Oinas F.J. Basic Course in Estonian. The Hague: Indiana University, 1966. - X +349 p.
PREFACE
This Basic Course in Estonian was prepared with support from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1961-62, as one of the projects devised for the development of training materials for use in teachin Uralic and Altaic languages. It constitutes a considerable reworking of the Spoken Estonian, textbook written for the use of the U. S. Armed Forces some ten years earlier. The fact that this original version was prepared for the military has left its imprint on the present book. It follows, in general, the plan of textbooks prepared for the U.S. Armed Forces since 1942. Itโs main emphasis is on the everyday conversational language. The language used is that of educated Estonians; dialectalisms have been avoided. The spelling as well as the use of the majority of diacritical marks follows E. Muukโs Vรคike รตigekeelsuus-sรตnaraamat (see the Bibliography), the official orthographic dictionary.
The scene for the bulk of the this textbook (the first twenty-four units) is the Estonian Republic just before the Second World War. The scene for the first six units is the U.S. here an Estonian immigrant discusses the history, economy, education, and culture of Estonia, referring both to the pre-war and the post-war situations.
The units are divided into the following parts: (a) basic sentences that contain Estonian words and phrases with their English equivalents; (b) additional words if there are any in the following exercises or conversations; (c) notes on grammar; (d) exercises on grammar with answers provided; (e) conversations; and (f) suggestions for conversations. Because of the nature of the textbook, only highlights of Estonian grammar have been given without going into great detail. However, this should be sufficient for students aiming at acquiring general knowledge of spoken Estonian.
The availability of a native speaker of Estonian for covering the material in the textbook would be of paramount importance. The services of the native speaker would be especially important at the initial stage of study, for going over the pronunciation exercises and the first units.
My wife Bettie compiled a part of the conversations and exercises and helped with the compilation of the vocabulary, and our son Valdar went over the manuscript in its entirety.