Estonia on the Map » university of washington

This week: Seattle singers to perform in Tallinn, Tartu, and Riga

Administrator — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:12:53 +0000

The University of Washington Chamber Singers and Chorale is currently en route to Tallinn from Seattle to present a series of choral concerts in Estonia and Latvia. The 75 singers, directed by UW music professors Giselle Wyers and Geoffrey Boers, will deliver five lively performances during their one-week Baltic tour.

The tour will begin this Saturday in Tallinn’s acoustically splendid Niguliste Museum (pictured), a rebuilt and converted Gothic church in the old town. It will include stops in Tartu and Riga before winding up next Wednesday in Tallinn’s 16th century House of the Brotherhood of Blackheads.

The complete schedule follows.

Saturday, March 20, 12:00 — Niguliste Museum, Tallinn (hosted by Vox Populi)
Sunday, March 21, 10:00 — Jaani Church, Tallinn
Sunday, March 21, 17:00 — University Aula, Tartu (hosted by HaleBopp Singers)
Monday, March 22, 19:00 — Riga (hosted by Riga Technical University Men’s Choir)
Wednesday, March 24, 19:00 — Mustpeade Maja (House of the Brotherhood of Blackheads), Tallinn (hosted by Revalia)

Is the Estonian language endangered?

Administrator — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:02:51 +0000

Estonia’s population continues to shrink. When I first moved to Estonia in 1992, its population stood at an estimated 1.59 million. It has dwindled ever since, dropping first below 1.5 million, then below 1.4 million. It has now officially fallen below the 1.3 million threshold: the country’s estimated population as of July 2009 is 1,299,371. And startlingly, as of 2009, Estonia’s population growth rate of -0.63% places it 230th out of 234 countries in the world. Only Ukraine, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and the Cook Islands are shrinking faster.

And as the country’s population shrinks, Estonia’s young people have increasingly embraced the global onslaught of the English language. So an ongoing source of anxiety to many has been the prospect of the eventual complete disappearance of the Estonian language. But is Estonian really an endangered language?

Many experts grimly forecast the eventual extinction of all languages that, like Estonian, currently have fewer than one million native speakers. University of Washington linguist Frederick Newmeyer agrees with this forecast in its general outlines, but he believes that Estonian will prove to be one of the world’s linguistic survivors.

In remarks made last week at Tartu University, Dr. Newmeyer asserted his view that the Estonian language would prevail because of its status as an internationally recognized official state language. As such, Estonian is widely used in both official and non-official publications and, critically, has an assured indelible presence on the Internet.

But in the long run, none of that will matter unless the population stops shrinking.

A detailed report on Dr. Newmeyer’s remarks can be found here. And the Estonian Language Institute (Eesti Keele Instituut) works tirelessly to promote the use of Estonian (as might be expected, the Institute’s website is exclusively in the Estonian language).

Scandinavian and Baltic Heritage Celebration

Administrator — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:09:07 +0000

The Estonia oak tree, UW campus, 26 Sep 09 (detail)

I joined several hundred people today on the University of Washington campus in Seattle at a celebration commemorating both the 15^th anniversary of the university’s Baltic Studies Program and the 100^th anniversary of its Scandinavian Studies Department.

To mark the occasion, eight oak trees, one for each country in the department’s curricula (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden), were planted along the oldest pathway on the UW campus.

As it happens, trees representing 30 countries, including all of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, were planted on the campus back in 1932. But alas, none of the Baltic or Scandinavian trees is still standing, each of them a victim of either disease or campus construction. Hence the idea to replace the eight Baltic/Scandinavian trees today.

Dr. Guntis Šmidchens, head of the Baltic Studies program, proposed to the assembled crowd that if we were to cheer loud enough to shake the leaves of the young oak trees, the echoes of our voices would still be heard in the mature oak grove 100 years from now. He then proceeded to lead a rousing chorus of “hip, hip, hooray!,” which we zestfully repeated three times.

And I can report that we were definitely loud enough to shake the leaves, so I’m quite certain that the distant echo of our enthusiastic cheers will be heard by the thoughtful pedestrians who pause among the leaves of this lovely oak grove a century from today.

Read more about the event, and the history of Scandinavian and Baltic studies at the University of Washington, here.