Estonian Etymology Uncovered
The Estonian Language Institute has published the first major etymological Estonian dictionary. It has been nine years since work began on the book. Two previous dictionaries exist, but this is the first compiled and published in Estonia.
The first known Estonian etymology dictionary was Julius Mägiste’s German effort which remained unfinished at the time of his death. Alo Raun’s 1982 edition contained just one line per word stem, and so the new version is seen as a huge breakthrough for the documentation of the language’s etymology.
The book includes 6,643 word entries.
Lead editor Iris Metsmägi states that;
“The book summarises everything that is today known about the origin of Estonian words.”
More information on word selection and dialect variants can be found here.
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