Hubane ja õdus: Johannes Aavik

Anu Lamp is a well known actor who provided voices for many children's animated films such as Ladybird's Christmas and Lotte from Gadgetville. She also wrote a play with her senior theatre students using the texts of Johannes Aavik. „Keeleuuenduse lõpmatu kurv“ (The Infinite Potential of Language Innovation), was published and produced in 2006. It is sadly out of print but a great find if you come across it.

"Keeleuuenduse ∞ kurv" sai alguse lavakunstikooli lavakõne tundidest, kus uuriti Johannes Aaviku süvenemisi eesti keele võimalustesse ning tema taotlusi keelt uuendada, kaasajastada. Anu Lambi juhendamisel jõudsid tudengid peagi omanäolise lavastuseni. Teater NO99 palus neil kava ka publikuni tuua.

Johannes Aavik was a philologist and translator who saw the need to modernize and standardize the Estonian language. He created new words, many of which were borrowed from Finnish and became part of mainstream Estonian. He also had suggestions for plural endings and use of vowels. His principles (utility, aesthetics and native quality) were summarized in „Keeleuuenduse äärmised võimalused“ (Extreme Perspectives of Language Innovation; Tartu, 1924), but he also wrote many essays and translations to highlight his words.

Aavik preferred short words to long ones; he strongly suggested adding foreign words with the stress on the second syllable to add flavour to Estonian. From Anu Lamp's book:

"Et rõhu viimine esimesele silbile labastab ja lamestab sõna jume, selles veendub kõige paremini, kui võõrsõnu rõhutada esmasilbiliselt: europa, amerika, iitalia, Paris nagu soomlased ja lätlased hääldavad. Seega öelgem: diftong, kefiir, kiosk, poliitika, sopraan, tapeet, teaater.”

For example, hubane ja õdus (warm and cosy) are both Finnish words that Aavik suggested; they are quite popular. Doing a google.ee search, adding kohvik or sohvabaar, will pull up many Estonian hotel and restaurant descriptions:

Garanteeritud on soe, hubane ja õdus magamistuba. Hubane salongiõhtu täis flamenkomuusikat. Sohvabaar on hubane koht einestamiseks. Vanalinna on tekkinud noobleid sohvabaare kus veetsime kokteiliõhtu.

A wonderful Aavik word that is not as popular but still used is ilge (vile, detestable). If you want to avoid bad places, a search using ilge koht on google.ee will pull up some colourful commentary.

Some recent words for fashionable restaurants and decor are trendikas and moekas.
Trendikas on kasvatada väikeste õitega orhideesid. Menüü peaks vastama trendika pealinlase rahvusvahelisele maitsele.
Do you think Johannes Aavik would be amused or horrified by this? Õudne night be his answer!

"Märtsikuu esimesel kolmapäeval leidis lounge`is Deja Vu aset Buduaar Fashion Night, mis tutvustas Halensi kevad-suviseid moetrende, lisaks lahedale moeshow`le üllatas Halens külalisi snäkitaldrikute ja kingikottidega. Õhtut juhtis Buduaari veebiajakirja uus peatoimetaja Merlyn Uusküla, kes esitas esmakordselt oma uut singlit "Soovin Sulle head". Peo üllatuskülalised olid Koit Toome ja Uku Suviste."

Victoria päev

Lilled ja õlu

Soojema talve tagajärjed on Toronto aedades näha; Rippuba, ehk wisteria, langeb kui kosk. Eestis kasvab rippuba peagu ainult kasvuhoonedes, siin on hiina rippuba puu.

Pildil Püsililled e. perennials on samad Eestis kui ka Kanadas; hall ja valge snow in summer ja roosad maiden pinks on leida aasadel ja nurmedel.

Estonian plant name origins are interesting. Snow in summer is called mägi-liivkann lumevaip, mainly because it grows in rocky areas and in clay or sandy soils that are most common in southern Estonia but also in Hiiumaa and near Lake Peipsi. The sandiest areas, called liivikud, are found near the Latvian border, the former Liivimaa.

A common variety of the carnation family, maiden pinks, are called nurmnelks because they grow in fields and meadows. In northern Estonia nurm is more often used for meadow, while in southern Estonia it can also mean corn field. The word nurm is a shortened form of nurmik and has Latvian origins.

From «Latvian loanwords in Estonian dialects V» by Lembit Vaba:

sibrik ‘small wooden tub with a round bottom’. Latv. ciba ‘ein rundes, hölzernes Gefäss, in der Butter, dicke Milch, auch Fleisch getan wird’ (a round, wooden vessel in which butter, curds and also meat were produced).

The Estonian appellations for utensils are often derivations with the suffix -ik (e.g. nur(m)ik ‘churn’ in the present case. Another example is paderik ‘small kettle’ (pada). Compare also Mih Tõs pär JõeK puntrik ‘beer keg’, Lei uhtrik ‘birch bark"\box’, Ris vintrik ‘small beer keg’. In these words, however, it is not quite sure whether the -r- is an integral part of the suffix. Latv. ciba can have reached West Saaremaa via Livonian.

Speaking of vats, the May 2+4 weekend is a good time to try new beers. As this year holiday Monday actually falls on the correct date of Queen Victoria's birthday, it really is a good time to celebrate!

Kuidas käsi käib?

Soovime tutvustada teile eesti sõnu, raamatuid ja muusikat Kanadas. Moodsas ja lahedas eesti keeles ütleme: "Kuidas läheb?" Aga meie vanemad ütlesid alati: "Kuidas käsi käib?" Miks? Siin on väike kirjeldus Eesti Instituudi poolt....

The Estonians say külma käes, vihma, päikese, tuule käes ('in the hand of the cold, rain, sun, wind'), or ta sai koerte käest hammustada (literally 'he was bitten from the hand of dogs' i. e. 'he was bitten by dogs') or ta sai nõgeste käest kõrvetada (literally 'he was stung from the hand of nettles'). Quite obviously, nobody any longer thinks that the wind, rain, dogs or nettles actually have hands. But in ancient times the moving, often personified natural phenomena, to say nothing about animals and plants, were believed to have certain powers. These powers, sometimes exerting control over human beings, were symbolised by a hand. Hence the contemporary Estonian käskima ('to order'; can be translated 'to give orders with one's hand'), käsilane ('handyman').

In all the above Estonian expressions 'hand' occurs in the singular. This is associated with the integral concept of the world of our ancestors. Everything formed a whole, a totality, also the paired parts of body which were used only in the singular. If one wanted to speak about one hand, one had to say pool kätt ('half a hand'). Hence the division of the holistic world into the right and left halves, right and left sides.

Even now, Estonians find their bearings spatially by using parts of the body, mostly without being aware of it themselves. If something is kõrval ('beside', 'next to'), an Estonian speaker does not even notice that what he is actually saying is that something is 'on his ear' (kõrv, kõrva meaning 'ear' and suffix -l corresponding roughly to the English preposition 'on'). The Estonian postposition peal('on') means literally 'on the head' (pea 'head' + -l); juures (juur, juure + -s which corresponds in modern Estonian to the English 'in' but in earlier times stood for 'near' as well) means that something or somebody is close to the speaker's juur ('root'), i.e. the place where he touches the ground.