Johannes Aavik
Encyclopedia
Johannes Aavik was an Estonian philologist and Fennophile who played a significant role in the modernization and development of the Estonian language.

Education and career

Aavik studied history at the University of Tartu
University of Tartu
The University of Tartu is a classical university in the city of Tartu, Estonia. University of Tartu is the national university of Estonia; it is the biggest and highest-ranked university in Estonia...

 and the University of Nezin in 1905. He was a member of the Young Estonia
Young Estonia
Young Estonia was a neo-romantic literary group established around 1905 and led by the poet Gustav Suits and short story writer Friedebert Tuglas. Other members of the group included Villem Grünthal-Ridala and Johannes Aavik. Gustav Suits articulated the ideology of the group thus:"What buoys up...

 movement and obtained a Doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 in romance languages at the University of Helsinki
University of Helsinki
The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but was founded in the city of Turku in 1640 as The Royal Academy of Turku, at that time part of the Swedish Empire. It is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available...

 in 1910. Aarvik taught Estonian and French at Tartu University between 1926 to 1933. In 1934 he was appointed by the Estonian Ministry of Education as a consultant and inspector of schools. He fled Soviet occupation in 1944 and lived in Stockholm for the remainder of his life.

Estonian language development

Johannes Aavik found that Estonian, which had for centuries been the language of peasants, needed innovation, as its sphere of usage widened rapidly with the emergence of a modern nation. There was a need for standardization of grammar and orthography as well as new technical terminology. Aavik added that the language also needed to be versatile and euphonic. In 1912 he started writing articles to literary journals, making propositions how to develop Estonian language. He suggested intensive borrowing from Finnish; many of his suggestions were quickly widely accepted and have become part of standard Estonian vocabulary
Estonian vocabulary
The Estonian vocabulary, i.e., the vocabulary of the Estonian language, was influenced by many other language groups.-Germanic languages:The heaviest external contribution, nearly one third of the vocabulary, comes from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon during the period of German rule,...

. From 1914 he started to artificially create well sounding new word stems to replace awkward compound words. Thus he proposed relv (’weapon’) instead of sõjariist (literally ’war tool’), roim (’crime’) instead of kuritöö (’evil deed’) and veenma (’convince’) instead of uskuma panema (’make believe’). He generally tried to avoid the sounds t and s and preferred shorter words to longer ones. He also favoured o in successive syllables to u, as is common in the South Estonian dialects.

Aavik tried to modernize even the grammar. He advocated the usage of i-plural instead of t(d)-plural (keelis pro keeltes) and the i-superlative instead of the ordinary superlative (suurim pro kõige suurem), as well as –nd instead of –nud in active past participle. He proposed inflexional affixes to the ma-infinitive, but only some of them entered into popular usage. He also tried to introduce a future form of verbs and a female personal pronoun, but these got little positive response.

Aavik published numerous essays and translations to propagate his ideas; he had vocal supporters as well as opponents. In 1919, he published a dictionary of 2000 novelty words. His principles (utility, aesthetics and native quality) were summarized in "Keeleuuenduse äärmised võimalused" (Extreme Perspectives of Language Innovation; Tartu, 1924).

Language innovation slowly died away after the 1927 act that made it compulsory for schools to teach standard Estonian as put down in Estonian Orthographic Dictionary (1925, chief editor J. V. Veski) and Estonian Grammar (by Elmar Muuk, 1927). However, some words proposed by Aavik and fallen into oblivion have been picked up and re-introduced by more recent literati.

An essay on linguistic innovation in Estonian by Paul Saagpakk
Paul Saagpakk
Paul Saagpakk was an Estonian linguist who compiled a standard reference dictionary of the Estonian language, a work that renders 500,000 Estonian expressions into English.From 1935, he worked as an English teacher in Tallinn, in 1944 fled the Soviet occupation of Estonia to Sweden...

can be found in his Estonian-English Dictionary.

Further reading

  • Antoine Chalvin. Johannes Aavik et la rénovation de la langue estonienne. Paris: ADEFO/L'Harmattan, 2010. 334 p.
  • Virve Raag. The Effects of Planned Change on Estonian Morphology. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Uralica Upsaliensia, 29. Uppsala, 1998. 156 p.
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