Estonian Language

Estonian Language

Estonian (eesti keel; ) is the official language of Estonia, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various migrant communities. It belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family.

One distinctive feature that has caused a great amount of interest among linguists is what is traditionally seen as three degrees of phoneme length: short, long, and "overlong", such that /toto/, /toˑto/ and /toːto/ are distinct. In actuality, the distinction is not purely in the phoneme length, and the underlying phonological mechanism is still disputed.

Read more about Estonian Language:  History, Classification, Dialects, Grammar, Vocabulary, Language Example

Famous quotes containing the word language:

    Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
    William Hazlitt (1778–1830)