I was reading Kroonika in the bathtub last night, and getting pretty deep into a story about the exploits of Jürgen Kaljuvee, when I saw it - a funny word with four vowels in the middle - kuuüür. From the text and my own linguistic skills I deduced that this was not one word but two put together - kuu (month) and üür (rent).But still, it had four vowels in the middle. As a child in elementary school, I would only dream of words cool enough to have so many vowels. In English we usually limit things to two vowels - spoon, spleen, Hawaii (and the last one doesn't even count). But here it was, an awesome word, with four vowels, two with dots over them. How cool!
Anyway, because it is so fun to look at, it's the first of a series of "words of the week" we are initiating here at Itching for Eestimaa. Enjoy, and don't forget to pay your kuuüür.
10 kommentaari:
jäääär :) this is a word too...
I was also thinking a word jäääär. It is the best!
kuu-uurija is cool, too.
hauaööõudused :)
-Kõueööaimdus
-Hauaööõudused
-Jõeäärne õueaiamaa
-Võõras kõuts kõndis õues ja mõnules lõõskava päikese käes
-Kummikutes kummitus kummitas kummutis
jõudu!
:)
*kuuuurija töööö jäääärsel teeeendil
* jüriöö ülestõus is also a classic hit among my foreign friends :)
Mitte ainult vokaalid:
vintsklema - viis konsonanti reas
I assume that phonetically uu is one vowel, and so is üü; both are long; they only happen to be written out in DIGRAPHS, to represent the length. Latvians, in their turn, would write uuüü as ūī when adapting a word from Estonian.
õueaiaäär :)
Thanks Dace. I meant two of the same vowels. We have some French-based words with three or four different vowels in a row, like "bourgeois" and "plateau"
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