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12.09.2019

“Did you eat the whole cake?” – a learners experience on studying Estonian

Linguistic map of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) languages, the non-Indo-European group of which Estonian is a member [Image: By User:Nug derived from a german version created by User:Chumwa – German language version, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28408682. Used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 Licence]

Linguistic map of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) languages, the non-Indo-European group of which Estonian is a member [Image: By User:Nug derived from a german version created by User:Chumwa – German language version, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28408682. Used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 Licence]
DEEP BALTIC: Estonian has been described as the most difficult Latin-alphabet language for English-speakers to learn. Its fourteen cases, abundance of vowels and unpredictable partitive plural strike fear into the hearts of learners.

But is its intimidating reputation justified? Last year, Judith Knott started learning Estonian at the University of Tartu, and now she fills us in on her progress so far.

Read more about her experience in learning Estonian (with great examples for everyone who is still hesitating to do it) here.