1361: Literary Influences on Estonian Sep 2, 2018

We can say that Shakespeare had a great deal of influence on English, but this is not nearly as significant as the influence that other poets and writers have had on other languages, like on Estonian. The modern standard dialect was heavily influenced by a reformer, Johannes Aavik, in the 1880's who thought that the language needed to be more beautiful and added more vowels to some of the words. He also created a dictionary of Estonian and included many words that he made up from no other etymological background than his own imagination. These words, even as common as 'naasma' ('to return') and 'ese' ('object') are still now widely used. For more on this, visit this link.