Estonian compound words are usually made of two nouns, the first one in the nominative (nimetav) or genitive (omastav) case, the second one in the nominative (nimetav) case. Compound words in Estonian are often creative and descriptive. Some of the more interesting and descriptive compound words include: pesu (wash) + karu (bear) = pesukaru (washbear) raccoon kilp (shield) + konn (frog) = kilpkonn (shieldfrog) turtle jõe (river) + hobu (horse) = jõehobu (riverhorse) hippopotamus nina (nose) + sarvik (horn) = ninasarvik (nosehorn) rhinoceros raud (iron) + tee (road) = raudtee (ironroad) railroad pistik (plug) + pesa (nest) = pistikupesa (plugnest) outlet
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The following words have similar sounds (and in some cases, related meanings); some of them may be easily-confused by learners of Estonian. Keep in mind that certain sounds added to verbs change the meaning in predictable ways. For example, -ta- added before the infinitive ending indicates that the action is causative or transitive (i.e., the subject causes the action to happen to something else). In other words, kasvama means "to grow", while kasvatama means "to raise, to cultivate". arvama = to think, to believe, to figure, to guess
arvestama = to bargain for, to count on arvustama = to criticize arvutama = to calculate, to compute asuma = to be located, to dwell, to reside, to commence asutama = to establish asundama = to displace, to colonize asustama = to colonize, to populate asendama = to replace asenduma - to be replaced asetama = to place, to lay, to situate asetsema = to be located, to be situated asetuma = to take place määrama = to determine, to identify määrima = to lubricate, to grease, to spread määratlema = to define, to specify määrduma = to soil tekitama = to cause, to bring forth, to generate tekkima = to originate, to come into being tegima = to do, to make tegelema = to deal with tegutsema = to act, to operate, to do toimuma: to happen, to take place toimima: to act as toimetama: to edit, to take tundma = to feel tunduma = to seem, to look tunnustama = to recognize, to acknowledge tunnistama = to witness, to admit, to confess ulama = to hang around ulatama = to pass, to hand ulatuma = to amount to, to reach, to stretch ulatsema = to behave mischievously unistama = to dream unustama = to forget ununema = to fade from memory For those not yet familiar with the Estonian case system, don't panic. You don't actually have to memorize 75 forms of the word "eighty", or of any other word. But it is true that there are 75 forms of the word "eighty"*. Here's how: there are 14 cases in Estonian. Each case has a singular and plural form, making 28 total. The numbers, in addition, have cardinal (one, two, three) and ordinal (first, second, third) forms, which makes two sets of 28. That makes 56, but in some cases there are more than one possible form. For the word "eighty" (or for any similar number word), many plural cases have two forms, and the total is 75 forms. On the bright side, there are fairly consistent rules to how cases are formed, so for most words you can form the all the other cases by learning only three forms (nominative, genitive, and partitive). *Why did I choose the number eighty? Because it's the one I encountered recently that was giving me trouble. I was trying to figure out the adessive plural of the ordinal number; in other words, I wanted to say "in the eighties". No, English doesn't use the ordinal number for this, but Estonian does: it means "in the eightieth (years)." By the way, the correct form for "in the eighties" is kaheksakümnendatel.
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