EESTI KEELEUUENDUS JA MURDED
Estonian language renewal movement and dialects

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 20th century standard Estonian was still rather weakly standardized. Usually, the author’s background was still identifiable by dialect features in language use. The purpose of the language renewal movement was to turn Standard Estonian, which had emerged from the vernacular of the central part of northern Estonia, into a modern national language that would be used uniformly in all Estonian towns and rural areas. However, the language reformers of the first decades of the 20th century represented multiple attitudes with regard to the dialects. The language reformers thought that a European-style standard language should be a complete well-functioning standard language without any redundant variation. On the other hand, the aspirations of the language reformers resulted in a higher degree of diversity. As a result of language renewal, standard Estonian diverged from the dialect usage of the central part of northern Estonia; however, at the same time the language reformers introduced words and grammatical forms from several peripheral dialects to the standard language. Thanks to the efforts of the language reformers, the dialect basis of the standard language became more diverse. The efforts of the language reformers are evident in the introduction of words and forms to the standard language that come from the insular, western, north-eastern, and southern dialects, which were spoken in the periphery of the Estonian language area. One can explain it partly by the background of the language reformers, the wish to promote one’s native variety. However, what is more important is the wish to enrich standard Estonian with speech forms that would be in accordance with the other principles of language renewal. Differently from earlier times, dialect words and forms were selected consciously by combining the aspiration for originality with the principles of expedience and beauty. The southern dialects were often well suited for the language reformers because of brevity and sonority. A contributing factor was better familiarity with such forms. For this reason, those forms that were known in the insular, western, and southern dialects had a better chance to be established in the standard language. The western dialect of southern Estonia or the Mulgi dialect occupied a special place because its structure combines dialect features of southern and western Estonia while its grammar reveals innovation. A number of innovative forms in the language-renewal grammar by Oskar Loorits, which was published in 1923, had a Mulgi dialect background. The adoption of forms from the dialects of the northern coast of Estonia and the north-eastern dialects was apparently facilitated by proximity to Finnish, which was a favoured source of borrowing for the language reformers.

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