Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Estonian |
EstonianAdjective1. Of or relating to or characteristic of Estonia or its people or language. Noun1. The official language of Estonia; belongs to the Baltic-Finnic family of languages. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Domain | Definition |
Geography | Inhabitant of Estonia. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
nds:Estland
The Republic of Estonia is a small country in Northeastern Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea to the west and the north (including the Gulf of Finland to the north), and sharing a land border with its fellow Baltic state Latvia to the south and with Russia to the east.
- ''Alternate uses: Estonia (disambiguation)
Eesti Vabariik
(In Detail) ''National motto: None'' Official language Estonian Capital Tallinn President Arnold Rüütel Prime Minister Juhan Parts Area
- Total
- % waterRanked 129th
45,226 km²
4.56%Population
- Total (2003)
- DensityRanked 150th
1,408,556
31/km²Independence
- Declared
- RecognisedFrom the Russia
February 24, 1918
February 2, 1920Currency Estonian kroon Time zone UTC +2 National anthem Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm Internet TLD .EE Calling Code 372
History
Main article: History of EstoniaEstonia has been populated by the native Finno Ugric Estonians since prehistory. It was first christianised when the German Sword Brethren and Denmark conquered the land by 1227. Subsequent foreign powers that controlled Estonia at various times included Denmark, Sweden, Poland and finally Russia.
Following the collapse of imperial Russia during the October Revolution, Estonia declared its independence as a republic on February 24, 1918. Forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in June, 1940, it regained its freedom in August 20, 1991 with the Singing Revolution and collapse of the Soviet Union. August 20 remains a national holiday in Estonia because of this.
Since the last Russian troops left on August 31 1994, Estonia has been free to promote economic and political ties with Western Europe. It is seeking membership of NATO and Estonia opened accession negotiations with European Union in 1998 and is planning to join in 2004.
Politics
Main article: Politics of EstoniaEstonia is a constitutional democracy, with a president elected by the parliament (elections every five years) and a unicameral parliament. The government or the executive branch is formed by the prime minister, nominated by the president, and a total of 15 ministers. The government is appointed by the president after approval by the parliament.
Legislative power lies with the unicameral parliament, the Riigikogu or State Assembly, which holds 101 seats. Members are elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms. The supreme judiciary court is the National Court or Riigikohus, with 17 justices whose chairman is appointed by the parliament for life on nomination by the president.
Counties
Main article: Counties of EstoniaEstonia numbers 15 main administrative subdivisions, called counties (maakonnad, singular - maakond):
- Harjumaa
- Hiiumaa
- Eastern Virumaa (Ida-Virumaa)
- Järvamaa
- Jõgevamaa
- Läänemaa
- Western Virumaa (Lääne-Virumaa)
- Pärnumaa
- Põlvamaa
- Raplamaa
- Saaremaa
- Tartumaa
- Valgamaa
- Viljandimaa
- Võrumaa
Geography
Main article: Geography of EstoniaBetween 57.3 and 59.5 latitude and 21.5 and 28.1 longitude, Estonia lies on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea on the level northwestern part of the rising east European platform. Average elevation reaches only 50 m.
Oil shale (or kukersite) and limestone deposits, along with forests which cover 47% of the land, play key economic roles in this generally resource-poor country. Estonia boasts over 1,400 lakes (most very small, with the largest, Lake Peipsi, being 3,555 km²), numerous bogs, and 3,794 kilometers of coastline marked by numerous bays, straits, and inlets. The number of islands and islets is estimated at some 1,500 with two large enough to constitute their own counties, Saaremaa and Hiiumaa.
Its highest point is the Suur Munamägi in the southeastern corner of the country (318 m).
Economy
Main article: Economy of EstoniaIn 1999, Estonia experienced its worst year economically since it regained independence in 1991, largely because of the impact of the August 1998 Russian financial crisis. Estonia joined the WTO in November 1999 - the second Baltic state to join - and continued its EU accession talks. Privatisation of energy, telecommunications, railways, and other state-owned companies is a continuing process. Estonia expects to complete its preparations for EU membership by the end of 2002 and is one of the economic front-runners of those seeking entry in 2004. The Estonian economy is growing fast, partly due to a number of Finnish companies relocating their routine operations. It's economy is one of the strongest of those countries planning to join European Union.
Demographics
Main article: Demographics of EstoniaAbout two thirds of the population consist of Estonians, with the rest from other former Soviet republics, mainly Russia, who predominantly live in the capital Tallinn. There is also a small group of Finnish descent.
The country's official language is Estonian, which is closely related to Finnish. Russian is also widely spoken.
The majority of Estonians are Lutheran, whereas the Russian minority is Eastern Orthodox.
Culture
Main article: Culture of Estonia
- List of famous Estonians
- Tartu University
- Music of Estonia
Miscellaneous topics
- Communications in Estonia
- Transportation in Estonia
- Military of Estonia
- Foreign relations of Estonia
- Tourism in the Baltics
- List of cities in Estonia
- Crime in Estonia
- The Estonian State Decorations
- List of people on stamps of Estonia
External links
- Official State Website (eRiik) - in English
- Estonia Country Guide
European Union:
Austria | Belgium | Denmark | Finland | France | Germany | Greece | Ireland
Italy | Luxembourg | Netherlands | Portugal | Spain | Sweden | United KingdomCountries acceding to membership on May 1, 2004:
Cyprus | Czech Republic | Estonia | Hungary | Latvia | Lithuania | Malta | Poland | Slovakia | Slovenia
Countries of the world | Europe | Council of Europe Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Estonia."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Estonian literary language is based on Latin alphabet. The Estonian alphabet consists of 32 letters:
See also: Letter Ä, Letter Ö, Letter Ü, Letter Õ, Finnish alphabet
- A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, Š, Z, Ž, T, U, V, W, Õ, Ä, Ö, Ü, X, Y
External links
- Alphabet, Ortography, Pronunciation
- The Estoninan alphabet
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Estonian alphabet."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Estonian language (eesti keel) is spoken by about 1.1 million people, of which the great majority live in the Republic of Estonia.Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. Estonian is not, as is sometimes thought, in any way related to its nearest geographic neighbors, Latvian and Lithuanian, which are Baltic languages, but is related to Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland, and Hungarian. In fact, the northern dialects of Estonian are sufficiently similar to Finnish for the two to be mutually intelligible.
One of the distinctive features of Estonian is that it has three degrees of phoneme length: short, long, and "overlong", such that SAMPA /toto/, /to:to/ and /to::to/ are distinct, as are /toto/, /tot:o/, and /tot::o/. The distinction between long and overlong is, in practice, as much a matter of syllable stress as duration; they are not distinguished in written Estonian.
Like Latvian and Lithuanian, Estonian employs the Roman script. The alphabet lacks the letters c, q, w, x, y, ('foreign letters'; except for foreign names and quote words and phrases) but contains the letters ä, ö, ü, and õ. The last letter denotes a high, central, unrounded vowel (SAMPA /1/). (It has a different sound than the same letter in Portuguese).
Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to an inflected language. Over the course of its history, it has been subjected to a strong influence from German, both in vocabulary and syntax.
Estonian does not have grammatical gender, but each noun is declined in fourteen cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative.
One of the pecularities of the case system is the absence of the accusative case. Rather, the direct object of the verb is supplied by either the genitive (for total objects) or the partitive (for partial objects).
The verbal system is characterized by the absence of the future tense (the present tense is used) and by the existence of special forms to express an action performed by an undermined subject (the "impersonal").
See also: List of tongue-twisters
External links
- The Estonian edition of Wikipedia
- An Estonian-English and English-Estonian dictionary
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Estonian language."
Synonym: EstonianSynonym: Esthonian (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Estonian |
| English words defined with "Estonian": Baltic-Finnic ♦ Fennic, Finnic ♦ Non-Ugric. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Estonian" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Romanian (esthonian). |
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | Jewett City, Connecticut (vicinity). Daughter of Estonian farmer. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
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| "London" by Tanel Viksi Commentary: "One estonian guy in london sept. 2003." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Business | Estonian Telecom comprises both the fixed line and mobile business. (references) | |
During the trial period, nearly 12,000 Estonian taxpayers took advantage of the service. (references) | ||
As of summer 2000, 28 percent of the Estonian population were Internet users and 33 percent used cellular phones. (references) | ||
Children | Estonia | The law allows for persons with serious sight, hearing, or speech impediments to become naturalized citizens without having to pass an examination on the Estonian Constitution and language. (references) |
Civil Liberties | Estonia | Although a decision was made in 2000 to combine ETV and Estonian (state/public) Radio into one entity, no real movement toward that end has taken place. (references) |
Estonia | In February the European Court of Human Rights upheld the Estonian courts' 1997 decision to convict and fine a prominent journalist for insulting the spouse of a prominent politician in a newspaper interview. (references) | |
Economic History | Estonia | Languages: Estonian. (references) |
Estonia | Over 56% of Estonian farms were collectivized in the month of April 1949 alone. (references) | |
Estonia | The oldest known examples of written Estonian originate in 13th century chronicles. (references) | |
Human Rights | Estonia | Because of tensions surrounding the adoption of the Elections Law and the Aliens Law in 1993, the President established a roundtable composed of representatives of the State Assembly, the Union of Estonian Nationalities, and the Russian-speaking population's Representative Assembly. (references) |
Minorities | Estonia | All decisions are in Estonian, but if a complaint is received in a language other than Estonian (usually Russian), the court provides a translation. (references) |
Estonia | Some noncitizen residents, especially ethnic Russians, continued to allege job, salary, and housing discrimination because of Estonian language requirements. (references) | |
Political Economy | Estonia | Some officials in the United Nations, the Russian Government, and members of the local ethnic Russian community continued to criticize the Citizenship and Aliens' Law as discriminatory for its Estonian language requirements. (references) |
Trade | Latvia | Currently there are four foreign banks operating in Latvia, two German banks, one Estonian bank and Finnish Bank Merita branch. (references) |
Worker Rights | Estonia | It also concluded several bilateral agreements on the extradition of Estonian citizens accused of trafficking in other countries. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Estonian" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 99.28% of the time. "Estonian" is used about 139 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 99.28% | 138 | 27,024 |
| Noun (singular) | 0.72% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 139 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "Estonian": Estonian kroon ♦ estonian republic ♦ estonian woman. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "Estonian": estonian-latvian, estonian-russian. | |
Ending with "Estonian": non-estonian. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "Estonian"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | Ests, Est. (various references) | |
Albanian | estonez, eston. (various references) | |
Arabic | من أبناء إستونيا, أستونيه, أستونى. (various references) | |
Asturian | Estoniu. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | естонски език, естонски, естонец. (various references) | |
Cebuano | Estonyano. (various references) | |
Chinese | 爱沙尼亚 (Estonia). (various references) | |
Czech | estonský. (various references) | |
Danish | ester,estlænder. (various references) | |
Dutch | Estlands, Estlander, Est. (various references) | |
Esperanto | estono, estona. (various references) | |
Estonian | eesti. (various references) | |
Faeroese | estonianskt. (various references) | |
Finnish | virolainen (Esthonian). (various references) | |
French | Estonien. (various references) | |
Frisian | Estysk. (various references) | |
German | este, estin. (various references) | |
Greek | Εσθονός, εστονικός. (various references) | |
Hungarian | észt (esthonian, Estonian woman), észt nyelv (Esthonian), észt ember (Esthonian). (various references) | |
Italian | estone. (various references) | |
Manx | Estoinagh. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | estonianay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | estoniano, estónio, estônio. (various references) | |
Romanian | eston (esthonian). (various references) | |
Russian | эстонский, эстонец эстонский, эстонец. (various references) | |
Samoan | Esotonia. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | estonski jezik, estonski, estonac. (various references) | |
Spanish | estonio. (various references) | |
Swedish | estländare. (various references) | |
Thai | ชาวเอสโตเนีย, ภาษาเอสโตเนีย. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Estonian" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: altonian, astonian, Ectona, estalian, Esthonia, instonian, meltonian, mertonian, seatonian, suttonian. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: enations, sonatine. | |
| Words within the letters "a-e-i-n-n-o-s-t" | |
-1 letter: anoints, atonies, enation, inanest, intones, nations, onanist, stanine, tension. | |
-2 letters: anenst, anions, anoint, atones, eonian, inanes, innate, insane, intone, nasion, nation, nitons, nonets, sennit, sienna, sonant, sonnet, tenias, tennis, tenons, tineas, tisane, tonnes. | |
-3 letters: aeons, anent, anion, anise, antes, antis, atone, entia, eosin, etnas, inane, inset, iotas, nates, neats, neist, neons, nines, nites. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-e-i-n-n-o-s-t" | |
+1 letter: anointers, antinodes, antinoise, innovates, intonates, negations, nominates, reanoints, sanbenito, sensation, tensional, venations. | |
+2 letters: abstention, anthelions, antimonies, antinomies, antinovels, antonymies, attentions, containers, crenations, emanations, isoantigen, lineations, melatonins, mentations, negotiants, nervations, nonascetic, nonelastic, nonnatives, resonating, sanbenitos, sanctioned, senatorian, sensations, stentorian, vernations. | |
+3 letters: abnegations, abstentions, alienations, ancestoring, angiotensin, annexations, anointments, anonymities, antagonizes, antileptons, antimoderns, antimonides, antiphonies, antipodeans, assentation, catenations, concertinas, confidantes, constancies, constrained, denegations, denominates, denotations, denudations, designation, destination, detonations, elongations, emendations, enantiomers, enervations, enunciators, extensional, geminations, generations, herniations, indexations, infestation, inobservant, inseminator, insertional, intensional, intravenous, isoantigens, langoustine, mensuration, nationalise, nitrogenase, nitrosamine, nominatives, nonascetics, noncabinets, nondeviants, nucleations, numerations, obtainments, ordainments, ostentation, personating, personation, postweaning, quaternions, renominates, renovations, resignation, sensational, sinfonietta, spontaneity, stanchioned, stenohaline, supernation, transection, venerations. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Quotations: Non-fiction | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Derivations 14. Anagrams 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
