Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby Virankannos » 2016-04-02, 13:10

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Or does the distinction between palatalised and non-palatalised just concern the basic core form, and stay the same regardless of what endings may follow? (I am at A0 level here, so I am just trying to get a grip on the basic pronunciation.)
Yes, the palatalisation is determined by the basic form and is retained throughout the paradigm. See this post.
Last edited by Virankannos on 2016-04-03, 10:59, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby ainurakne » 2016-04-02, 13:44

Virankannos wrote:Yes, the palatalisation is determined by the basic form and is retained throughout the paradigm.
:hmm: This makes me wonder, why isn't palatalization consistent here then:
tuli : tule : tuld (fire)

I'm pretty sure that tuli should be palatalized. At least I have always done that. It would be unnatural to not palatalize it. Unfortunately I can't check this, because ÕS doesn't mark palatalizations in front of i and j, stating that they are implicit.
I'm also certain that tule and tuld are not palatalized.
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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby Virankannos » 2016-04-03, 10:57

Yes, you're right, my initial explanation was wrong. The decisive factor is not the basic (nominative) form, but the stem vowel, which is visible in the genitive form. Tuli (along with käsi, lumi, vesi etc.) belongs to a class of old words where a change from word-final -*e to -i occurred in the nominative singular; the stem vowel is still -e regardless, so no palatalisation takes place.

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby littlepond » 2016-04-24, 17:08

Being an Estonian learner, I was just reading this discussion, though more than half of it is above my head at this moment.

But I was fascinated by a remark from tunguuz:
"meel is a very specific ancient word not having the direct translation into indo-european and it means the unity between the mind, mood and conciousness."

If that is what meel means indeed, then the word very much exists in some Indo-European languages: for example, "man" in Hindi, which means exactly that unity. The word is untranslatable in any of the other languages I knew till now, but I am happy to find that maybe I have discovered a language in which Hindi "man" is, at least closely if not perfectly, translatable.
[flag=]hi[/flag] born in it, [flag=]en[/flag] first love, [flag=]fr[/flag] can discuss philosophy in it, [flag=]gu[/flag] can hear garba all night long, [flag=]it[/flag] can just about manage in it, [flag=]de[/flag] remnants of forgotten basics, [flag=]et[/flag] learning with zest, [flag=]sa[/flag] was in school and now want to re-learn, [flag=]no[/flag][flag=]sv[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag][flag=]ta[/flag] next on radar

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby ainurakne » 2016-04-25, 10:04

Meel can have a lot of different meanings in English.
Here are some that I could think of:

Thinking and remembering:
Mis sul meeles mõlgub? ~ What thoughts are wandering in your mind?
Mis meelel, see keelel. ~ What's on one's mind, is on one's tongue.
ühel meelel olema ~ to agree, to have agreeing thoughts

meeles olema ~ to remember, to have a memory of
meelde jääma ~ to get remembered
meelde jätma ~ to remember, to "put" into memory
meelde tulema ~ when a memory comes back, pops up from the depths of mind
meelde tuletama ~ to recall a memory
meelest minema ~ to forget

Moods:
hea meel ~ gladness, happiness
meel on rõõmus, paha, murelik, nukker, kurb;
hea meelega -> meelsasti ~ gladly

Intellect, thinking ability:
meelest segane, meelest ära ~ grazy, out of one's mind
meelest nõder, nõdrameelne ~ senile
meel jääb töntsiks ~ mind becomes dull

Nature, character:
aus meel (honest nature; ausameelne ~ honest-minded), õiglane meel (righteous, fair nature), kriitiline meel (critical mind), pikk meel (patient nature), äkiline meel (quick temper), isemeelne (stubborn).

Senses:
Viis meelt (5 senses): nägemine (/ nägemismeel), kuulmine (/ kuulmismeel), haistmine (/ haistmismeel, haistemeel), kompimine (/ kompimismeel, kompemeel), maitsmine (/ maitsmismeel, maitsemeel);
kuues meel (6th sense).

Opinions:
Minu meelest ... ~ In my opinion ...

Pleasing, liking:
meelepärane olema, meele järele olema, meelt mööda olema ~ to pease, to be likable, to be appealing
-> meeldima ~ to appeal to (to like)
-> meelitama ~ to flatter, to butter up
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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby littlepond » 2016-04-25, 14:12

This is very interesting for me, ainurakne; thanks so much. In that case, "meel" maps almost perfectly to "man" of Hindi! I said almost because only the five senses meanings do not map: in all other cases you mentioned, we use the word "man" in Hindi, which needs a variety of translations in English, just as you need to do with "meel".

I never thought that I would find the concept of "man" in any other culture!
[flag=]hi[/flag] born in it, [flag=]en[/flag] first love, [flag=]fr[/flag] can discuss philosophy in it, [flag=]gu[/flag] can hear garba all night long, [flag=]it[/flag] can just about manage in it, [flag=]de[/flag] remnants of forgotten basics, [flag=]et[/flag] learning with zest, [flag=]sa[/flag] was in school and now want to re-learn, [flag=]no[/flag][flag=]sv[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag][flag=]ta[/flag] next on radar

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby isusbellus » 2016-08-31, 16:50

Ma ei sa kõik aru ja mind ärritab

I don't understand everything and its irritating/irritate me

Correct?
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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby ainurakne » 2016-08-31, 18:43

Ma ei saa kõigest aru ja see on ärritav / ... ja see ärritab mind (/ ... ja mind see ärritab)

Or "Mind ärritab (see), et ma ei saa kõigest aru"
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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby isusbellus » 2016-09-01, 10:28

Aitäh, Kiitos, Tack
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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby księżycowy » 2016-09-24, 16:27

Tere!

I'm interesting in learning some Estonian in the near future, and have been trying to get some resources to that end. I've gotten some really good textbooks, but I have yet to find a good dictionary. I was wondering if anyone knew of a good Estonian <-> English or Estonian -> English dictionary (preferably both ways, but if I have to, I'll take from Estonian to English only)? Having looked into the grammar and pronunciation a bit, I was wondering if there were any dictionaries that give any info on that sort of stuff, otherwise the dictionary would be hard for a learner like me to use.

I've seen that this dictionary is listed on Amazon at a good price and a good review, but one review is not much to go on.

Any help would be appreciated!
Tänan!

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby littlepond » 2016-09-25, 15:24

I use the fantastic kn.eki.ee (Estonian-Estonian) in conjunction with Google Translate: that coupled with some common sense and hard work is a lot, really. In my opinion, using a dictionary that is same to same language is very important from the very beginning, especially to learn a language by standing in its own mind (for example, the Estonian word "meel": to get a sense of it, one needs to go to an Est-Est dictionary).
[flag=]hi[/flag] born in it, [flag=]en[/flag] first love, [flag=]fr[/flag] can discuss philosophy in it, [flag=]gu[/flag] can hear garba all night long, [flag=]it[/flag] can just about manage in it, [flag=]de[/flag] remnants of forgotten basics, [flag=]et[/flag] learning with zest, [flag=]sa[/flag] was in school and now want to re-learn, [flag=]no[/flag][flag=]sv[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag][flag=]ta[/flag] next on radar

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby księżycowy » 2016-09-25, 15:41

I meant to specify a print dictionary before. Thanks though, cause online dictionaries can be useful too.

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby Linguaphile » 2016-09-25, 17:29

księżycowy wrote:Tere!

I'm interesting in learning some Estonian in the near future, and have been trying to get some resources to that end. I've gotten some really good textbooks, but I have yet to find a good dictionary. I was wondering if anyone knew of a good Estonian <-> English or Estonian -> English dictionary (preferably both ways, but if I have to, I'll take from Estonian to English only)? Having looked into the grammar and pronunciation a bit, I was wondering if there were any dictionaries that give any info on that sort of stuff, otherwise the dictionary would be hard for a learner like me to use.

I've seen that this dictionary is listed on Amazon at a good price and a good review, but one review is not much to go on.

Any help would be appreciated!
Tänan!


I'm not familiar with the dictionary you linked to. I am familiar with a few others. I will copy from each one the entry for leht so that you can get an idea of how words are presented.

Eesti-Inglise sõnaraamat by Enn Veldi. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht leaf (pl leaves), (palmi-) frond; (raamatu-) page; (paberi-) sheet; (ajaleht) newspaper leht nätsu stick/piece of gum lehte minema break into leaf lehte pöörama turn the page lehti rehitsema rake leaves

Eesti-Inglise sõnaraamat koolidele by C. Parts. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht (puu~, raamatu~ jms.) leaf* [li:f]; (paberi~) sheet [ʃi:t]; (aja~) newspaper ['nju:speipə], paper lehte: ~ minema come* into leaf

Eesti-Inglise sõnaraamat koolidele by J. Silvet. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht (puu~, raamatu~ jms.) leaf (pl. leaves); (metalli~, paberi~) sheet; (aja~) (news)paper lehte: ~ minema = lehistuma

Estonian-English English-Estonian Dictionary by Ksana Kyiv. (English-to-Estonian and Estonian-to-English)
leht [leht] n.leaf
leaf [li:f] n. leht; ~let n. leheke; lendleht

Eesti-Inglise sõnaraamat by Paul Saagpakk. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht [-he] 175 s. leaf (pl. leaves) (ka raamatu-); (paberi-, metalli-) sheet (of paper) (õhuke sheet; sae- blad; E. pop. (news-)paper; lehed (pl.) leaves; lehelt laulma to sing at sight; puud lasevad v. langetavad lehti the trees are shedding their leaves; (aja-)lehe tellimine magazine subscription; ta keeras ~i he turned over the pages; et see lehte läheb (E. fam) that it will go in; ~edega -leaved (tarvit. er. liitsõnades); vt. lehte, lehtes; ~- atr. foliaceous; ~adru 328 s. (bot.) tangle.... (continues for 4 more lines)


Of these, Saagpakk's is by far the most comprehensive (it's huge) and marks palatization and overlong syllables and declination forms, which the others don't. However, the words are pretty dated, some back to before World War II from what I understand. It's also difficult to find and expensive unless you happen across a used copy.
Ksana Kyiv's is tiny by comparison but you can usually find it for less than $10 and it's not bad for a beginner, and useful that you can search for words in either language. I suspect the K. Kiik one you linked to may be better though, just based on the fact that Kyiv's has 10,000 words and Kiik's says it has 40,000.

Online, http://kn.eki.ee/ has already been mentioned. Another good one is http://www.keeleveeb.ee/, which lets you search a huge number of different online dictionaries at once - several English-Estonian dictionaries, Estonian-to-other-languages, several monolingual dictionaries, etymology, Estonian dialects, morphology, etc. It's excellent. Also I'm not sure if http://www.filosoft.ee/gene_et/ has been mentioned yet but it will give you all the case-forms and conjugations of any word, much more comprehensive than ANY dictionary in terms of grammatical forms.
Really I'd probably go with one of the smaller Eng-Est/Est-Eng dictionaries (Kyiv or Kiik) along with the online resources, then get a larger dictionary later if you feel the need. I use the online resources more than anything now.

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby księżycowy » 2016-09-25, 19:13

Thanks for the informative post, Linguaphile!
I think I'll give Kiik's dictionary a short.

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby Lumilintu » 2016-09-29, 7:50

The best Estonian dictionary for foreigners I have seen so far is actually an Estonian-German one. That probably won't be of help for most of you, but I thought I'd mention it anyway, maybe it's of use for someone after all. I haven't seen anything comparable for Estonian-English, mostly because most dictionaries are rather meant for Estonian speakers learning English than vice versa, so they often lack grammatical information and exact meanings of the Estonian words.
I didn't know about Saagpakk's dictionary, though. Does it have declination/conjugation tables as well? Or what do the numbers refer to?

The Estonian-German dictionary I meant is Wörterbuch Estnisch-Deutsch (eesti-saksa sõnaraamat) by Berthold Forssmann.
leh/t, -e, -te, -ti/-tesid²¹ 1. Blatt, Laubblatt 2. Blatt Papier 3. Zeitung 4. s. auch lehtes; lehte minema sich belauben
lehteminek, -u, -ut, -uid⁸ Belaubung
lehtes 1. belaubt 2. s. auch leht
lehthaaval Blatt für Blatt
lehthõbe, -da, -dat, -daid⁸ Blattsilber
lehti/ma, -da, -n⁵¹ sich belauben
...

For someone who studies Estonian, that dictionary is ideal in the sense that it really gives all the forms you need. For a noun that would e.g. be nom sg, gen sg, part sg and part pl short and/or long form. It also has declination and conjugation tables sorted by word types.
It's rather up to date, too - my copy is from 2005. It has 70 000 entries.

As for Estonian-English-Estonian, I would go for a dictionary with as many words as possible and in addition use some of the online dictionaries offered by the Estonian Language Institute. For example ÕIS gives also enough information on word forms and types: http://www.eki.ee/dict/qs/index.cgi?Q=leht&F=M
For advanced speakers, EKSS might help as well: http://eki.ee/dict/ekss/index.cgi?Q=leht&F=M
But yeah, instead of that, you can also use littlepond's link which has all the dictionaries combined. :)
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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby księżycowy » 2016-09-29, 9:36

I'm actually brushing up my German at the moment, so I could potentially get use out of the Estonian - German dictionary. Thanks!

And thanks for the other suggestions as well.

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby Naava » 2016-12-15, 14:35

I saw this in the translation topic:

Esiteks saabus ajakirjanik, kellele/talle järgnes politseinik.


What is this esiteks? Where does it come from? I think esi- is related to words meaning 'front', but does -te- mean something, too?

I'm asking this because my dialect has the word este or esteks meaning 'first', as in 'something happens before something else'. None of my friends from Southern Finland recognized this word or even knew what it means when I used it. Could it be the same word as esiteks? If so, I'm quite surprised! :o

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby Linguaphile » 2016-12-15, 15:12

Naava wrote:I saw this in the translation topic:

Esiteks saabus ajakirjanik, kellele/talle järgnes politseinik.


What is this esiteks? Where does it come from? I think esi- is related to words meaning 'front', but does -te- mean something, too?

I'm asking this because my dialect has the word este or esteks meaning 'first', as in 'something happens before something else'. None of my friends from Southern Finland recognized this word or even knew what it means when I used it. Could it be the same word as esiteks? If so, I'm quite surprised! :o


Congratulations, you speak Estonian! :D
But seriously, it means "first of all," "in the first place," "to begin with" and so on. There are a lot of related words (esi; ees 'front, before', esimene 'first', esik 'hallway, entryway', etc) having to do with "first" or "front".
Here is the dictionary entry for it from EKSS: http://www.eki.ee/dict/ekss/index.cgi?Q=esiteks&F=M
Even more interesting are the dialect forms, which include estes in Haljala and Vaivara, really similar to your este and esteks. I'm curious, which part of Finland is your dialect from?

(Here is the horribly long URL link to the Estonian dialect forms: http://www.eki.ee/cgi-bin/vms.cgi?mrks=esiteks&maxm=100&kk_yks=&nmin_yks=1&nmax_yks=116&mmin_yks=0&mmax_yks=116&kk_kaks=&nmin_kaks=0&nmax_kaks=116&mmin_kaks=0&mmax_kaks=116&kk_kolm=&nmin_kolm=0&nmax_kolm=116&mmin_kolm=0&mmax_kolm=116)

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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby ainurakne » 2016-12-15, 16:18

I use it mostly as "firstly", when referring to things in order (esiteks, teiseks, kolmandaks, ...). So, the second point from EKSS: usage in place of "esimeseks".

I have also heard it being used for "before" and "earlier", together with its variation "esteks", which I have also heard quite a lot. So, I guess, it's quite similar to your dialect.

I'm not sure exactly, but could it be (at least in Estonian) something like "esiti" mutated to "esite" + translative.

Also, a fun fact: the genitive form of "esi" is "ee" :mrgreen:
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Re: Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

Postby ainurakne » 2016-12-15, 16:43

By the way, has anyone seen that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J388u1mJVyM

I wonder if there is more Proto-Finnic (/pre Proto-Finnic) in the whole movie. And how correct is it.
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