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58-636: Traditionally Northern Estonia has had a large Estonian majority and much smaller Swedish and Finnish minority but that changed during the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia. Region was deliberately colonized and by that Russified by Soviet authorities more than other regions of Estonia. Some towns and villages like Narva, Jõhvi, Kohtla-Järve, Sillamäe, Maardu and Paldiski experienced almost total repopulation by Russians. New city districts that were meant to accommodate colonizers were built in Tallinn, most of which are

116-690: A language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe , the Iranian plateau , and the northern Indian subcontinent . Some European languages of this family— English , French , Portuguese , Russian , Dutch , and Spanish —have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian , Armenian , Balto-Slavic , Celtic , Germanic , Hellenic , Indo-Iranian , and Italic ; another nine subdivisions are now extinct . Today,

174-663: A common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European . Membership in the various branches, groups, and subgroups of Indo-European is also genealogical, but here the defining factors are shared innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups. For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that much of their structure and phonology can be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of their common features are presumed innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic ,

232-551: A confirmation of de Saussure's theory. The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches, listed below in alphabetical order: In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages and language-groups have existed or are proposed to have existed: Membership of languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by genealogical relationships, meaning that all members are presumed descendants of

290-794: A diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in German and in Persian. Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic (" Kurlandic "), Iranian (" Medic "), Finnish , Chinese , "Hottentot" ( Khoekhoe ), and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German, and Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors. The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on

348-765: A high sharing of IBD ( identity-by-descent ) segments with other studied Balto-Finnic groups (Finns, Karelians and Vepsians ) and the Sami people, as well as with the Polish people. Indo-European languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Indo-European languages are

406-458: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of a high vowel (* u in the case of Germanic, * i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants * ṛ, *ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ , unique to these two groups among IE languages, which

464-637: A subgroup of the larger Uralic family of languages , which also includes e.g. the Sami languages . These languages are markedly different from most other native languages spoken in Europe , most of which have been assigned to the Indo-European family of languages . Estonians can also be classified into subgroups according to dialects (e.g. Võros , Setos ), although such divisions have become less pronounced due to internal migration and rapid urbanisation in Estonia in

522-784: Is associated with being Finno-Ugric and their close relationship with the Finnish people and does not exclude being Baltic. In Estonian foreign ministry reports from the early 2000s Nordic identity was preferred over Baltic one. After the Treaty of Tartu (1920) recognised Estonia's 1918 independence from Russia, ethnic Estonians residing in Russia gained the option of opting for Estonian citizenship (those who opted were called optandid – 'optants') and returning to their fatherland. An estimated 40,000 Estonians lived in Russia in 1920. In sum, 37,578 people moved from Soviet Russia to Estonia (1920–1923). During

580-510: Is cited to have been radically non-treelike. Specialists have postulated the existence of higher-order subgroups such as Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Aryan or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, and Balto-Slavo-Germanic. However, unlike the ten traditional branches, these are all controversial to a greater or lesser degree. The Italo-Celtic subgroup was at one point uncontroversial, considered by Antoine Meillet to be even better established than Balto-Slavic. The main lines of evidence included

638-517: Is commonly carried by modern Uralic-speaking groups but also other North Eurasians, including Estonians' Baltic-speaking neighbors Latvians and Lithuanians . Compared to the Balts, Estonians have been noticed to have differences in allelic variances of N1c haplotypes, showing more similarity with other Finno-Ugric-speakers. When looking at maternal lineages , nearly half (45 %) of the Estonians have

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696-466: Is found also in the Balts, Finns and Mordvins , for example. Uralic peoples typically carry a Siberian -related component, which is also present in Estonians and makes up about five percent of their ancestry on average. Although they have a smaller share of it than other Balto-Finns, it is one factor that distinguishes them from the Balts. Estonians can also be modelled to have considerably more Finnish-like ancestry than Baltic-speakers. Estonians have

754-531: Is in agreement with the wave model. The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence among members of very different branches. An extension to the Ringe - Warnow model of language evolution suggests that early IE had featured limited contact between distinct lineages, with only the Germanic subfamily exhibiting a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic

812-527: The Iron Age at the latest. This lead into the formation of Baltic Finnic peoples , who would later become such groups as Estonians and Finns . The oldest known endonym of the Estonians is maarahvas , literally meaning "land people" or "country folk". It was used until the mid-19th century, when it was gradually replaced by Eesti rahvas "Estonian people" during the Estonian national awakening . Eesti ,

870-511: The Votic language ) sometimes also reaches Ida-Viru County. Estonians Estonians or Estonian people ( Estonian : eestlased ) are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group who speak the Estonian language . Their nation state is Estonia . The Estonian language is spoken as the first language by the vast majority of Estonians; it is closely related to other Finnic languages , e.g. Finnish , Karelian and Livonian . The Finnic languages are

928-432: The " wave model " is a more accurate representation. Most approaches to Indo-European subgrouping to date have assumed that the tree model is by-and-large valid for Indo-European; however, there is also a long tradition of wave-model approaches. In addition to genealogical changes, many of the early changes in Indo-European languages can be attributed to language contact . It has been asserted, for example, that many of

986-455: The 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan , Iranian , and European languages. In 1583, English Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century) in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin . Another account

1044-457: The 1820s. The ruling elites had remained predominantly German in language and culture since the conquest of the early 13th century. Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850), a Baltic-German Estophile , became the first author to treat the Estonians as a nationality equal to others; he became a source of inspiration for the Estonian national movement, modelled on Baltic German cultural world before the middle of

1102-541: The 1880s, their view of Imperial Russia remained positive. Estonians have strong ties to the Nordic countries stemming from important cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during Scandinavian and German rule and settlement. According to a poll done in 2013, about half of the young Estonians considered themselves Nordic , and about the same number viewed Baltic identity as important. The Nordic identity among Estonians can ovelap with other identities, as it

1160-411: The 1880s. Brugmann's neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure 's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "modern" Indo-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as Calvert Watkins , Jochem Schindler , and Helmut Rix ) developed a better understanding of morphology and of ablaut in

1218-447: The 19th century. However, in the middle of the century, the Estonians became more ambitious and started leaning toward the Finns as a successful model of national movement and, to some extent, toward the neighbouring Latvian national movement . By the end of 1860 the Estonians became unwilling to reconcile with German cultural and political hegemony. Before the attempts at Russification in

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1276-726: The 20th century. There are approximately 1 million ethnic Estonians worldwide, with the vast majority of them residing in their native Estonia. Estonian diaspora communities formed primarily in Finland, the United States, Sweden, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Estonia was first inhabited about 10,000 years ago, soon after the ice from the Baltic Ice Lake had melted. Living in the same area for more than 5,000 years would put Estonians' ancestors among Europe's oldest permanent inhabitants. On

1334-528: The Anatolian and Tocharian language families, in that order. The " tree model " is considered an appropriate representation of the genealogical history of a language family if communities do not remain in contact after their languages have started to diverge. In this case, subgroups defined by shared innovations form a nested pattern. The tree model is not appropriate in cases where languages remain in contact as they diversify; in such cases subgroups may overlap, and

1392-448: The Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non- satem languages in general—including Anatolian—might be due to their peripheral location in

1450-558: The Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Greek and the Anatolian languages of Hittite and Luwian . The oldest records are isolated Hittite words and names—interspersed in texts that are otherwise in the unrelated Akkadian language , a Semitic language —found in texts of the Assyrian colony of Kültepe in eastern Anatolia dating to the 20th century BC. Although no older written records of

1508-642: The Indo-Iranian branch. All Indo-European languages are descended from a single prehistoric language, linguistically reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European , spoken sometime during the Neolithic or early Bronze Age . The geographical location where it was spoken, the Proto-Indo-European homeland , has been the object of many competing hypotheses; the academic consensus supports the Kurgan hypothesis , which posits

1566-825: The biggest city districts to this day because Estonia was only partially decolonized after regaining of independence in 1991. Estonians made up about 80% of Tallinn's population before World War II, but make up only 49% in 2019. In 2009, Estonians made up about 55,2% of Tallinn's population. The all time smallest share occurred in 1988 when only 47% of Tallinners were ethnic Estonians, not far from 2019. Tallinners made up about 29,7% of Estonia's population in 2009. In 2009, Tallinn's ethnic Estonian residents made up 23,9% (219,900) of all ethnic Estonians residing in Estonia. In 2009, Tallinn's non-Estonian residents, mainly Russians, made up 42,7% (178,694) of all non-Estonians residing in Estonia. The positive birth rate of ethnic Estonians and non-positive birth rate of non-Estonians should have increased

1624-698: The existence of an earlier ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name: The Sanscrit [ sic ] language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. Thomas Young first used

1682-485: The family relationships between the Indo-European languages, and the reconstruction of their common source, was central to the development of the methodology of historical linguistics as an academic discipline in the 19th century. The Indo-European language family is not considered by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics to have any genetic relationships with other language families, although several disputed hypotheses propose such relations. During

1740-421: The first known book in Estonian, was printed in 1525, while the oldest known examples of written Estonian originate in 13th-century chronicles. Although Estonian national consciousness spread in the course of the 19th century during the Estonian national awakening , some degree of ethnic awareness preceded this development. By the 18th century the self-denomination eestlane spread among Estonians along with

1798-538: The gender or the verb system) have been interpreted alternately as archaic debris or as innovations due to prolonged isolation. Points proffered in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia and the preservation of laryngeals. However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence. According to another view,

Northern Estonia - Misplaced Pages Continue

1856-416: The genitive suffix -ī ; the superlative suffix -m̥mo ; the change of /p/ to /kʷ/ before another /kʷ/ in the same word (as in penkʷe > *kʷenkʷe > Latin quīnque , Old Irish cóic ); and the subjunctive morpheme -ā- . This evidence was prominently challenged by Calvert Watkins , while Michael Weiss has argued for the subgroup. Evidence for a relationship between Greek and Armenian includes

1914-629: The haplogroup H . About one in four (24.2 %) carry the haplogroup U , and the majority of them belong to its subclade U5 . Autosomally Estonians are close with Latvians and Lithuanians. However, they are shifted towards the Finns , who are isolated from most European populations. Northeastern Estonians are particularly close to Finns, while Southeastern Estonians are close to the Balts; other Estonians plot between these two extremes. Estonians have high steppe -like admixture, and less farmer -related and more hunter-gatherer -related admixture than Western and Central Europeans. The same pattern

1972-566: The homeland to be the Pontic–Caspian steppe in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia , associated with the Yamnaya culture and other related archaeological cultures during the 4th millennium BC to early 3rd millennium BC. By the time the first written records appeared, Indo-European had already evolved into numerous languages spoken across much of Europe , South Asia , and part of Western Asia . Written evidence of Indo-European appeared during

2030-567: The individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , French and German each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language —by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue , with over two-thirds (313) of them belonging to

2088-565: The modern endonym of Estonia, is thought to have similar origins to Aesti , the name used by the Germanic peoples for the neighbouring people living northeast of the mouth of the Vistula . The Roman historian Tacitus in 98 CE was the first to mention the " Aesti " in writing. In Old Norse , the land south of the Gulf of Finland was called Eistland and the people eistr . The Wanradt–Koell Catechism ,

2146-460: The more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be areal features . More certainly, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, because English and continental West Germanic were not

2204-569: The older maarahvas . Anton thor Helle 's translation of the Bible into Estonian appeared in 1739, and the number of books and brochures published in Estonian increased from 18 in the 1750s to 54 in the 1790s. By the end of the century more than a half of adult peasants could read. The first university-educated intellectuals identifying themselves as Estonians, including Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850), Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822) and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882), appeared in

2262-477: The original Proto-Indo-European population remain, some aspects of their culture and their religion can be reconstructed from later evidence in the daughter cultures. The Indo-European family is significant to the field of historical linguistics as it possesses the second-longest recorded history of any known family, after the Afroasiatic Egyptian language and Semitic languages . The analysis of

2320-611: The other hand, some recent linguistic estimations suggest that Finno-Ugric speakers arrived around the Baltic Sea considerably later, perhaps during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BCE). It has also been argued that Western Uralic tribes reached Fennoscandia first, leading into the development of the Sámi peoples , and arrived in the Baltic region later in the Bronze Age or the transition to

2378-557: The perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link this group closer to Anatolian languages and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts. The Indo-Hittite hypothesis proposes that the Indo-European language family consists of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages and another branch encompassing all other Indo-European languages. Features that separate Anatolian from all other branches of Indo-European (such as

Northern Estonia - Misplaced Pages Continue

2436-631: The period of Tsarist rule of Estonia (1710-1917), over 100,000 Estonians migrated to the neighbouring areas of the Russian Empire , especially to the then capital city Saint Petersburg . According to the 1897 census, 6,852 native Estonian-speakers also lived in the Russian Partition of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , in what is now Poland , Lithuania , Belarus , Latvia and western Ukraine , of which over 4,360 lived in territories of today's Poland. During World War II , when Estonia

2494-536: The population is Estonian . Harju County also has a large Russian population (31.2%), and most of it resides in Tallinn . Lääne-Viru County, however, only has a 9.5% Russian population. Religion in Northern Estonia (2021) [1] Northern Estonia covers about a quarter of Estonia. It is located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland . The shoreline is characterized by many peninsulas, most of these are located in

2552-461: The regular change of the second laryngeal to a at the beginnings of words, as well as terms for "woman" and "sheep". Greek and Indo-Iranian share innovations mainly in verbal morphology and patterns of nominal derivation. Relations have also been proposed between Phrygian and Greek, and between Thracian and Armenian. Some fundamental shared features, like the aorist (a verb form denoting action without reference to duration or completion) having

2610-546: The return of Estonians who have particular skills needed in Estonia. One of the largest permanent Estonian communities outside Estonia is in Canada, with about 24,000 people (according to some sources up to 50,000 people). In the late 1940s and early 1950s, about 17,000 arrived in Canada, initially in Montreal . Toronto is currently the city with the largest population of Estonians outside of Estonia. The first Estonian World Festival

2668-427: The share of ethnic Estonians in Tallinn and whole Northern Estonia, but increased immigration mainly from other ex-soviet countries has on the contrary increased the share of non-Estonians. Today Northern Estonia has two main ethnic groups: Estonians and Russians. Ida-Viru County, most notably, has a large Russian population. The population of Ida-Viru County is 72.8% Russian, unlike other Estonian counties, where 80% of

2726-537: The similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian. He included in his hypothesis Dutch , Albanian , Greek , Latin , Persian , and German , later adding Slavic , Celtic , and Baltic languages . However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of

2784-434: The source of all the Germanic languages. In the 21st century, several attempts have been made to model the phylogeny of Indo-European languages using Bayesian methodologies similar to those applied to problems in biological phylogeny. Although there are differences in absolute timing between the various analyses, there is much commonality between them, including the result that the first known language groups to diverge were

2842-600: The standard scientific term. A number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopp wrote in 1816 On the conjugational system of the Sanskrit language compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic and between 1833 and 1852 he wrote Comparative Grammar . This marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleicher 's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann 's Grundriss , published in

2900-475: The striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin , Greek , and Sanskrit , to which he tentatively added Gothic , Celtic , and Persian , though his classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions. In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made the following prescient statement in a lecture to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, conjecturing

2958-528: The term Indo-European in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: from Western Europe to North India . A synonym is Indo-Germanic ( Idg. or IdG. ), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in French ( indo-germanique ) in 1810 in the work of Conrad Malte-Brun ; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than Indo-European , although in German indogermanisch remains

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3016-501: The wake of Kuryłowicz 's 1956 Apophony in Indo-European, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the Hittite consonant ḫ. Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of the existence of coefficients sonantiques , elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-European languages. This led to the so-called laryngeal theory , a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and

3074-450: The westernmost part ( Harjumaa ). There are also numerous islands, largest are Naissaar , Aegna and Pakri Islands . The highest point in Northern Estonia is Emumägi (166m). The area is mainly covered by forests. Ida-Viru County has large deposits of oil shale . Estonia has one of the largest deposits of oil shale in the world. In 2008, Estonia was the second largest producer of oil-shale products. In 2009, 80% of oil shale used globally

3132-549: The years of independence, many Estonians have chosen to work abroad, primarily in Finland , but also in the UK, Benelux , Sweden , and Germany . Recognising the problems arising from low birth rate and emigration, the Estonian government has launched various measures to increase the birth rate and to lure migrant Estonians back to Estonia. For example, a campaign Talendid koju! ("Bringing talents home!") has aimed to coordinate and promote

3190-646: Was invaded by the Soviet Army in 1944, large numbers of Estonians fled their homeland on ships or smaller boats over the Baltic Sea . Many refugees who survived the risky sea voyage to Sweden or Germany later moved from there to Canada , the United Kingdom , the United States or Australia . Some of these refugees and their descendants returned to Estonia after the nation regained its independence in 1991. Over

3248-564: Was extracted in Estonia. In 2005, the oil-shale-fired Narva Power Plants accounted for 95% of the country's electrical generation. The most common language spoken in Northern Estonia is Estonian . Russian is the second most spoken language, mainly in Tallinn and Ida-Viru County. The northeastern coastal dialect is also spoken, the Middle Estonian dialect is sometimes spoken in Lääne-Viru County. The East Estonian dialect (similar to

3306-663: Was held in Toronto in 1972. Y-chromosome haplogroups among Estonians include N1c (35.7%), R1a (33.5%) and I1 (15%). R1a, common in Eastern Europe, was the dominant Y-DNA haplogroup among the pre-Uralic inhabitants of Estonia, as it is the only one found in the local samples from the time of the Corded Ware culture and Bronze Age. Appearance of N1c is linked to the arrival of Uralic-speakers. It originated in East Eurasia and

3364-597: Was made by Filippo Sassetti , a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included devaḥ / dio "God", sarpaḥ / serpe "serpent", sapta / sette "seven", aṣṭa / otto "eight", and nava / nove "nine"). However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry. In 1647, Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted

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