Speaking from Estonia’s Foreign Ministry, Marin Mõttus states that “iga keel on omaette mõtteviis ja maailmanägemine ning selles keeles sündivad ideed on seda kõneleva rahva nägu, isegi kui need laiema leviku huvides võõrkeeltesse ümber panna tuleb”. With that, she’s asserting that languages encompase a unique way of thinking and world-view. Even in translation, they expose national character.
The belief is vague, but broadly held, even by prodigious intellectuals like Alexander Solzhenitsyn who became acquainted with Estonians in the GULAG. One of his first cell-mates there was Arnold Susi, a prominent lawyer and independent Estonia’s last Minister of Education. Solzhenitsyn later wrote that Susi “breathed a different sort of air” and his surrepticious exchange of ideas with Susi, during exercise periods in the prison yard, moved Solzhenitsyn to question his Marxist upbringing.