Beauty of languages
Sometimes comments have a lot more substance than actual posts. Take this one by Rene with the theory that Swiss German and Estonian share some influences from German that have been forgotten in the original language. Surely that’s a possibility. Then again, because of very colorful historical Estonian as a language is a whore (not to be misinterpreted – I like Estonian a more than anyone, I’m just stating the obvious here) that has influences from English, Russian, Finnish, German, Swedish, Dutch and every other language on the planet except Swahili.
Oh, and in case anyone wants to learn that language with low moral standards, here are my materials from my extremely successful Estonian class:
Every language is a whore. Estonian, given the geographic place of its speakers, maybe a little more than most others – but every language is inevitably a whore. We just love having this weird (and typical human short-lived) perspective of languages being something static, probably because it makes us feel a bit more “everlasting” than admitting the fact that everything changes, and our tiny lifespan within this sometimes just doesn’t allow us to even notice these changes first-hand.
Cheers for the Esto materials, by the way – nice stuff. To give you a hint of correct Estonian pronunciation: It’s precisely the same as Swiss German, except of course for the õ
Nice blog and fun materials! Just gave them to my non-estonian boyfriend.
Sorry for my ignorance but what’s behind the “Tallin is not the capital”?
Yes, I was wondering about that as well.
Is it the classic “nn” issue?
As I speak both German and Swiss German (ja eesti keelt ka muidugi), I strongly support the “theory” that estonian and swiss german share influences (and not just some) from the German language.
I am pretty much sure that in a hundred years time we can honestly say that german has been strongly influenced by the turkish language and our precious estonian might sound slightly more like the “hinduenglish”, or take whatever other language you like. Swahili perhaps, once adopting starving babies from africa becomes a trend.
We appear to share at least 4 languages then, Kadi.
If you find some examples, let me know please. I used to have plenty, but they keep disappearing in that bottomless pit that I call my brain.
And in a hundred years: For sure. It’s always been like that, with different languages. Nothing is forever. Except maybe Lukashenko, but we’ll see about that.
The discussion, the heat! Glad to see it here
Yup, Rene it’s the “nn”. If someone planted a tree every time this is misspelled we would long ago have ran out of land.