One plus one equals one: the forging of Standard Estonian

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This contribution provides a historical sketch of the emergence and gradual elaboration of a standard variety of Estonian seen against the background of the development of society within Estonia, and within a framework comprising the key terms of standard language building in corpus planning. graphization, codification, and adaptation; in addition the role of purism in language adaptation is illustrated. It is argued that graphization in itself need not demarcate the beginning of standardization. Standardization of Estonian started in the sixteenth century when two written varieties emerged, one for North Estonia and another for South Estonia. The two written languages were codified in the first half of the seventeenth century and existed side-by-side in different parts of the area inhabited by Estonians for the following two centuries. After a major orthographic reform implemented in the 1860s and 1870s, the modern standard language was developed on an essentially northern basis, although allowing a number of southern characteristics to be incorporated into the standard. Further lexical and morphological adaptation followed suit at four linguistic conferences 1908-1911 and was continued by the subsequent language reform and language regulation movements between 1910 and 1940, when Estonian language planning also became institutionalized. Institutionalized modernization efforts have continued throughout the postwar period.