Overlong

[0stsee]

Tere!

I read that in Estonian there's three degrees of phoneme length: long, short, and overlong.

Why is it not shown in the orthography? Is it not that important to distinguish long and overlong phonemes? Like you can understand it through the context after all?

What does "suprasegmentally phonemic" mean? (In the Wikipedia article about Estonian)

Thank you!


Mark

[Loiks]

Tere!

I read that in Estonian there's three degrees of phoneme length: long, short, and overlong.

Why is it not shown in the orthography? Is it not that important to distinguish long and overlong phonemes? Like you can understand it through the context after all?

What does "suprasegmentally phonemic" mean? (In the Wikipedia article about Estonian)

Thank you!


Mark

It is shown in orthography only for p, t, k. b=short, p=long, pp=overlong. It is important to distinguish long and overlong because it can be only difference between cases, as in kooli (long) - gen. sg.; kooli (overlong) - part. sg. or ill. sg. But yes, it is understandable from context for a native speaker. It is a tradition. Also palatalization is not shown. The first ones who started to write Estonian were Baltic Germans. They didn't have ear for those things and when Estonians themselves started to develop the orthography the writing tradition had already been born without three lengths and palatalization. But I think it is really a problem only for a foreigner. No native speaker reads wrongly, although uneducated people have writing problems with p vs. pp, t vs. tt and k vs. kk, as I've often seen. I'm very sure that it would be a problem for them to distinguish the overlong from long because kids have problems at school when these issues are taught.

I have to admit that this "suprasegmentally phonemic" is hard to understand to me too without any examples.

[0stsee]

Thank you Loiks!

I suppose many non native speakers learn Estonian.
So probably like the native Russian speakers in Estonia have problems distinguishing long and overlong, and palatalized consonants not shown in the orthography.

[Loiks]

Well, most of the Russian speakers don't want to distinguish anything anyway.

But hey, English has one of the most horrible orthography in the world but it is still the most learned language. Nobody wines .

So maybe there would be ways to mark those things in orthography. Like overlong with acute: tooli - tóoli; kella - kélla, leili - léili. But what about õ, ä, ö, ü? I personally detest double diacritics like in Livonian. OK, maybe some apostrophe after first syllable? Like: tooli - too'li; kella - kel'la; leili - lei'li; tõugu - tõu'gu.

Your question translated into Estonian in that orthography would be:

Tere!

Ma lugesin, et eesti keeles on kolm foneemi pikkuse astet: pikk, lühike ja ülipikk.

Miks ortograa'fia seda ei näi'ta? Kas pole täh'tis eristada pikki ja ülipikki fonee'me? Nagu te saak'site sellest konteksti põhjal niikuinii aru?

Mis tähendab suprasegmentaal'selt foneemiline? (Vikipee'dia artik'lis eesti keele koh'ta)

Aitäh!



And palatalization occurs only before i or j (there are maybe some exceptions). This i or j may have been lost in nominative stem leaving only palatalization but it still exists in genitive and other cases:

Nom. kann - Gen. kanni (palatalized n)
Nom. kann - Gen. kannu (unpalatalized n)

Nom. jälg - Gen. jälje (palatalized l)
Nom. jalg - Gen. jala (unpalatalized l)

Genitive is the most important case. You have to know it anyway if you learn Estonian.

[0stsee]

Well, most of the Russian speakers don't want to distinguish anything anyway.

So maybe there would be ways to mark those things in orthography. Like overlong with acute: tooli - tóoli; kella - kélla, leili - léili. But what about õ, ä, ö, ü? I personally detest double diacritics like in Livonian. OK, maybe some apostrophe after first syllable? Like: tooli - too'li; kella - kel'la; leili - lei'li; tõugu - tõu'gu.

Your question translated into Estonian in that orthography would be:

Tere!

Ma lugesin, et eesti keeles on kolm foneemi pikkuse astet: pikk, lühike ja ülipikk.

Miks ortograa'fia seda ei näi'ta? Kas pole täh'tis eristada pikki ja ülipikki fonee'me? Nagu te saak'site sellest konteksti põhjal niikuinii aru?

Mis tähendab suprasegmentaal'selt foneemiline? (Vikipee'dia artik'lis eesti keele koh'ta)

Aitäh!



And palatalization occurs only before i or j (there are maybe some exceptions). This i or j may have been lost in nominative stem leaving only palatalization but it still exists in genitive and other cases:

Nom. kann - Gen. kanni (palatalized n)
Nom. kann - Gen. kannu (unpalatalized n)

Nom. jälg - Gen. jälje (palatalized l)
Nom. jalg - Gen. jala (unpalatalized l)

Genitive is the most important case. You have to know it anyway if you learn Estonian.

Aitäh a lot, Loiks!

Well, I've always thought that writing three letters would be the simplest solution. So kooli and koooli for example.

Indonesian also has the problem that e can represents a schwa or an e-sound like in Spanish. No orthography is perfect, I was just wondering whether the long vs. overlong distinction wasn't that important that the orthography ignores it.

[Virankannos]

No orthography is perfect, I was just wondering whether the long vs. overlong distinction wasn't that important that the orthography ignores it.

Mu õpiku järgi ei olevat kõige olulisem asi õppimise alguses täielikult välja hääldada, sest tavaliselt ei sünni arusaamatusi. Aga hääldus olevat võõras, kui selles pikad ja ülipikad foneemid pole eristatud. Muidugi ma arvan, et edenedes see saab kindlasti oluliseks. Soome keele hääldamises on ka asju, mida ortograafia ei näita.

According to my book it's not that important in the beginning to be able to distinguish between long and overlong phonemes, because it normally doesn't cause misunderstandings. It just makes the pronunciation sound non-native. Of course I'm sure that after you have studied long enough, you need to start considering this, too. In the pronunciation of Finnish there are also some things that aren't shown in the orthography.

[Loiks]

Tegelikult ma pole veel kohanud näiteks ühtegi soomlast, kes oskaks hääldada palataliseeritud kaashäälikuid või eesti keele teist väldet, kuigi nad räägivad eesti keelt muus mõttes ilma vigadeta. Aga see ei sega üldse arusaamist, lihtsalt on arusaadav, et tegemist ei ole eestlasega.

Actually I haven't met for instance any Finn who could pronounce palatalized consonants or Estonian second length degree (long), although they speak Estonian in other senses without mistakes. But it doesn't disturb understanding, you just understand that one is not Estonian.


And to Läänemeri (Ostsee ): Three letters in a row seem also very ugly to my eye.

[0stsee]

And to Läänemeri (Ostsee ): Three letters in a row seem also very ugly to my eye.

I just think it's the most practical way rather than creating new diacritics.

Läänemeri

[Travis B.]

But hey, English has one of the most horrible orthography in the world but it is still the most learned language. Nobody wines .

Having a horrible orthography is tolerable in the case of English in that it divorces literary English from any given variety of English as actually spoken; hence it does not impose any particular spoken variety as being truly "standard" on an English-wide level, and allows people who speak different dialects to consider their own pronunciations as equally correct. This is unlike with things like literary Standard German, where the orthography itself prescribes a "correct" pronunciation, with dialects differing from such being thus prescribed as being explicitly nonstandard in nature.

[0stsee]

But hey, English has one of the most horrible orthography in the world but it is still the most learned language. Nobody wines .

Having a horrible orthography is tolerable in the case of English in that it divorces literary English from any given variety of English as actually spoken; hence it does not impose any particular spoken variety as being truly "standard" on an English-wide level, and allows people who speak different dialects to consider their own pronunciations as equally correct. This is unlike with things like literary Standard German, where the orthography itself prescribes a "correct" pronunciation, with dialects differing from such being thus prescribed as being explicitly nonstandard in nature.

This is getting off topic, but would you mind giving some examples please? Thanks!

[Travis B.]

But hey, English has one of the most horrible orthography in the world but it is still the most learned language. Nobody wines .

Having a horrible orthography is tolerable in the case of English in that it divorces literary English from any given variety of English as actually spoken; hence it does not impose any particular spoken variety as being truly "standard" on an English-wide level, and allows people who speak different dialects to consider their own pronunciations as equally correct. This is unlike with things like literary Standard German, where the orthography itself prescribes a "correct" pronunciation, with dialects differing from such being thus prescribed as being explicitly nonstandard in nature.

This is getting off topic, but would you mind giving some examples please? Thanks!

Take the example of lieutenant for instance. In General American, it is [lu(ː)ˈtʰɛnə̃nt], with there being the option of having [ɫ] instead of [l] and or [ɨ̃] instead of [ə̃]. In Received Pronunciation, though, it is the seemingly absurd (to an American) [lɛfˈtʰɛnə̃nt], yet despite how different its pronunciation is from the orthography (which would imply RP [l(j)uːˈtʰɛnə̃nt]) it is still accepted as being perfectly standard. Hence it becomes much harder to object on prescriptive grounds that, say, my own pronunciation of [ɰ(ˡ)uˈtʰɜ̃ːnɨ̃ʔ] or even [ɰ(ˡ)uˈtʰɜ̃ːɨ̯̃ʔ] is somehow "not correct", as clearly the large discrepancy between the RP pronunciation and the pronunciation one would expect in RP from the orthography is clearly not objected to on orthographic grounds except by more ignorant Americans.

[Loiks]

I can by the way say that the length and palatalization issues are also in Estonian not so very hard rules and there are differences between dialects and idiolects. That's why it is better, I think, that these things are unmarked. The word tasku - I've heard both long and overlong; the name Jaan - I've heard both palatalized and unpalatalized n.

[0stsee]

I can by the way say that the length and palatalization issues are also in Estonian not so very hard rules and there are differences between dialects and idiolects. That's why it is better, I think, that these things are unmarked. The word tasku - I've heard both long and overlong; the name Jaan - I've heard both palatalized and unpalatalized n.

Where's the long vowel in the word tasku? ("Tasku" means exactly "my bag" in Indonesian btw. )

Now that you mentioned it, do you actually have very different accents, or are there only slight differences?

[Travis B.]

I can by the way say that the length and palatalization issues are also in Estonian not so very hard rules and there are differences between dialects and idiolects. That's why it is better, I think, that these things are unmarked. The word tasku - I've heard both long and overlong; the name Jaan - I've heard both palatalized and unpalatalized n.

Where's the long vowel in the word tasku? ("Tasku" means exactly "my bag" in Indonesian btw. )

Now that you mentioned it, do you actually have very different accents, or are there only slight differences?

It should be remembered that it can easily be argued that what is called "Estonian" is not really even a single language, but rather two different languages, North Estonian and South Estonian, which themselves have their own dialects (such as the Võro dialect of South Estonian which has provided the literary standard for modern written South Estonian), which in turn often vary significantly (as do, say, Finnish dialects).

[0stsee]

I see. Thanks!

[Travis B.]

I forgot to mention that modern standard literary Estonian is based off of North Estonian, even though a lot of writing historically was in South Estonian (such as the first Estonian bible translation) and there are some writings today in South Estonian dialects (such as the newspaper Uma Leht, which is written in the Võro dialect of South Estonian).

[Loiks]

Where's the long vowel in the word tasku? ("Tasku" means exactly "my bag" in Indonesian btw. )

It doesn't have to be a vowel. In the word tasku we speak about the s. Actually we should speak about short, long and overlong syllables. Tasku means pocket - so the meaning is not so different from Indonesian . It has to be Dutch loanword though, it's tas in Dutch. And (Low) German loanword in Estonian.

Now that you mentioned it, do you actually have very different accents, or are there only slight differences?

As Travis said Võro is very different. It is debated if it is a language or a dialect. I consider it a language. It is difficult to understand it for a regular Northern Estonian as I am. You'd also probably understand when someone is from Saaremaa because they have different palatalization, they lack õ and have different intonation. Oh, and also little island of Kihnu near Pärnu. They still wear national costumes and speak nice dialect. They have some kind of UNESCO protection. There are news in Kihnu dialect on Estonian Radio once a week, I've listened to it.

And then one thing I've noticed is different way of pronouncing word initial h between men and women. Men usually don't pronounce it while women do. I don't know why's that. Maybe women are more correct.

But well, there are never two persons who speak exactly the same way.

[Levo]

As Travis said Võro is very different. It is debated if it is a language or a dialect. I consider it a language. It is difficult to understand it for a regular Northern Estonian as I am. You'd also probably understand when someone is from Saaremaa because they have different palatalization, they lack õ and have different intonation. Oh, and also little island of Kihnu near Pärnu. They still wear national costumes and speak nice dialect. They have some kind of UNESCO protection. There are news in Kihnu dialect on Estonian Radio once a week, I've listened to it.

And then one thing I've noticed is different way of pronouncing word initial h between men and women. Men usually don't pronounce it while women do. I don't know why's that. Maybe women are more correct.

But well, there are never two persons who speak exactly the same way.

I am very surprised, they still wear folk-costumes in Kihnu! I know only one place in Hungary where folk-costumes can be seen on regular days too, but only on little children.
Yeah, no two persons who speak exactly the same way, some pronounce Hungarianish A, some German-like A ,some pronounce funny S and some the one we pronounce in Hungary