france-eesti wrote:Aitäh süür!
I don't understand what you mean with süür. Did you maybe want to say suur aitäh?
Yes, I remember the basics of the partitive/genitive difference. What was more tricky for me was, with "feelings". I understand your use of "meeldina" (it's like in French "plaire" or Hungarian "tetszik") so using illative "mulle meeldib" is okay. But when you "armastan" something/someone, why partitive? And when you want a dog, or when you want a kringel, is it also a partial object?
With meeldima you use the allative case (minulle), the illative would be minusse. So yes, it's the same logic as with Hungarian tetszik.
As for verbs like armastama, they express feelings. And a feeling is more a state of mind than an action with an outcome. So you either love someone or you don't, it's not like with a book that you can either read a bit and then continue another time or read through in one go.
france-eesti wrote:I think if one day I go back to Estonian, the way I'll learn it will be "always use partitive except in some special cases". Do you have an idea of which one is more used, is it something like a 50/50 or is there a 70/30 in favor of partitive?
I don't think it works that way, just deciding based on statistics. Sorry.
But I think it's easy-ish to memorize that when you finished something or the outcome is what's important (instead of the deed itself), then you should use the genitive/nominative and in other cases just the partitive. There are also some verbs that only work with partitive, like the ones you mentioned. So yes, having partitive as the "default" case would probably make more sense. Also, remember that with ära the direct object is always in genitive.
There is no doubt Estonian is easier than Hungarian But for some reason my brains didn't stand being shared between Estonian and Hungarian (not to mention having to leave room for Portuguese, that is slowly slipping through my fingers too).
In my case Hungarian replaced everything that was left from the French I learned in school - don't ask me why.
Thank you for your help too! I really appreciate it.
Võta heaks. Though I don't think I'm that much of a help as you already decided to quit Estonian.