Editing Estonian language (section)

===''Ex nihilo'' lexical enrichment===
Estonian [[language planner]]s such as [[Ado Grenzstein]] (a journalist active in Estonia from the 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ''[[Estonian vocabulary#Ex nihilo lexical enrichment|ex nihilo]]'' (''Urschöpfung'');<ref name="Zuckermann 2003 p149">{{cite book |last=Zuckermann |first=Ghil'ad |title=Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew |title-link=Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew |date=2003 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-4039-1723-2 |location=New York, NY |pages=[https://archive.org/details/languagecontactl00zuck/page/n159 149] |author-link=Ghil'ad Zuckermann}}</ref> i.e. they created new words out of nothing.

The most well-known reformer of Estonian, [[Johannes Aavik]] (1880–1973), used creations ''ex nihilo'' (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of the 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly ''ex nihilo'' are in common use today. Examples are * ''ese'' 'object', * ''kolp'' 'skull',  * ''liibuma'' 'to cling',  * ''naasma'' 'to return, come back', * ''nõme'' 'stupid, dull'.<ref name="Zuckermann 2003 p149" /><ref>{{cite web |title=Eesti entsüklopeedia|trans-title=Aavik, Johannes |url=http://entsyklopeedia.ee/artikkel/aavik_johannes2
 |language=et}}</ref>   

Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ''ex nihilo'' could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from [[Russian language|Russian]], [[German language|German]], [[French language|French]], [[Finnish language|Finnish]], [[English language|English]] and [[Swedish language|Swedish]]. Aavik had a broad classical education and knew [[Ancient Greek]], [[Latin]] and [[French language|French]]. Consider ''roim'' 'crime' versus [[English language|English]] ''crime'' or ''taunima'' 'to condemn, disapprove' versus [[Finnish language|Finnish]] ''tuomita'' 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item.<ref>{{cite book |last=Zuckermann |first=Ghil'ad |url=https://archive.org/details/languagecontactl00zuck |title=Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew |date=2003 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-4039-1723-2 |location=New York, NY |pages=[https://archive.org/details/languagecontactl00zuck/page/n160 150] |url-access=limited}}</ref>