Kuhu lähed, eesti keel? Sõnavara muutumine jätkub
Quo vadis, Estonian? Vocabulary still on the move

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the innovative tendencies observed in the Estonian lexicon over the past decade. In the late 1990s the abundance of novel words in the press seemed to endanger the very identity of the Estonian language. However, an inventory of the innovations adopted into the language over the recent years proves that word formation still dominates over borrowing, although a lot of new material has indeed been added both to the general language and to sublanguages. being in change, the Estonian lexicon still needs an alert eye and reasonable advice of language planners. true, most of the really disturbing loans arriving in the language unadapted belong, as was observed in the 1990s, to the domains of entertainment and youth interests, but the fading of the boundaries between the standard and the sublanguages has provided for their spreading further. standard vocabulary is growing intensely due to addition of foreign words. In special languages a great effort is made to replace foreign terms with genuine derivatives and compounds, but the general language receives them almost unnoticed as components of compound words.

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