Estonian is a conlang.

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cunningham
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Estonian is a conlang.

Post by cunningham »

Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia in the 1870s–90s) tried to use formation ex nihilo, Urschöpfung, i.e. they created new words out of nothing. Examples are Ado Grenzstein's coinages kabe ‘draughts, chequers’ and male ‘chess’.

The most famous reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), also used creations ex nihilo (cf. ‘free constructions’, Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). Aavik belonged to the so-called Noor-Eesti (‘Young Estonia’) movement, which appeared in Tartu, a university town in south-eastern Estonia, around 1905 (for discussion, see Raun 1991). In Aavik’s dictionary (1921), which lists approximately 4000 words, there are many words which were (allegedly) created ex nihilo. Consider • ese ‘object’, • kolp ‘skull’, • liibuma ‘to cling’, • naasma ‘to return, come back’, • nõme ‘stupid, dull’, • range ‘strict’, • reetma ‘to betray’, • solge ‘slim, flexible, graceful’ (which did not gain currency, cf. Contemporary Estonian graatsiline ‘graceful’, although the word itself, interestingly, is used for a certain kind of parasitic worm, namely the Ascaris lumbricoides), and • veenma ‘to convince’. Other Aavikisms ex nihilo (not appearing in Aavik 1921) include • nentima ‘to admit, state’, • nördima ‘to grow indignant’, • süüme ‘conscience’, and • tõik ‘fact’."

Note, however, that many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items, for example words from Russian, German, French, Finnish, English and Swedish. Aavik had a broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek, Latin and French. Consider • relv ‘weapon’ versus English revolver, • roim ‘crime’ versus English crime, • siiras ‘sincere’ versus English sincere/serious • embama ‘to embrace’ versus English embrace, and • taunima ‘to condemn, disapprove’ versus Finnish tuomita ‘to judge’ (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik’s 1921 dictionary). Consider also • evima ‘to have, possess, own’ (cf. also Estonian omama ‘to own’, and mul on, lit. ‘to me is’, i.e. ‘for me there is’, meaning ‘I have’) versus English have; • laup ‘forehead’ versus Russian лоб lob ‘forehead’; • mõrv ‘murder’ and mõrvama ‘to murder’ versus English murder (these Aavikisms do not appear in Aavik 1921); and • laip ‘corpse’ versus German Leib ‘body’ and German Leiche ‘body, corpse’. These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item. The often irregular and arbitrary sound changes could then be explained not as subconscious foreign influence but rather as conscious manipulation by the coiner. Aavik seems to have paid little attention to the origin of his neologisms. On occasion, he replaced existing native words or expressions with neologisms of foreign descent. Therefore, Aavik cannot be considered a purist in the traditional sense, i.e. he was not ‘anti-foreignisms/loanwords’ as such.

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by hwhatting »

So you say these ex-nihilo creations are in actual use?

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Pole, the »

It is.

Case closed.
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Miekko »

IIRC Finnish has a few words with similar origins, i.e. inventions of 19th and early 20th century enthusiasts. Alas, I do not recall any specific such words at the moment.
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by gach »

Miekko wrote:IIRC Finnish has a few words with similar origins, i.e. inventions of 19th and early 20th century enthusiasts. Alas, I do not recall any specific such words at the moment.
The element names vety ("hydrogen"), typpi ("nitrogen"), and happi ("oxygen") are good examples. They are planned derivations from the words vesi ("water"), typehtyä ("extinguish", dialectal) or typistää ("to truncate"), and hapan, "sour" (possibly via happo, "acid"). These all have semantic parallels with names used in other languages, the German names in particular, but they are all consciously planned derivations that don't fit into any otherwise well known derivation pattern. Another excellent planned word from the 19th century is sähkö ("electricity") which was formed to resemble the verbs sähistä ("hiss") and säkenöidä ("sparkle"). Such irregular derivations have been favourites of language planners

As you can see, these words aren't really truly drawn out of the blue, but the same appears to be the case with the proposed Estonian words as well. One more word in the list, that wasn't provided with a suggested source but which seems fairly obvious to me is ese ("object"). This is suspiciously similar to Finnish esine (id.) which is a planned derivation from the really versatile root esi ("front"), again first proposed in the mid-19th century.

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Vijay »

Ya can't be happi without oxygen!

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Qwynegold »

I also spotted these correspondences with Finnish:
liibuma - liimautua
range - rankka
solge - solakka
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Hallow XIII »

whoa there cunningham, it's quite rude to make threads with titles this seriously misleading

next you're going to make a thread called "palm trees are aliens" and OP at length about the dangers to native palm trees from imported species, all the while making gratuitous use of the word "bird"
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Pole, the »

Also.

Lithuanian, Turkish and Hebrew are conlangs, too.
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by din »

Many 'standard languages' are made up of a combination of words and features from different dialects, making them constructed on some level. Also, standard languages which have some sort of regulatory body deciding on which constructions and words are deemed 'grammatical' are on some level artificial.

Sure, ex nihilo word creation goes a step further, but it's no more outlandish than, for example, copying grammatical structures from Latin because it's considered prestigious.
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Nortaneous »

but h13, palm trees are aliens
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by jmcd »

They have atoms from space and everything!

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Viktor77 »

Henry Schoolcraft was a real-life conworlder. Back when my homestate of Michigan was being organized he named a number of counties and cities just by pulling the names out of his ass. He married an Indian woman and he spoke her language, and so the names he picked (Tuscola, Alpena, Iosco, Kalamazoo, etc.) all sounded Native American but they meant absolutely nothing.
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by zompist »

Wikipedia supports you on the first three, but not Kalamazoo, which is attested far earlier, in the 1700s. (The meaning is contested, but the best guess is that it's from Potawatomi.)

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by jmcd »

I would prefer to just use 'conlang' for creating the entire linguistic system. Neologisms, even deliberate ones, are part of the development of many languages.

Any standard language is a mythical creature that comes more into one's line of visionthe more one thinks about it.

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by Viktor77 »

zompist wrote:Wikipedia supports you on the first three, but not Kalamazoo, which is attested far earlier, in the 1700s. (The meaning is contested, but the best guess is that it's from Potawatomi.)
Ah, I misremembered Kalamazoo. Thanks for the correction.
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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by linguoboy »

Viktor77 wrote:Henry Schoolcraft was a real-life conworlder. Back when my homestate of Michigan was being organized he named a number of counties and cities just by pulling the names out of his ass.
Names are arbitrary, which is to say they're all to some extant or another the result out-of-ass-pulling. But it's not "conworlding" if Michigan actually exists.

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Re: Estonian is a conlang.

Post by HoskhMatriarch »

linguoboy wrote:
Viktor77 wrote:Henry Schoolcraft was a real-life conworlder. Back when my homestate of Michigan was being organized he named a number of counties and cities just by pulling the names out of his ass.
Names are arbitrary, which is to say they're all to some extant or another the result out-of-ass-pulling. But it's not "conworlding" if Michigan actually exists.
Well, obviously he created the state of Michigan. Originally there was only lake.
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