Under Cup

It's strange how much of the Estonian I've been trying to absorb over the past year is suddenly clicking into place now that I'm learning German.

One of the first things I learnt in Estonian (thanks to a CDROM called Talk Now! Estonian) was "cup and saucer": tass ja alustass. It was part of a whole section on food related words - which are still, sadly, the words I remember best. The other day in German class we were also learning food related words and, wouldn't you know it, the German for "cup and saucer" is Tasse und Untertasse. What with the Germans occupying Estonia for a while, it makes sense that they'd have a few words crossing over.

However, the thing that suddenly clicked into place for me was the significance of the "alus" in "alustass". The "word" for saucer in both of these languages is "undercup". I finally connected "alus" with "all". It was also nice to note how often the Estonian word for this, that or the other would pop into my head when I was learning the German version. It means something is sticking in there after all.

I've been getting frustrated lately with the fact that I'm still looking up the same words in Estonian after all this time. It seems my vocabulary acquisition is just not cutting it. I'll look at a word in a reading, recognise it as something I've seen several times before - looked up several times before - and I just won't be able to pull the meaning out of my brain. I have to look it up again. It's dang frustrating.

It's probably because I'm not interacting with the language, just passively receiving it from various sources. Krashen would say that's perfectly valid, I should just keep reading and eventually it will all click into place. Which is a load of fetid dingoes' kidneys, if you ask me. Then again, he used to say that in the early 80s. He started to mellow out a bit in the 90s and may have moved on in the last twenty years.

Anyway, I've been trying to challenge myself lately by trying to create something in the language, which has been frustrating to say the least. Take the whole "square" incident. Question: How hard can it be to find the correct version of the word "square" in order to say "the circle is next to the square"? Answer: I still haven't found it. My best guess: "ringi on nelinurku juures".

I've been busy ploughing through all of these readings about things that are supposed to help language learners develop their vocabulary, and so far my attempts to apply them to Estonian have been a slog. Which is why German has been such a pleasant surprise. I borrowed a book in German that was at the same reading level as a couple of Estonian books I have been unable to crack, and I managed to follow it quite happily. I didn't have the 95% coverage that Nation and his ilk advise for vocabulary acquisition through reading, but I managed to glean a few words from the context, which turned out to be exactly what I thought they were, and I could read it through reasonably happily without the unknown words getting in the way... And yet, theoretically, I know less German than I do Estonian.

Also, the German words for things are popping into my head much more quickly than the Estonian words did. I'm wondering if Estonian is so hard in comparison to German that when I encounter the easier language my brain is just saying: "Oh, thank God, something I can actually process" and is latching onto it. It's so weird to have these "Oh, this is what you were talking about" moments with language learning after dismissing half of what I had been reading about in the literature as being irrelevant for beginners.

Maybe it's because German is a "cousin" of English. Maybe it's because I briefly flirted with German as a child, and something imprinted. Maybe it's because I took a semester of Anglo-Saxon at university and I've been immersed in Renaissance English for decades through Shakespeare and his mates (declension of verbs in Renaissance English skirts very close to the pattern in German). Or maybe it's just because the Finno-Ugric languages are insanely foreign compared to English. I don't know.

By the way, have you ever seen a flying undercup?