http://www.ef.com/epi/

Ha! Estonia at the top

Estonia shows as #4 now. You illiterate peasant!

Just kidding. I'm not surprised Italy is quite low.

The big question is... where would USA be?

Way below Italy I'm sure.

I work with British people and I'm constantly correcting their emails. Some examples:

- Writing "to be of assistance" as "to be off assistance". She wouldn't believe me that it was wrong and asked a fellow Brit, whose reply was "I'm not sure".
- Asking me if "tunnel" was written with one n
- Asking me how you spell "dairy"
- Writing "would have been good" as "would of been good". Not as a mistake once in a while, but consistently.
- Not knowing the meaning of the word "phallic".

Some of these people have college degrees. If you have children, please don't send them to a UK college.

Replacing 'have' with 'of' is very common in the US as well. I guess because the two are pronounced similarly, at least when you have issues speaking and walking at the same time. The misuse of apostrophes is common. Many people just use an apostrophe any time a word ends in s. It's annoying as hell.

Had to google that one . There is no ' in common use in estonian language. Well maybe sometimes used with person's name when it would change form, an example would be where it would in spoken language change from Leek to Leegi but in written form the correct use would be Leeki but in order to maintain the correct name one might use Leek'i. For instance in one text there could be two people with names Leek and Leeki but to tell the difference between them one would use the '. But usually and I think the correct version is Leeki.

A direct quote example:
"At ten o'clock it started snowing" -Leek. "Kell kümme hakkas lund sadama" -Leek.

A journalist or researcher might use a reference oriented sentence but not a direct quote:
"According to Leek it was around 10 o'clock when it started snowing."
"Leegi kohaselt hakkas lund sadama kella kümne paiku"

Notice how the name changed, thats how it would change in normal spoken language, in written language it would be correct to use Leeki. Oh and in estonian language the characters are spoken as you read them, for instance the e in Leek is spoken as e in "get" or "met" just stretch it a bit longer and not as i in "meat" or "eat".

PS. Leek translates to flame in case you were wondering .

And if you didn't understand anything just forget about it .

Edit: some more "fun": For example, "tee" means (1) a road, (2) tea, and (3) do! (imperative form)

I think we had this before but recycling of funny stuff is the basis of internet.

The Origins of the Estonian Language

The Origins of the Estonian Language I just celebrated my fifth year in Estonia and my fifth fruitless year trying to figure out how to correctly speak Estonian. I mean really, it wouldn't be so bad if Estonians weren't so smug about it. Oh, they will congratulate you on your good Estonian even if you can only speak a few words, but deep inside they really don't want you to learn it!

They are so happy with their secret code and you can see it every time someone asks you "Oh, are you learning to speak Estonian?". Then comes the sly grin, the "You've got a snowball's chance in hell of learning OUR language" grin. This is quickly replaced by a faked look of concern as they say "Oh, its a very difficult language isn't it?". I think after this, they go off and laugh uncontrollably and give high-fives to other Estonians, but I haven't actually seen it happen.

I have decided to write an expose' on the Estonian language. One time I sent my brother a tape of Estonian language and he asked me if Estonians have an obsession with sex. There is terviseks and ostmiseks and kasutamiseks, teadmiseks, parandamiseks and armastamiseks. All kinds of "seks". That, plus the fact that after five years little kids still laugh when I speak Estonian, has made me decide to tell all. The real story behind why Estonian is the way it is.

A long time ago, about 1000 or 1100 B.C. there were three Estonian guys sitting around the campfire. Their names were Billy, Ray and Duke (bet you didn't know that these are real ancient Estonian names). It was winter time and they were bored. Billy spoke first. "Ya know Ray, what we need is a new language". "Damn straight!" said Ray, "Talkin' this way is gettin' boring and besides everybody almost understands us. We need a language that's sooo crazy, soooooo complicated that nobody will ever understand what's going on!" As the idea picked up steam, Duke piped up. "Let's do it this way, that you can't say he or she. That way you won't know if your talkin' about a man or a woman. Also, we gotta think up names for people that give no clue to foreigners about their gender, names that change with the grammer so you never know what to call somebody." Ray nodded in approval "Yeah," he said thoughtfully "that's it. Then we can eliminate the future tense. Think of trying to ask someone out on a date when you can't say the right name, whether it's a boy or girl or when it is going to happen!"

Billy, the smart one, was thinking in more technical terms already. "O.K., let's make it this way, that when you learn a noun, you don't have to learn just one word but FOURTEEN Yeah and instead of just saying that you are going to or from something, you have to change the noun in some weird way." Now Ray was excited and spilled his beer. "Yeah Yeah! And..and.. the nouns can't change the same way, let's make like, a hundred different spelling groups that all change in different ways!" This appealed to Duke who added slyly, "Ya wanna make it real hard, a real nut-buster? Let's make it so all the adjectives change, too. In boring old English, you say 'five small, red houses', 'small, red houses' and many small, red houses'. Small and red always stay the same but in our new language? Whoaaaa Nellie!" They exchange high fives all around and cracked a few beers. After that they started practicing how to say "Oh, you're learning Estonian" without busting up laughing.

That's how Estonian came to be, honest!

by Douglas Wells

So why do you add seks after everything?

Collegue of mine is learning finnish now. Probably something that doesn't make much sense either

Haha, good question. I honestly don't know how to answer that. But I can speak finnish quite well. I used to read a lot of finnish comic books when I was little. At first I didn't quite understand anything but after a while the pictures and the text started making sense and our language is somewhat similar. At least when it comes to words. But usually they mean something totally different. For instance "linna" means to go to the city in estonian but in finnish it means jail. Then there is "lossi" which means to the castle (chateau) in my language but in finnish it means a ferry.

And when you see a finn, say "Matti Nükanen on maailman paras!" but good luck pronouncing that .

I'll try saying that to my Finnish colleague's Peltz. (That apostrophe is for Satis hahaha)

douche!

http://blog.ut.ee/10-tongue-twisters-to ... -estonian/

Some weird combinations and examples in my native language.