Our volunteering, Estonian languageMay 9, 2007 6:24 pm

Our classroom...

We haven’t told you much about it, but you might remember our previous attempts about learning estonian. Well, we’re still working at it and now have a new course we can attend, which is in a local school in Loo (where we gave our tourism course) . We go there twice a wek to meet Erika, who usually teaches english to younger children, but accepted to help us out to learn estonian. Actually, we’re doing good, progressing as we can and doing our exercises like good students. We are learning basic things, such as learning how to present ourselves, parts of the body, reading the time, naming objects and food or building very simple sentences. These get us around and help us in our everyday life, an extra motivation for us to listen and try to understand.
We come back with the school bus, which is quite a fun experience. The bus goes through all the small villages nearby and drops each person in front of his or her house. We’re always last to get off and the driver looked surprised the first time he saw us stopping at the museum, for he didn’t know anybody lived in it !


Estonian languageJanuary 16, 2007 7:23 pm

Vocabulary ENGLISH / ESTONIAN

1) Hello : Tere päevast

2) Hi : Tere

3) Good evening : Tere öhtust

4) Yes : Ja

5) No : Ei

6) Please : Palun

7) How does it cost? : Paiju see maksab?

8) I am lost : Ma olen eksinud

9) I don’t understand : Ma ei saa aru

10) Thank you : Tänan

11) OK : Nõus

12) Sorry : Vabandust

13) See you later : Kohtumiseni

14) Good bye : Head aega

Here is a few words of Estonian, to help you trying to become familiar with this language a little bit strange with two infinitives and 14 declensions and which haven’t the same roots as French or English. In fact, it looks like a mix of Hungarian and Finn (so nothing that we know).

For anyone who would like to learn more vocabulary, here is an English / Estonian dictionnary.