Küsimus eesti keele kohta / Questions about Estonian

[ainurakne]

To my ears, the õ of the first three words is slightly more relaxed and open than the õõ of the last two words.

Indeed, "õ" in the first three words seem to be a bit more relaxed while in the other two it is more intense and thus is generated farther back in the mouth. I bet that if all those words would have been said by the same person and inside a longer text, they would have sounded more similar.

I read from Wikipedia that õ can be "mid back, close back, or mid central". Does this happen in certain contexts or is it just up to the speaker which one they'll use?

I think it depends on both: the context and the speaker (how intensely or lazily he or she pronounces "õ"). But until today, all "õ"-s have sounded the same to me.

Is there any dialectal variation? I know that some dialects lack õ, but for example my teacher's õ sounds like Russian Ы to me. Is there a dialect with Ы-like õ or is that one possible (standard) pronunciation, too?

I know that Võro language has two different "õ"-s: madal "õ" (or eestipärane "õ") and kõrge "õ" (which, I guess, is similar to Russian Ы; but I don't think I have heard it myself yet).

I'd also like to ask about -gi. If anyone happens to speak Finnish / know the answer, is it used like Finnish -kin? For example
minäkin lähden - I'll go, too
minä lähdenkin - I changed my mind, I'll go / but I go to X (and you don't)

In case of non-verbs, I think it should have the same meaning as Finnish -kin, it's pretty much the same as "ka(a)" or "samuti" (too, also), but more precise, because you can target specific words. But there is no equivalent to Finnish "-kaan/kään"; "-gi/ki" is used in both positive and negative contexts.

In case of verbs, I am not so sure -- especially after reading your example. I would translate "ma lähengi" as "I do go". I usually use it to emphasize the action, to state the obvious or something that I knew would happen or something that I planned to do anyway.

[Naava]

Thanks, ainurakne, for your answers!

In case of verbs, I am not so sure -- especially after reading your example. I would translate "ma lähengi" as "I do go". I usually use it to emphasize the action, to state the obvious or something that I knew would happen or something that I planned to do anyway.

I'd say "niin mä lähenkin" in that case, almost always with "niin" (though it's not obligatory, I think). I'm starting to get confused by too much pondering and wondering, but I guess it sounds more like "I am going/leaving" than "I do go".

At least it's sure now that it's not 100% same in Estonian. Could you give me more examples, please?

[ainurakne]

You are welcome!

Could you give me more examples, please?

Hmm, ok, for example:
"(Sa) oled loll!/Loll oled!" - "Olengi." -- you're stupid! - Indeed I am.
"(Sa) peaksid sinna minema!" - "Lähengi." -- you should go there! - And I do(/will) go.
"Kukkuski pikali!" -- and it fell over, as I was expecting / I said/knew all the time it would.
EDIT: two more examples:
"Loll oled!" - "Ja kui olengi?" -- ... - and what if I am?
"Kui hakkaksingi kohe minema, ei pruugi ikka õigeks ajaks kohale jõuda." -- and even if I would start going right away, I may not get there on time.

But as I was thinking about a negative example, I started to doubt whether "Ma ei leidnudki seda üles!" would be "I didn't find it, although I hoped I would" or "I didn't find it, as I expected that I wouldn't".
I guess, it really depends on the context.

minä lähdenkin - I changed my mind, I'll go / but I go to X (and you don't)

I started to think about this, and actually if you use the long (emphasized) form of the pronoun here "mina lähengi", then it means similarly to your example "and I (do/will) go (but you don't, or someone else doesn't)".

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About my first example: a common dialog between young children:
"Loll oled!" - "Ise oled!" -- you are stupid! - no, you are!
Can "itse" be used in Finnish this way too?

[Naava]

Aitäh jälle!

It seems the meaning is the same, I'd just add more words in Finnish. (Niin olenkin, niin minä menenkin, entä jos olenkin.) The negative one is also similar, but you could show you expected that you wouldn't find something: ja enhän minä sitä löytänytkään. (vs. en löytänytkään sitä) Can you do that?

"Loll oled!" - "Ise oled!" -- you are stupid! - no, you are!
Can "itse" be used in Finnish this way too?

Yes.
"Sä oot tyhmä!" - "Ite oot!"
Another option is the neverending "enkä oo!" "ootpas" "enpäs" "ootpas"...

[ainurakne]

Võta heaks!

The negative one is also similar, but you could show you expected that you wouldn't find something: ja enhän minä sitä löytänytkään. (vs. en löytänytkään sitä) Can you do that?

Unfortunately there are no more enclitic particles in Estonian other than "-gi/ki". I'm not sure if just rearranging the words to "ei ma seda leidnudki" (vs. "ma ei leidnudki seda") would make the meaning so much different (although there is definately a vague perceivable difference between the two sentences).
Maybe: "Ega ma seda leidnudki." (where "ega" is similar to Finnish "eikä").

I also took a look at the Finnish "-kin" particle in Wiktionary. While the first three non-verb examples are also completely valid in Estonian, the other three (which are for verbs) don't make much sense at all, at least not without any modifications. Estonian equivalents would be:
"Mul ei ole nälga, kuid sõin ikkagi(/siiski) jäätist."
"Pidin minema kauplusesse, kuid läksin hoopis(ki) kõrtsi."
"Kuidas sa kauba poest kätte said? Sul polnud ju raha! Sellepärast maksingi krediitkaardiga." (that's the reason why I paid with a credit card)

[Loiks]

Isn't it so that ET spoken language tends to use more the little word 'ka'? Like: FI Minäkin? ET Kas mina ka? ('Minagi?' sounds very high style to me). Like in some novel maybe: Temagi on leidnud oma elu mõtte. But in spoken language: Ta on ka oma elu mõtte leidnud. The FI 'myös'.

[ainurakne]

Isn't it so that ET spoken language tends to use more the little word 'ka'? Like: FI Minäkin? ET Kas mina ka? ('Minagi?' sounds very high style to me). Like in some novel maybe: Temagi on leidnud oma elu mõtte. But in spoken language: Ta on ka oma elu mõtte leidnud. The FI 'myös'.

I guess you're right. "ka" seems to be indeed preferred over -gi/ki suffix (for too/also) in spoken language.
But there is also "samuti", which in my opinion is better, because "ka" seems like a word that is used more by young children rather than grown ups.

Nevertheless, I prefer to use -gi/ki, at least in written texts, because it's much less ambiguous than "ka" or "samuti", especially in longer sentences.

Head vabariigi aastapäeva!

[Naava]

"Ka" is similar to Finnish "kanssa / kans / kaas": mä tulen kans sinne. But I think it has a slightly different tone in it, maybe. Mäkin feels like stressing more "I", whereas "mä kans" is more neutral imo. Someone might disagree with me though.

Happy independence day!

[ainurakne]

"Ka" is similar to Finnish "kanssa / kans / kaas": mä tulen kans sinne. But I think it has a slightly different tone in it, maybe. Mäkin feels like stressing more "I", whereas "mä kans" is more neutral imo.

Compared to standard Finnish, colloquial Finnish quite often sounds so much more like Estonian.
Indeed, in Estonian "ka" is also much more neutral or "general" than using "-gi/ki", which also makes it difficult to use it in longer and more complicated sentenced (that have to make sense and be unambiguous), but in colloquial language where mainly short sentences and only parts of sentences are used, it's fine.

If you wouldn't have told I would have thought that "kans" / "kaas" is equivalent to Estonian "kaasa" (to take/come/bring along/together with).

[LMNY]

Hello!

I have another question:

Seaduse sätet tõlgendatakse koos seaduse teiste sätetega.

According to my knowing, "teiste" is the plural partitive form of "teist", and "sätetega" is the plural comitative form of "säte". But aren´t they supposed to take the same case form? For example:

Seaduse sätet tõlgendatakse koos seaduse teistidega sätetega.

Thank you very much!

[ainurakne]

For some mysterious reason, the case endings of the last four Estonian cases - terminative, essive, abessive and comitative - are omitted from all but the very last word.

Single word:

• "Sõidan autoga." <- a noun using comitative case
• "Millise autoga sa sõidad?" - "Punasega." <- an adjective using comitative case

But, multiple words (usually adjective(s) + noun):

• "Sõidan suure punase autoga."

As you can see from the last example, only the last word (in a list of agreeing words) has the case ending. Other words are also in the same case, because they use the correct stem (in case of singular comitative, the stem is equivalent with singular genitive form), just the case endings are removed.

Interestingly, this can be also done with actual lists, but this is not mandatory:
"Sõidan bussiga, trolliga ja autoga." -> "Sõidan bussi, trolli ja autoga."

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Actually "teiste" is plural genitive of "teine".
If plural comitative of "teine" would have stood alone in that sentence, then it would have been "teistega", but since it comes together with "sätetega", you must omit its case ending (leaving its stem intact): "teistega sätetega" -> "teiste sätetega".

[LMNY]

Wow, you must be a linguist. Best explanation ever.

Suur suur aitäh!

[ainurakne]

Võta heaks!

Thanks, but I have never studied anything related to linguistics. So take my posts in these forums with a grain of salt, I might be just making things up.

[Naava]

For some mysterious reason, the case endings of the last four Estonian cases - terminative, essive, abessive and comitative - are omitted from all but the very last word.

I've always thought that the comitative has evolved from the same word as Finnish "kanssa", with, which would explain why it's used only in one word. Cf. fi "suuren punasen auton kaa", not "suuren kaa punasen kaa auton kaa" nor in English "with big with red with car". I don't know about the others, though.

How would the other words be conjugated then, if they aren't in terminative/essive/abessive?

[Virankannos]

A neat mnemonic to help remember the cases that behave like this is nina taga 'behind the nose'. It has all the case endings: -ni (term.), -na (ess.), -ta (abess.), -ga (com.) At least it has helped me a lot

How would the other words be conjugated then, if they aren't in terminative/essive/abessive?

What do you mean? Like teine auto in other cases besides those four? Both words get the case ending: teises autos, teisest autost, teisel autol, teistes autodes etc.