Vead kõrgtasemel eesti keele kõnelejate kirjalikus keelekasutuses
Errors in written Estonian by advanced level speakers

Summary/Abstract: This article presents categories of errors made by non-native Estonian speakers in order of frequency of occurrence. This compilation of errors was compared with the errors made by native Estonian speakers. Both groups consisted of students of the Estonian as Foreign Language Department, University of Tartu. The compilation of errors (664 errors by non-native speakers, 101 by native speakers) was gleaned from the composition portion of the Estonian language final examination. The errors made by non-native speakers were also examined for possible influences by the native language (L1). The most common error category by non-native speakers was word order (17.6%), followed by word choice (13.9%), incorrect object case (9.9%) and improper phrasing (6.6%). Errors caused by interference were found most frequently in the object, followed by word order, lexical errors and government. Possible interference errors comprised 39.3% of the total error count. Written errors by native Estonians were dominated by improper construction of compound words (15.9%), followed by word order (13.9%) and lexical errors: phrasing (9.9%) and word choice (6.9%). A comparison of the native and non-native speaker groups (who both share the same philological education) revealed that both tend to err in the same category.

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