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Estonian Language

Estonian alphabet, Estonian orthography, Estonian language history and sources

Estonian language

Estonian: Official language of Estonia since 1988.

Language Classification: It belongs to Finno-Ugric group of languages. The largest Finno-Ugric languages are Hungarian and Finnish. Close to the Finnish languages. The Finno-Ugric languages are not part of Indo-European family of languages.

Estonian Alphabet: It uses Roman alphabet. It has 9 vowels and 17 consonants.

Estonian Orthography: Word order is flexible.

Estonian Language History: First written words go back to the 13th century. Standard written form started in 1850.

Estonian Language Enriched by: Estonian is influenced by Low and High German, Swedish, and Russian.

Modern Estonian - Major Events: After the national awakening in the mid-19th century, Estonian was widely used in literature. Linguist Johannes Aavik led the renewal campaign. Major development occurred after independence in 1918.

"Free" instant quote for Estonian translation by email: translation@acrusa.net or call: 858-922-7724 or  Fax: 480-247-5474

Unique Features of Estonian: Estonian is one of the hardest languages to learn. The sound of Estonian is exotic and intimate. Estonian language was the most powerful tie to keep Estonian identity during Soviet regime.

For more linguistic affiliation, language variation, orthography, linguistic sketch, and history of Estonian language UCLA Language Materials Project has a good linguistics and interlingual background information on Estonian.

Estonian language is included in the Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) which is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

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