Estonia - Old Postcards
The Origins of the Estonian Language
Douglas Wells
I just celebrated my fifth year in Estonia
and my fifth fruitless year
trying to figure out how to correctly speak
Estonian. I mean really, it
wouldn't be so bad if Estonians weren't so
smug about it. Oh, they will congratulate
you on your good Estonian even if you can
speak a few words, but
deep inside they really don't want you to
learn it! They
are so happy with their secret code and you
can see it every time
someone asks you "Oh, are you learning to
speak Estonian?". Then comes
the sly grin, the "You've got a snowball's
chance in hell of learning
OUR language" grin. This is quickly replaced
by a faked look of concern
as they say "Oh,
its a very difficult language isn't it?".
I think after this, they go off
and laugh uncontrollably and give high-fives
to other Estonians, but I haven't
actually seen it happen. I
have decided to write an expose on the Estonian
language. One time I
sent my brother a tape of Estonian language
and he asked me if Estonians have
an obsession with sex. There is terviseks
and ostmiseks and kasutamiseks,
teadmiseks, parandamiseks and armastamiseks.
All kinds of "seks".
That,
plus the fact that after five years, little
kids still laugh when I speak
Estonian has made me decide to tell all. The
real story behind why Estonian
is the way it is. A
long time ago, about 1000 or 1100 A.D. there
three Estonian guys sitting
around the campfire. Their names were Billy,
Ray and Duke (bet you didn't
know that these are real ancient Estonian
names). It was winter time
and they were bored. Billy
spoke first. "Ya know Ray, what we need is
a new language". "Damn
stright!" said Ray, "Talkin' this way is gettin'
boring and besides everybody
almost understands us. We need a language
that's sooo crazy, soooooo
complicated that nobody will ever understands
what's going on!". As
the idea picked up steam, Duke piped up. "Lets
do it this way, that
you can't say he or she. That way you won't
know if your talkin' about
a man or woman. Also, we gotta think up names
for people that give no
clue to foreigners about their gender, names
that change with the grammar
so you never know what to call somebody". Ray
nodded in approval "Yeah," he said thoughtfully
"that's it. Then we can
eliminate the future tense. Think of trying
to ask someone out on date when
you can't say the right name, whether it's
a boy or girl or when it is
going to happen!" Billy,
the smart one, was thinking in more technical
terms already. "OK,
let's make it this way, that when you learn
a noun, you don't have to learn
just one word but FOURTEEN. Yeah and instead
of just saying that you are
going to or from something, you have to change
the noun in some weird way". Now
Ray was excited and spilled his beer. "Yeah
Yeah! And ... and ... the nouns
can't change the same way, let's make like,
a hundred different spelling
groups that all change in different ways!". This
appealed to Duke who added slyly, "Ya wanna
make it real hard, a real nut-buster?
Let's make it so all adjectives change, too.
In boring old English,
you say 'five small, red houses', 'small,
red houses' and 'many small,
red houses'. Small and red always stay the
same but in our new language?
Whoaaaa Nellie!". They
exchange high fives all around and cracked
a few beers. After that they
started practicing how to say 'Oh,
you're learning Estonian' without busting
up laughing. That's
how Estonian came to be, honest!