Language Information
The Estonian language uses the Latin alphabet and its variants. The Estonian
alphabet consists of 32 letters:
The letters f, š, z and ž are only used in words of foreign
origin, while the letters c, q, w, x and y are used mainly in personal names,
place names and foreign words.
Estonian orthography is
essentially phonemic with each phoneme of the language represented by exactly
one grapheme. Exceptions to this derive from historical agreements - for
example the initial letter 'h' in words, preservation of the morpheme in
declination of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t is pronounced)
and in the use of 'i' and 'j'.
In Estonian nouns and
pronouns do not have grammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in
fourteen cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative,
allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and
comitative, with the case and number of the adjective(s) always agreeing with
that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative,
where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the
genitive form).
The verbal system lacks a
distinctive future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special
forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the
"impersonal").
There
are no articles in Estonian, either definite or
indefinite.
In
Estonian there are three
(over-long, long and short) levels of quantity both in vowels and consonants. The 2nd and 3rd quantities are not distinguished in
spelling; the meaning and pronunciation of the word becomes clear from the
contents. For example:
|
o in 1st quantity |
o |
koli |
trash |
|
l in 1st quantity |
l |
koli
|
trash |
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