Grammar: how to turn verbs into adjectives

In other words: participles

Recap: word classes

Let’s briefly recap what the four main categories of words are (yes, this list is intentionally simplified):

• nouns / nimisõnad (“name words”): refer to things, concrete and abstract. Examples: laud - table, sein - wall, armastus - love

• verbs / tegusõnad (“action words”): refer to actions. Examples: tegema - to do, nägema - to see

• adjectives / omadussõnad (“property words”): refer to the properties of things. Examples: suur - big, kiire - quick

• adverbs / määrsõnad (“determining words”): in our simplified view of the world are just a catch-all category for words like “homme” - tomorrow.

Now these words have concrete relationships with each other, determining how you can use them and link them together:

• adjectives are used to describe nouns,

• adverbs can describe both verbs and adjectives,

• nouns and verbs “just are”

The cool thing about Estonian (and other languages) is that these categories are not fixed.

Transforming words

You can take a word from one category, pass it through some kind of transformation function, and get a word in the new category that has a relationship with the original meaning.

Even in English, a language in which words don’t change all that much, you can do this:

adverb(x: Adjective) = x + “ly”

This function means that you can take any adjective (let’s call it “x”) and add the ending “-ly” to it, to turn it into an adverb.

Example:

• adverb(quick) = quick + “ly” = quickly

• adverb(calm) = calm + “ly” = calmly

Now let’s see how we can translate this to Estonian: