# Estonian: Pronouns



## Alexandre8

Hi, 

Would someone care to explain to me the way in which Estonian uses pronouns 


	 Mina olen pikk.	 I am tall.  (A man saying this)
         Mina olen tüse.	 I am fat.  (A woman saying this)

         Ma olen rikas.	 I am rich. ( A man saying this)
         Ma olen vaene.	 I am poor.( A woman saying this



In addition, we have Sina, and Sa

And Tema and Ta


Thanks


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## urizon9

Hi, Alexandre8! As you probably know,Estonian is a genderless language.This also applies to pronouns-they don't have grammatical gender.
Here it's explained in detail.(Mina=ma,sina=sa,tema=ta.)


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## Alexandre8

I understand, the suffix denotes the definite or indefinite article!

Cheers.


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## dinji

Alexandre8 said:


> I understand, the suffix denotes the definite or indefinite article!
> 
> Cheers.


I doubt that very much, on what do you base that? 

As Estonian is closely related to Finnish I dear to do some guess work here since no Estonian has answered.

In Finnish there are no definite or indefinite articles and I have never heard of any in Estonian either.

In Finnish _sinä/sä(ä)/sie_ 'you singular' are all synonymous, they mainly represent different dialects and styles. The most archaic form is the literary _sinä_, which I therefore dear to equate with Estonian _sina_ 'you'. I believe Estonian _sa_ is perfectly synonymous in meaning in an analogous fashion.

The same should go for Fi. _minä/mä(ä)/mie_ 'I' =?= Est. _mina/ma _'I'

In Finnish, literary _tämä_ equals colloquial _tää._ Again I guess Estonian _tama_=_ta_, with a difference in style or dialect, but not in meaning.

Any Estonian arround to verify this?


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## jonquiliser

Not Estonian or even speak the language, but have learnt some basics, and can confirm Estonian has neither gender nor definiteness distinctions. 

_Mina_ and _ma_ both mean _I_, as with Finnish minä/mä but (if I remember correctly what I was being told in previous threads in the forum) without a difference of register (in Finnish, mä is colloquial and not used in writing except to reflect spoken language).


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## Alexandre8

jonquiliser said:


> Not Estonian or even speak the language, but have learnt some basics, and can confirm Estonian has neither gender nor definiteness distinctions.
> 
> _Mina_ and _ma_ both mean _I_, as with Finnish minä/mä but (if I remember correctly what I was being told in previous threads in the forum) without a difference of register (in Finnish, mä is colloquial and not used in writing except to reflect spoken language).




Awsome thanks for your replies guys.


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## jaapani_lendorav

Yeah... as native estonian speaker I can vertify everything what has been said by my Finnish neighbours. (In Estonian we use alsoMa in written language quite often. If we say mina it somecases sounds  very official. One can use both depends of the sentence.
And yes we are speaking genderless languages so you can say "Mina olen pikk" I(man/woman saying) am tall- or- "Ta on pikk" he/she is tall


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## astlanda

The shorter forms of those pronouns never carry a primary stress (and probably any stress at all).
The longer forms may be stressed.
Thus, if  I say "Ma olen täna kodus." - then it means just "I'll be at home today.", but "Mina olen täna kodus." sounds as if I had opposed myself to someone else.
May  be you said first: "Me läheme täna sõpradega kinno." - "We'll go to the cinema with friends today." and I'll UNDERLINE in red, that I'll stay at home.

Yes, we should not have indefinite and definite categories in Estonian. Nevertheless in colloquial speech we often say "Anna see pliiats!", even though we could just say "Anna pliiats!". The standard Estonian was created by German pastors and it's obviously impossible to get rid of all the germanisms any more.


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