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.
There are 1.3 million of us. We possess power and strength. But only if we go forward taking heed of one another, not elbowing our own truth through, President Alar Karis said in his speech at the Rose Garden reception in Kadriorg on the Day of Restoration of Independence on Saturday.
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In describing what he wants the audience to feel when leaving a Collegium Musicale concert, conductor Endrik Üksvärav identifies the understanding “that the c…