Estonian

Es·to·ni·an

E0222000 (ĕ-stō′nē-ən)adj. Of or relating to Estonia or its people, language, or culture.n.1. a. A native or inhabitant of Estonia.b. A person of Estonian ancestry.2. The Finno-Ugric language of Estonia.

Estonian

(ɛˈstəʊnɪən) or

Esthonian

adj1. (Peoples) of, relating to, or characteristic of Estonia, its people, or their language2. (Languages) of, relating to, or characteristic of Estonia, its people, or their language3. (Placename) of, relating to, or characteristic of Estonia, its people, or their languagen4. (Languages) the official language of Estonia: belongs to the Finno-Ugric family5. (Peoples) a native or inhabitant of Estonia

Es•to•ni•an

(ɛˈstoʊ ni ən)

n. 1. a member of the Finnic people of Estonia. 2. the Finnic language of the Estonians, closely related to Finnish. adj. 3. of or pertaining to Estonia, the Estonians, or their language.

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	Estonian - the official language of Estonia; belongs to the Baltic-Finnic family of languagesEsthonianBaltic-Finnic - a group of Finnic languages including Finnish and Estonian
Adj.	1.	Estonian - of or pertaining to Estonia or the people or culture of Estonia

Translations

爱沙尼亚人爱沙尼亚的爱沙尼亚语

Estonian

→ 爱沙尼亚人zhCN, 爱沙尼亚的zhCN, 爱沙尼亚语zhCN

Estonian

, Esthonian the official language of Estonia: belongs to the Finno-Ugric family

Estonian

the language of the Estonians, who live in the Estonian SSR, in Leningrad, Pskov, Omsk, and other oblasts of the RSFSR, in the Latvian and Ukrainian SSR’s, and in the Abkhazian ASSR, as well as in Sweden, the USA, and Canada. There are 1,007,400 speakers of Estonian in the USSR (1970 census). Belonging to the Balto-Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric languages, Estonian has three main dialects: the northeastern coastal dialect, the north Estonian dialect, and the south Estonian dialect. Two literary languages, based on the north and south Estonian dialects, coexisted from the 16th century. The Estonian language was standardized in the first half of the 20th century.

Estonian has nine vowels, 16 consonants, and an abundance of diphthongs. Both vowels and consonants are characterized by three degrees of length. The primary stress falls on the first syllable of a word. The morphological structure is of the inflectionalagglutinative type. Nouns are inflected for number and case; grammatical gender is absent. The verb has conjugated and non-conjugated forms. The syntactic relations of words are expressed mainly through the grammatical forms of individual words and through auxiliary (syntactic) words. The number of prepositions is small, but postpositions are well developed. The word order is relatively free.

The vocabulary includes ancient Finno-Ugric, Balto-Finnic, and purely Estonian words, as well as many old Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic loanwords. There are also later borrowings from German, Russian, and other languages. The Estonian writing system is based on the Latin alphabet.

REFERENCES

Kask, A. “Estonskii iazyk.” In Iazyki narodov SSSR, vol. 3. Moscow, 1966. (With bibliography.)
Osnovy finno ugorskogo iazykoznaniia: Pribaltiisko-finskie, saamskii i mordovskie iazyki. Moscow, 1975.
Ariste, P. Eesti keele foneetika, 2nd ed. Tartu, 1966.
Tamm,J. Eesti-vene sōnaraamat. Tallinn, 1961.

R. A. AGEEVA

Estonian

Es·to·ni·an

Estonian

Esthonian

Es•to•ni•an

Estonian

Estonian

Estonian

Estonian

REFERENCES

Estonian

Synonyms for Estonian

noun the official language of Estonia

Synonyms

Related Words