Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Keywords: Estonian language, history of vocabulary, etymology

The article discusses the etymology of the Estonian word (raie)lank ‘a piece of forest land meant for cutting’. The first documented use of this word dates back to 1898. The word has no etymological counterparts in other Balto-Finnic languages. In etymological literature, the Estonian lank has been linked to the verb langema ‘to fall’, assuming the formation of a new basic root – lank – through the sound change g > k in the root. This explanation is unconvincing. The assumption is not supported by any derivative relationships in the relevant vocabulary in the neighbouring or contact languages. This interpretation is even more clearly challenged by evidence in the vernacular literature in Estonian dialects, where not just lank but also, plank : plangi ~ plangu has been documented in the sense of ‘a piece of a forest land that has been cut down or is meant for cutting; a plot of farmland or hayfield’. It is probably a German loan, cf. Middle Low German planke, German Planke ‘a thick board, a plank’. This is assumed that the semantics of the Estonian (raie)lank originates from the meaning branch ‘fence, barrier’ in the German semantic line that has served as the source of the loan. In the Estonian language context the meaning has developed as follows: ‘a demarcated area’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land where the cutting area has been marked with poles and lines’ ⇒ ‘a piece of forest land that has been cut down, a clearing’.

Between 1898 and 1915, one of the largest pulp factories in the world, Waldhof, operated in Pärnu as a subsidiary of the German-based corporation AG Zellstoff­fabrik Waldhof. To supply the factory with raw materials, the surrounding areas of Pärnu were subjected to devastating logging activities, resulting in enormous clear-cut areas, which people began to call Waldhof’s clearings. Taking into account the described circumstances and economic situation, it is plausible to assume that it was at that time that lank, meaning a forest area designated for cutting, started to spread and take root more widely in Estonian.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, ­phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: etymology, origin of Finnic phonetics, Germanic borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, derivatives

The dictionary of Estonian dialects (EMS) lists oht as three lexical items: oht¹ (= South Estonian oht) ‘1 peril, danger, menace; jeopardy, risk, hazard; 2 distress’; oht² ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’; and the partitive-only ohtu ‘-like, -ish, resembling, as good as’. Mägiste (1929) has connected oht¹ to Votic and Ingrian ohto ‘enough’ and further with Estonian oher (in literary language ohter) ‘abundant, plentiful; liberal, bountiful; rich; opulent; profuse’, explaining the meaning ‘distress’ as derived from ‘abundance of distress’.

I equate the Estonian, Votic and Ingrian words with the Finnish and Karelian ehto ‘condition; alternative, choice, possibility; sufficient, abundant’, derived from the Proto-Finnic verb *ehti-, meaning ‘have time, arrive in time, forestall; get ready, finish; turn green, ripen; decorate; wear’ in different Finnic dialects. Estonian ohtu has developed from ‘alternative of’, perhaps under the influence of Middle Low Saxon achte ‘like, in -ish way’; the derivative oher has arisen from the ‘abundant’ semantics.

The Finnic equation is made possible by positing the change *e– > *o– before a second syllable o in Votic, Estonian and South Estonian. The same change has occurred in Estonian onu ‘uncle’, cf. Finnish eno ‘maternal uncle’, and in two words with initial h-: Estonian hobu ‘horse’, cf. Finnish hepo id., and Estonian orm ‘string or loop of a birch-bark shoe’, cf. Finnish hermo ‘nerve’.

In addition, I propose a borrowing from Old Norse ótti < Proto-Scandinavian *ohtō ‘fear’. Mingled with the inherited *ohto (< *ehto) ‘choice, possibility’, the loanword has acquired the meaning ‘possibility of sth. fearful, i.e. danger, menace, risk’, making in turn the inherited *ohto – meaning ‘choice or help against evil’ – still visible in Old Literary Estonian oht, and further ‘(herbal) medicine, drug, antidote’. Another possibility is to explain oht² through the verb ohutama¹ ‘heal, attack evil forces with witchcraft’ derived from the borrowed *ohto ‘fear’ (the homonymous ohutama² ‘pester’ is derived from oht¹).

 

Santeri Junttila (b. 1974), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Lexicographer (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), Santeri.Junttila@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, standards of written language, spelling variants, culinary terms, adaptation of borrowings, French borrowings

The article looks at the ways the spelling of foreign words of French origin has become fixed in Estonian, with a focus on the adaptation into Estonian of words pronounced with an open e in French. In Estonian, the spelling of foreign words typically follows their pronunciation, i.e., the spelling is based on the approximate pronunciation in the (original) language. Hence, the variations in the spelling of the Estonian adaptations likely derive from the French pronunciation instructions provided in Estonian sources and possibly from the influence of intermediary languages.

Two spellings of the word for the French choux pastry cake eclair currently co­exist in Estonian: ekleer and ekläär. The word first appeared in ÕS 1960 as ekläär and was also standardized as ekleer in 2013; as such, it is a good example of the adaptation of French words in Estonian.

The adaptation of French borrowings containing an open e has been inconsis­tent in Estonian. The initial fixation of the word éclair with the spelling ekläär likely derived from the erstwhile custom of pronouncing the open e in the stressed syllables of French words as a long ä in Estonian. An effort was probably also made to avoid the spelling coinciding with the Russian form (эклер); there is a general tendency to ignore Russian-influenced forms when it comes to the standardization of foreign words in Estonian.

The variation of the open e in Estonian adaptations has been affected by pronunciation – differences in the phonotactics of French and Estonian – as well as inter­mediary languages: German, Swedish and Russian.

 

Madis Jürviste (b. 1985), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, madis.jyrviste@eki.ee

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: corpus planning, gender marked words, meanings

So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

 

Elisabeth Kaukonen (b. 1995), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Doctoral Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), elisabeth.kaukonen@gmail.com

Keywords: Estonian, Slavic languages, lexical history

In the glossary of Heinrich Göseken’s (1641–1681) Estonian handbook Manuductio ad Linguam Oesthonicam. Anführung zur Öhstnischen Sprache (1660) the word taarn is explained as follows: Abgrund / tarn / süggaw paick ‘abyss’ (p. 98) and Grundlos / Taarn (p. 507). The relevant information presented in the Estnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by F. J. Wiedemann, which was first published in 1869, comes from Göseken. Estonian dialect collectors have never recorded the word from actual usage. In the 1920s, the word taarn was proposed as a geographic term denoting ‘a narrow abyss with vertical walls’. In some cases the word has also been used in Estonian poetry.

No plausible etymological association has ever been established between taarn and any other Finnic word stem. Julius Mägiste has hesitantly related the word with the plant name tarn : tarna, Fin taarna, tarna ‘Carex, Catabrosa, Scirpus etc.’, assuming the development ‘high-growing aquatic plant’ ⇒ ‘place covered with such plants’ ⇒ ‘steep-sloped lowland, abyss’. The assumption does not sound credible, though.

Apart from descriptive words, most of the Estonian words with an intra-stem rn-sequence without a morpheme boundary are loanwords. The article weighs the possibility that taarn may have been borrowed from the Proto-Slavic source word *starnā, whose descendants include, e.g., Bulg странà ‘land, locality, direction; side, cheek’, стърнà ‘nearly vertical slope, steep river bank’, стърнъ̀ ‘escarpment’, Rus dial. сторона́ ‘hillside’, сторона́, сторо́нка ‘ashpit’. Analogous loanwords are the Estonian sarn : sarn ‘cheekbone’ and varn : varna ‘peg in the wall, hook etc.’, which must have also been borrowed from a very archaic pre-pleophonic variant of Slavic.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: lexical history, etymology, language contacts, Low German loanwords, C. Kelch, J. G. Herder, old written Estonian, Estonian folk song

In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg news­paper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

 

Külli Prillop (b. 1974), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Researcher of Estonian Phonology (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kulli.prillop@ut.ee

Keywords: actual use, borrowings, corpus planning, fixed norm, linguistic standard

One way to interpret the contradiction between the linguistic standard or authoritative recommendation and the actual use in the case of vanill ‘vanilla’ and vanilje ‘vanilla’ is that the actual use has not allowed itself to be confused by the standards. It can be assumed, though, that without the fixed norm, vanilje would perhaps enjoy a still greater predominance over the receding vanill.

The case of vanill and vanilje is a good example of the fact that even a hundred years of dictionary recommendations may not be able to eliminate or reduce some lexical parallels, much less – in actual language use a less recommended variant can be preferred. The regulative approach of corpus planning usually attempts to find a semantic difference between parallel words, assigning them to different categories or domains.

Note again that here we speak not of a temporal linguistic change, but of a whole century of parallel use of vanill and vanilje. Considering that ÕS (The Dictionary of Standard Estonian) has already accepted the parallel variants of quite many foreign words, there seems to be not much sense in going on to marginalize vanilje either.

 

Tiina Paet (b. 1974), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Senior Language Planner, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, tiina.paet@eki.ee

Keywords: Finnic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, lexical history, etymology

There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lend^h–), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-).

The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix –kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.

 

Lembit Vaba (b. 1945), PhD, Foreign Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, phorest45@gmail.com

Keywords: reflexive verbs, corpus planning, meanings

The u-reflexive kostuma ‘to be heard’ of the reflexive verb kostma ‘to be heard’ and other verbs with -uma ending began to spread in Estonian in the first half of the 20^th century. Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik revived the use of u-reflexives during the Estonian language renewal, but he also established a rule in the 1920s to prevent the use of u-derivatives created from reflexive verbs (such as kostma > kostuma, pleekima > pleekuma ‘to fade’). During the century, this rule was copied in both grammar and school textbooks, without taking into account the actual use of language. However, as the data of various text corpora show, this rule has not been adopted in the use of language for a century. According to the recommendation of the corpus planning, it is now appropriate to use the verb kostuma in the sense of ‘to be heard’ in written language in addition to the verb kostma. The same has been done with other u-derivatives previously considered inappropriate.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn); University of Tartu, doctoral student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee