(A Very Brief Introduction to the Estonian Language, snippet 2)
Estonian is said to be a “transitional form from an agglutinating to an inflected language”, an opinion most of us would find hard to argue with, but not very helpful either. Without going into too much detail and embarrassing myself, what it essentially boils down to is that it piles dozens of different endings (usually one at a time, thank God) onto the root of the word, and, in case that’s too easy, changes the root spelling. In English, for example, a river’s a river. OK, you take on an “s” if there’s lots of them but that’s about it, although one or two verbs are, admittedly, a bit iffy, with speak, spake, spook, as Hyman Kaplan would have said, but Estonian? It’s on viagra... Take a look at this:
Nominative - jõgi - river
Genitive - jõe - of the/a river
Partitive - jõge - e.g. pumping the/a river*
Illative - jõesse - into the/a river
Inessive - jões - in the/a river
Elative - jõest - from, out of the/a river
Allative - jõele - to the/a river
Adessive - jõel - upon, on the/a river
Ablative - jõelt - from, off the/a river
Translative - jõeks - for, as the/a river
Essive - jõena - as the/a river
Terminative - jõeni - up to, until the/a river
Abessive - jõeta - without the/a river
Comitative - jõega - with the/a river
* Partitive singular also used for number of things, so two rivers would be kaks jõge... (see below)
... which raises various points: this is the singular so multiply by two; no difference between “the” and “a”; adjectives only follow suit until the translative, after which they throw up their hands in despair and go genitive (which does actually simplify things); various forms get shortened (e.g. illative jõesse to jõkke, a real ink saver that one); the inessive plural probably has two forms and on-one even mentions the instructive (or the prolative), then there’s the exceptions, the maybes, the sort-ofs, and the ones that no-one’s quite sure about. Rumor has it that Estonia has a 24/7 helpline for natives worried about their declining capabilities... Anyone remember German or Latin with its pathetic little band of conjugations and declensions (der, die, das, amo, amas, amat)? Estonian has 600 of the buggers.
- A Rambling Dictionary of Tallinn Street Names, Simon Hamilton page vii
