Estonian language
| Estonian | |
|---|---|
| eesti keel | |
| Native to | Estonia |
| Ethnicity | Estonians |
|
Native speakers
|
1.1 million (2012) |
|
Latin (Estonian alphabet) Estonian Braille |
|
| Official status | |
|
Official language in
|
 Estonia European Union
|
| Regulated by | Institute of the Estonian Language / Eesti Keele Instituut, Emakeele Selts (semi-official) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | et |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 |
Individual codes: ekk – Standard Estonian vro – Võro |
| Glottolog | esto1258 |
| Linguasphere | 41-AAA-d |
 |
|
Estonian (eesti keel [ˈeːsti ˈkeːl]) is the official language of Estonia, spoken natively by about 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 outside Estonia. 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 phonemic length: short, long, and "overlong", such that /sɑdɑ/, /sɑˑdɑ/ and /sɑːdɑ/ are distinct. In actuality, the distinction is not purely in the phonemic length, and the underlying phonological mechanism is still disputed.
Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages, along with Finnish, Karelian, and other nearby languages. The Uralic languages do not belong to the Indo-European languages. Estonian is distantly related to Hungarian and to the Sami languages.
Estonian has been influenced by Swedish, German (initially Middle Low German, which was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League and spoken natively in the territories of what is today known as Estonia by a sizeable burgher community of Baltic Germans, later Estonian was also influenced by standard German), and Russian, though it is not related to them genetically.
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Wikipedia