March 14, Estonia celebrated Mother Tongue Day (Emakeelepäev). In spite of taking Estonian language class for 1 year, I still can not speak this language. Shame on me, but as an excuse I can say that Estonian is one of the most difficult languages and it differs from the group of European languages considerably. However, I can speak Russian and English and, fortunately, majority of the Estonians speaks either English or Russian, too.
Thus, every time before starting the conversation with a person whom I do not know (for example, cashier, taxi-driver, librarian) I need to conduct very quick analysis what language should I talk. By the trial-and-error method I have discovered that young people under 35 in most of the cases have free English, and people below 50 are not bad in Russian. This is easy. Although 35-50 years old people is a challenging group for me since correlation with the language that they speak was not found. That is why I use the next logic: if a person looks rather Russian - I speak Russian, if the person looks rather Estonian – I speak English. I can not say that this method is very efficient, but it is better than nothing:)
And now you may pose a question: how can you define a nationality of a stranger? For this purpose I have a secret technique that almost always allows me to do that accurately. My secret „weapon“ in defining is… a nose. Estonian noses usually small and „look“ up. Russian noses are all the rest:) Interestingly, that a boy on the monument dedicated to the birth of 100 000th citizen of Tartu has exactly the Estonian nose.
So, now you also know a secret technique how to define an Estonian;) And Happy Mother Tongue Day to all Estonians! Estonian language is one of the most beautiful languages I have ever heard. I sincerely hope that one day I will stop facing the challenge of choosing between Russian and English languages – and I will be able just start conversation in Estonian.