Johannes Aavik ( in Randvere,

Saaremaa Saaremaa is the largest island in Estonia, measuring . The main island of Saare County, it is located in the Baltic Sea, south of Hiiumaa island and west of Muhu island, and belongs to the West Estonian Archipelago. The capital of the island ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe, Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, sea across from Sweden, to ...

(then

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. T ...

) – 18 March 1973 in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropol ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

) was an

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

and Fennophile who played a significant role in the modernization and development of the

Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language, written in the Latin script. It is the official language of Estonia and one of the official languages of the European Union, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people; 922,000 people in Estonia and 160 ...

.Toivo Miljan, ''Historical Dictionary of Estonia'', Scarecrow Press 2004

Education and career

Aavik studied history at the

University of Tartu The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

and the University of Nezin in 1905. He was a member of the Young Estonia movement and obtained a

Doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

in Romance languages at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

in 1910. Aavik taught Estonian and French at Tartu University between 1926 and 1933. In 1934 he was appointed by the Estonian Ministry of Education as Chief Inspector of Secondary Schools, a position he held until 1940.'' The International Who's Who 1943-44''. 8th edition.

George Allen & Unwin George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It went on to become one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and to establish an ...

, London, 1943, p. 1. 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 proposing ways to develop the Estonian language. He suggested intensive borrowing from Finnish; many of his suggestions were quickly widely accepted and have become part of standard Estonian vocabulary. From 1914 he started to artificially create new 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'' ("put into believing"). 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 considered many of his

neologisms A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

as created out of nothing (see Estonian language#Vocabulary, ex nihilo lexical enrichment). However, according to

Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and C ...

, many of Aavik's neologisms were influenced by foreign lexical items, for example words from

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...

, German, French, Finnish,

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and Swedish (Aavik had a broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek,

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

and French). Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003),

Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew ''Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew'' is a scholarly book written in the English language by linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, published in 2003 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book proposes a socio-philological framework for the an ...

Palgrave Macmillan Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains of ...

.

pp. 149-150. For example, ''roim'' ("crime") might have been influenced by the

word ''crime''; ''relv'' ("weapon") might have been influenced by the English word ''revolver''; and ''taunima'' ("to condemn, disapprove") might have been influenced by the Finnish word ''tuomita'' ("to condemn, to judge"). 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 inflectional 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 Neologism, 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 the 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 can be found in his Estonian-English Dictionary.

Legacy

On 26 September 1992 in

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

, Johannes Aavik Society was established. The society focuses on research of Estonian language and especially on those language aspects which are related to Johannes Aavik. The society has 107 members. The society publishes the publication "Keeleuuenduse Kirjastik".

References

External links

Johannes Aavik at Estonian Writers' Online Dictionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aavik, Johannes 1880 births 1973 deaths People from Saaremaa Parish People from Kreis Ösel Linguists from Estonia Estonian male poets Estonian World War II refugees 20th-century Estonian poets Language reformers 20th-century male writers Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 3rd Class 20th-century linguists

Education and career

Estonian language development

Legacy

References

Further reading

External links