okay…

yksitoista = eleven

kaksitoista = twelve

Sure, no problem…

puoli = one half

puolitoista = one and a half

kaksi ja puoli = two and a half

?!?!?!??!?!?!

üks - 1 kaks - 2 üksteist -11 kaksteist -12

pool - half poolteist - 1 and a half tuhat - 1000 poolteist tuhat - 1500

Wiktionary tells us the following in the entry about ‘üksteist’:

‘üks ‎(“one”) +‎ teist ‎(“of second”). Shortened from üksteistkümmend (“one of the second ten”), which is still evident in declension. Cognate with Finnish yksitoista.’

The Wikipedia article on numbers in Finnish says much the same thing.

Thus we could analyse poolteist tuhat as ‘a thousand and half of the next’

Then, if you are serious about learning Estonian, you should get your hands on Saame Tuttavaks by Silva Tomingas. (Be careful you get the right language version, as it comes in a few!)

Regarding the essive -na/-nä vs adessive -lla/-llä and parts of the day.

It seems to me that essive -na/-nä gets a more specific time expression across than adessive -lla/-llä, as it always seems to be used frequently in conjunction with tämä, whereas adessive -lla/-llä stands on its own more often, conveying a more general idea.

So… aamulla means, to my mind, just “in the morning” but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific morning.

I feel like essive -na/-nä has to be used with either a day of the week by default since that’s the only case that the days of the week take to express “on” a certain day, as a day of the week in essive stands with the adessive part of the day (e.g. keskiviikona aamulla) or with tämä to convey its meaning effectively. I’ve never seen it stand alone as just being aamuna, iltana, iltapäiväna, etc. I feel like it needs to have more specificity than adessive -lla/-llä in order to work.

Is it possible for essive to stand on its own with parts of the day, or does it need to be used in conjunction with something else at all times? My assumption is that it does, but I just want to be sure.

Helen Link (via neiumustaskleidis)

Tere! Minu nimi on Elena. Ma olen kakskümmendviis aastat vana ja ma elan Helsingis. Ma õpin eesti keelt ja see on minu päevik.

Minu vanemate nimed on E ja H ja minu õe nimi on K. Ta on kuusteist aastat vana ja õpib veel koolis. Minu koera nimi on Waldo, see on Shetlandi lambakoer ja see on viis aastat vana. See on väga armas ja alati väga mänguline ja rõõmsameelne.

Ma ei räägi palju eesti keelt aga ma õppida uusi sõnu iga päev. Eesti on tore keel 👍🏻

• * • * • * • * • * • * • * • * • * •

I started keeping a diary in Estonian today. Let’s hope it will help me memorise words and grammar better. :D

To me though, and I am not a native speaker by the way, it would be better to say something like: “eesti keel on lahe/kena/ilus keel”.

Also, to mix things up you could say that your sister goes to/attends school: ta käib veel koolis.

Thanks for the question! It always makes me happy to get them, so ask away whenever.

This is a really good question. My grammar books and the internet version of Finnish grammar only offer that both vai and tai are conjuctions, and disjunctive ones at that. They are used much in the same way as English or.

They are almost the same, as all my grammars list them together, but they are still not totally interchangeable. I’m going out on my own intuition on this one, because it was hard to find anything useful to back this up after a quick research. How I see it, vai is used as a question.

Haluatko tätä vai sitä? is better than Haluatko tätä tai sitä? (both of these translate to do you want this or that). Actually the latter one sounds somehow wrong, at least to me. Also, in En osaa päättää laitanko mekon vai housut (I can’t decide if I should put on a skirt or trousers), vai is used when the subordinate clause is a question even when the whole sentence is not.

Vai can also be used, more often in spoken Finnish, to make something into a question: Tämä on hyvä vai? (something along the lines of This is good, then?) It can also imply disbelief, when used like this.

You can add vai in front of some question words, too, like vai mitä? when asking for agreement in something. Se oli hyvä leffa, vai mitä? (It was a good movie, right?)

Tai, then again, is used (for example) in places where one lists options: Voit ottaa mukaasi lelun tai pelin. (You can take with you either a toy or a game.) In these, you can’t use vai.