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In order to improve the knowledge of
Estonian among school-leavers of gymnasiums, a requirement was imposed to start
transition to Estonian as the language of tuition for 60% of total teaching at the gymnasium
level in 2007. However, the preparations for this have been inadequate. The National
programmefor the education of new immigrant children is currently at the draft stage. It
may well be that the arrival of new immigrants will further complicate the language
problems in education. For the future objectives are set as follows:
students of
non-Estonian-medium primary schools (compulsory education) will acquire Estonian at level
B2, which will enable them to continue their studies or seek employment in
Estonian-language environments (secondary education, workplaces);
linguistic
integration of new immigrants into Estonian society will be arranged according to a
special programmeincluding teacher in-service training and language materials for students
and teachers (methodological handbook).
16. Estonian in vocational schools
According to law,
Estonian is the language of tuition in vocational schools. However, as an exception
vocational training can be carried out in Russian as well. The scope of Russian-language
vocational training is about 36 per cent. In Russian-language vocational schools or
Russian-language study groups of vocational schools Estonian is compulsory only for
students studying on the basis of compulsory education.
The state does not
regulate the teaching of Estonian in Russian-language vocational training. The majority of
school-leavers of Russian-language vocational schools are unable to work and communicate
in the Estonian-language environment, thus being vulnerable in the face of employment
changes. Plans foresee restructuring of Russian-language vocational training and its
gradual transition to full Estonian-language tuition. The plan will among other things
foresee termination of admission to Russian-language vocational training on the basis of
secondary education, a considerable increase in the scope of teaching Estonian and
Estonian-medium teaching, and transition to integrated teaching in institutions with two
languages of tuition.
17. Language Technology
The technology
support of a language consists of linguistic resources, linguistic software, and the
applications of the latter. Its objective is to develop the language technology support of
the Estonian language up to the level that will enable the Estonian language to
successfully function in the contemporary information-technological environment. Estonia
has its own specialists for creating linguistic resources, linguistic software, and its
applications as well as opportunities for training new specialists in computational
linguistics and language technology.
By now Estonia has
entered the phase where most wide-spread software products are available also in Estonian
(Windows XP, WindowsOffice, Linux, OpenOffice, several book-keeping, management and
information programmes plus menus of high-technology products), however, the domain is
legally not regulated. Also various speech technology products are used, though for
persons with special needs mostly.
Support from the
state is necessary for the elaboration of prototypes of applied language processing
systems and order the elaboration of marketable finished products from software companies.
Tasks include creation
of various language-technological applications, including automatic speech recognition,
speech synthesis, grammar checker, machine-translation programmes, information-search
programmes, abstracting and summarising programmes and interactive language teaching
programmes.
Simultaneously
development of the following language resources is planned:
enlargement of
the general corpora of Standard Estonian, colloquial Estonian, multilingual parallel
corpora for the elaboration of translation software;
specialised
corpora, first of all a dialogue corpus and syntactically tagged corpus for the
elaboration of communication programmes that allow the use of natural language;
a database of
spoken Estonian for the creation of Estonian-language software of speech recognition;
a standard
system of electronic dictionaries, including bilingual dictionaries, for online use as
well as in language-technology applications, for the compilation of new translation
dictionaries, in language-teaching and translation programmes;
a
lexical-grammatical database and a lexical-semantic database (thesaurus) of the Estonian
language;
formalised
linguistic descriptions for the creation of programmes of morphological, syntactic,
semantic, and pragmatic analysis and synthesis;
Refinement of the
existing programmes for morphological analysis and synthesis and the elaboration of
programmes for automatic syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analysis and synthesis are
constant on-going activities.
18. Development strategy of the Estonian language
The development
strategy of the Estonian language (DSEL, to be adopted by the Parliament in 2004) outlines
the development priorities of the Estonian language as the only state language of the
Republic of Estonia and the national language of Estonian for the years 20042010.
The main objective of the strategy is to realise the opportunities provided by the
constitution and legislation to secure the protection, sustainability, development, and
full-scale use as a state language in all spheres of life on the entire territory of the
Estonian state. The Government of the Republic, its ministries, local governments,
educational, research, and development institutions will proceed from DSEL in planning and
organising their language-related work. DSEL will serves as the basis for the Ministry of
Education and Research for working out the annual action plans concerning the Estonian
language.
Several
institutions participate in the implementation of DSEL areas: Ministry of Education and
Research (chief executive body); Estonian Language Council (advisory expert committee to
the ER minister); Language Inspectorate (supervision of the observance of the language act
and other legal acts regulating the use of language); Tallinn and Tartu Universities, the
Institute of the Estonian Language (research and development institutions); Estonian Legal
Language Centre (creates and administers the database of legal terminology); Vőru
Institute (research and development institution developing the local Vőro language and
culture); Mother Tongue Society (non-profit society, contributes to the research and
planning of the Estonian language); Association of Estonian-language Teachers (non-profit
society, brings together teachers of the Estonian language and literature); Estonian
Terminology Society (non-profit society that supports and in some domains coordinates
terminological work); Estonian Society for Applied Linguistics (liaison body to AILA);
Integration Foundation for non-Estonians (implements the national integration programme
for 2000-2007); National Examination and Qualification Centre (institution administered by
the Ministry of Education and Research, draws up the assignments for national examinations
in the Estonian language and conducts the examinations, issues the language certificates
for employment and citizenship).
ELDS is supported
through several national programmes, such as:
Estonian
Language and National Memory (20042008) (the development of language planning
and specialised language, basic dictionaries of Estonian, and language-technology projects
as well as the shaping of linguistic attitudes),
South Estonian
Language and Culture (20002004) (development, research, teaching, and use of the
South Estonian varieties of the Estonian language in the media and culture),
Academic Foreign
Teaching Programmeof the Estonian Language and Culture (20042008) manages the
system for the teaching of the Estonian language and culture in those European
universities that present more interest to Estonia,
Compatriots
Programme(20042008) supports compatriots living outside Estonia, their Estonian
language usage and Estonian-medium teaching through Estonian schools, Sunday schools, and
language courses,
Estonian
identity 20062009 (language marketing programmeto be adopted next year).
Besides,
traditional tasks in corpus and status planning, language-in-education and language
technology, language marketing as a new domain was introduced. Language marketing
(prestige planning) includes motivation to use good Estonian in all spheres of life,
application of linguistic criteria in employment, tenders and contracts, etc., stimulation
of Estonian-language tuition, research and entertainment, including Estonian-language
popular music, motivation to use Estonian-language software both in established and
emerging fields of information technology. The task is to enhance language awareness,
shape linguistic attitudes, and popularise good usage in society at large in order to
secure a favourable reputation of the language among its users and a high status in
society as a whole.
DSEL looks into
issues of tertiary education and research also. The long tradition of Estonian-medium
higher education and research supports the Estonian language. However,
internationalisation is accompanied by the use of foreign languages, including the
emergence of students and lecturers with an insufficient knowledge of Estonian. In some
domains the specialised language is not taught, and the specialised terminology is absent.
Therefore, ELDS foresees the provision of specialised dictionaries and Estonian-language
teaching materials for various domains, preservation of the current extent of
Estonian-medium teaching, publication of major research results also in Estonian.
University graduates are obliged to master the advanced level of Estonian.
Various tasks are
also focused on the regional varieties of Estonian (dialects and the corresponding
literary varieties; varieties of Estonian as used by Estonians living in different
countries), varieties of social groups (sociolects, slang), and varieties of people with
special linguistic needs, including the Estonian sign language.
The most prominent
regional variety (language) Vőro is based on South Estonian dialects that served as the
basis for the historical Tartu language. These are regarded as cultural heritage, a source
for the development of Standard Estonian, and the bearer of the local Estonian identity.
The Estonian
language of Estonians living abroad is the language variety used by people who are native
speakers of Estonian and whose ancestors were speakers of Estonian but who live outside
Estonia. Their language variety is related to the area or country where they live. The
mother tongue of expatriates develops separately from the language of the mother country
and is influenced by the country of residence. The state supports the study of Standard
Estonian and the study in Standard Estonian, as well as the collection and research of
language materials of the Estonian language outside Estonia.
People with
special linguistic needs include the deaf and people with impaired hearing, also the
blind, the deaf blind, dyslectics, etc. The Estonian Sign Language is used by people with
impaired hearing. The task here is to guarantee favourable conditions for study,
communication, and work to users of the sign language and other people with special
linguistic needs.
Besides Estonian,
foreign laguage policy is provided in the document. English, Russian, German, French, and
Finnish languages affect the development of Estonian most and are also of special
importance in international communication. In order to assure normal development of
Estonian and avoid undesirable influences it is essential that the Estonian population
should have a good knowledge of foreign languages (two or three foreign languages,
including English), there should be qualified interpreters and translators with an
excellent knowledge of Estonian, and the Estonian language should be represented
internationally. Therefore, the aim is to implement a foreign language policy that will
take into account the development needs of the Estonian language (learning and teaching,
study and use) and to assure the international representation of the Estonian language.
Tasks foreseen are: reaching the level in foreign-language teaching that will enable a)
the school-leavers of compulsory schools to attain the B1 level in at least one foreign
language; b) the school-leavers of secondary schools to attain the B2 level in at
least one foreign language; c) graduates of higher schools to attain the B2 level
in at least two foreign languages; d) teachers of foreign languages to attain the
C2 level in the respective language. Expanding the training of university lecturers,
teachers, interpreters, and translators in foreign languages and organising continuing
education, market research for the identification of target groups and their needs,
academic supervision, evaluation of interpreters and translators and modernisation of
teaching materials and curricula are the main activities planned. This goes hand-in-hand
with the increasing role of Estonian in the foreign language curricula, supporting the
contrastive studies of Estonian and the languages that influence Estonian and developing
teaching materials that take into account the relations between Estonian and the
influencing languages, establishing the national test development centre and expanding
academic learning of Estonian outside Estonia.
19. Conclusion
At present the
Estonian language is used in all spheres of life. However, many fields show signs of
domain loss to other languages and drawbacks in the quality of the language used. The past
decade in Estonia has been oriented towards openness; the position of Estonian has
weakened against the background of globalisation and the development of the information
society. The negative factors affecting the development opportunities of the Estonian
language include immigration of non-Estonian speakers and emigration of Estonians as well
as the absolute decrease in the number of native speakers of Estonian. The latter is not
compensated by a certain increase in the number of people who know Estonian in Estonia and
the rest of the world. |