Eesti keel Henrikust Anton Thor Helleni
The Estonian Language from Henry of Livonia to Anton Thor Helle

Summary/Abstract: The first Estonian sentence survived in a historical document (the Chronicon Livoniae) is an exclamation used by some Estonian pagans to taunt a Christian missionary in 1215. the Estonian full Bible first appeared in print in 1739, thanks to the effort of anton thor Helle. during the half of a millennium span between those two events the material of the oral language of a pagan Finnic people was used to build a Christian and European literary Estonian. Literary Estonian was born as an ecclesiastical special language. Its appearance was a byproduct of a Christian mission, and it was created by Western, mainly German clergymen. the history of the birth of a literary language can be analysed in different theoretical frameworks which, in turn, highlight different aspects of the language. the present special issue represents an attempt to provide some recent positivist information to feed the development of such different approaches, research trends and methods. the articles follow the chronology of the material. the opening essay offers a brief survey of the major developments and figures of the period in question, to provide a general context of literary language history for the articles to follow.

• Details
• Contents