|
 |
Estonian: A voyage to understanding | ||
Tags: Estonian | Comprehension/understanding | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5623 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 1 of 11 31 January 2012 at 3:20am | IP Logged | |||||
|
First, I'd like to explain why I'm beginning a journal documenting my Estonian studies. In my time on
the forum I've seen relatively few people learning the language and I haven't seen a regularly updated log for it at all. I feel like there should be a log for people interested in learning the language who want to know what troubles to expect and what kind of progress they can make, therefore I've decided to take it into my own hands even though I haven't been very successful with keeping a journal in the past. I know there have been several very helpful posts, mainly by Chung, describing some of the difficulties, etc. of learning Estonian, but not much at all dealing with problems faced on a daily basis by learners. Since Slavic languages are the only other languages I have any real experience with, I'm going to use Russian relatively often to highlight some grammar quirks, mainly because Estonian grammar is more easily comparable with Russian in many ways. (And actually, since I am in dire need of Russian practice I may make bi- or even trilingual posts, assuming I make enough progress in Estonian.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5623 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 2 of 11 31 January 2012 at 3:46am | IP Logged | |||||
|
And now for the log itself!
I began dabbling in Estonian around September because I met some students at my university from Estonia and because many of my friends are in a master's program that requires one semester's study there. I began mainly by learning some greetings and pleasantries, without bothering to learn much about the grammar at all. I decided a few weeks ago that I would actually start studying the language actively an have been collecting materials since that time. Some of the materials I plan to use are "Basic Course in Estonian" which seems really interesting and mixes grammar and vocabulary pretty well, "E nagu Eesti" which is entirely in Estonian but is actually surprisingly easy to understand after having completed a few lessons of "Basic Course", and "Teach Yourself Estonian", which I haven't really looked at much but which I hear is a decent course. I also have my native speaking friends who are ridiculously good for motivation since they constantly tell me I'm doing well and that I sound like a native Finn speaking Estonian. I'm actually not sure if that is an insult or a complement but I'll just pretend it's a good thing for now. I've been doing great when it comes to verbs, since the verbal system seems ridiculously easy compared to Russian, unless I'm missing something majorly complex. Minus the conjugating for person, the verbs are slightly more akin to English, perhaps even a little simpler. Nominal and adjectival morphology is the part that's killing me right now. The amount of cases and their uses are not the problem, as I've gotten used to complex declension in Russian. The real problem is trying to remember the nominative, genitive, and partitive case of each word, since it's basically impossible to predict without knowledge of another Finno-Ugric language or the complex rules of gradation, etc. My friend did send me a chart that listed 49 different declensions categories which actually has helped a bit, but I think it will be a while before I truly grasp the system. Determining when to use the partitive and when to use the genitive isn't as complex as I had feared and it almost seems similar to the choice of imperfective/perfective verb in Russian, only with the distinction being nominal instead of verbal. Pronunciation isn't a huge problem either. As I said before, my friends say I sound Finnish. The only troublesome sound was "õ", but once I realized it was just an unrounded "o" I picked it up pretty quickly. That's about all I can think of for now, but I'll keep updating with my progress and I'll include more actual examples of Estonian from now on, I just thought I'd start with my overall impression before diving in. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4960 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 3 of 11 31 January 2012 at 4:07am | IP Logged | |||||
|
What dedication to learn such a hard language with such limited usefulness! I haven't
seen anyone else here studying Estonian so I will follow your progress with interest. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7159 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 11 31 January 2012 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Sa oled väga vapper (ja tõesti napakas ;-)), gdoyle. Now that I look back, I could have made a log as I worked through "Teach Yourself Estonian" a few years ago but I didn't get into the language logs until a while after having studied the language. Once you know the stem (and this is can be absolute b!tch to figure out as this summary illustrates), conjugating verbs is often easy since the endings for subjects are consistent. There are rules for figuring out how to form the cases but they're so damned complicated that the IRS' regulations are probably easier to figure out. Note especially the complexity and inherent frustration for learners when it comes to the partitive plural and illative singular.
You're probably better off just memorizing what you need, as inefficient as this approach is when compared to learning other languages. So for nouns and adjectives, memorize the genitive singular, partitive singular and partitive plural while for verbs, memorize the -ma and -da infinitives, and present and passive perfect participle stems. If you ever delve into Finnish later, you'll probably understand better why I've come to think of Estonian as "Colloquial Finnish in anarchy" :-P On the plus side, I doubt that you'd find inflection in Finnish or Saamic (to say nothing about Hungarian's which is child's play compared to all of the others) to be fiendishly difficult after getting used to Estonian inflection. Õnn kaasa! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5623 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 5 of 11 31 January 2012 at 6:42am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Tänan väga. Ma arvan, et ma ei ole vapper (negation requires genitive? Vapra?), aga tõesti napakas olen
küll, jah. It seems like the cases will be slightly easier once I figure out the declension paradigms...although apparently there are almost 50 of them, so I have my work cut out for me. At least my friends are keeping me motivated. Having learned Russian in university classes, I have always been afraid to speak for fear of being corrected in front of my peers (oh the humiliation!) and so it's a nice change of pace to have someone praise my every attempt at speaking. :-D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5623 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 6 of 11 02 February 2012 at 6:04am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Ok, so I haven't been doing much active studying, as I've been worrying about graduation and finding graduate schools. (Oh the horror! Especially since I'm about 4 months late beginning my search) I've been reviewing the first few lessons of "Basic course" just so I can internalize the vocabulary that they use.
The one problem I have with the courses first 3 lessons or so is that when new words are introduced, they aren't introduced with the nominative/genitive/partitive forms. They do begin to list words this way after all of these cases are introduced, as well as in the glossary, but it's still frustrating to be presented a word without all of the important forms. Also, I never understand why partitive/accusative cases are not introduced at the beginning. In most courses that I've come across for both Estonian and Russian, the case for the direct object is usually presented after the genitive and locative cases. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the partitive/accusative is more important. On a positive note, however, I feel like I'm beginning to grasp the concept of consonant gradation, albeit slowly. I have been able to guess, pretty effectively, when a p/t/k will change to a b/d/g and vice-versa and also when certain sounds will be elided altogether. For example, I understand that "Aeg" has "aja" for the genitive form, and that "Jõgi" has "jõe" and the processes that bring that about. Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to do some actually studying this weekend. Also, if anyone cares, I've been looking into some graduate programs at the University of Tartu, just for fun, and I found out that they have a Master's in Finno-Ugric linguistics that seems really awesome. I have been looking for areal linguistics programs like that, so it's something I'd really like to do, but that particular program is only taught in Estonian, and I think it'll be a while before my Estonian is good enough for graduate study. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5536 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 7 of 11 12 February 2012 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I haven't seen those books you're speaking about but here's a quick tip to figure out
declension forms for any particular word. Look the nominative form up in http://www.eki.ee/dict/qs/ and see if there's hyperlinked number behind the headword (there should be). This number shows word type and clicking on it shows you main forms for that particular type of words. There are 69 types and once you figure out type number you should be able to decline the word you just looked up, at least in theory. For example, suppose you're looking for "sammas". It's type 33 "ratas/kallas". Just as you'd form kallas, kalda, kallast, kaldasse, kallaste, kaldaid, kallastesse, kaldaisse you can form sammas, samba, sammast, sambasse, sammaste, sambaid, sammastesse, sambaisse 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tecktight Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States Joined 4979 days ago 227 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian Studies: German, Russian, Estonian | Message 8 of 11 12 February 2012 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
May I just say, I am so thrilled that you decided to make this log, as I have started learning Estonian, as well! I'm
only in the very beginning stages, because a) I haven't had time and b) I've been discouraged by the lack of materials and the constant barrage of petty "why is this useful?" questions from friends fellows. I've only really had an introduction to the language through some German course for Estnisch I found online. I just ordered 'Teach Yourself,' though, and I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival from Amazon. I'll be following this log with disturbing intensity, so please don't be alarmed by my enthusiasm. And good luck to you, as well! 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
