Vocab: sulanduma

to become one with, to merge with

to merge together into a larger whole, boundaries disappearing

Building blocks

We can break down sulanduma into different parts:

• sula- melting, (snow)melt,

• -nda- causative (“make something melt”),

• -u (replacing the previous -a) - reflexive “make yourself melt”

• -ma - infinitive ending

Thus the final meaning becomes “melt yourself [into something]”

How to use it

The verb ending has to match who/what is melting into something/merging with something else.

Mina sulandun seltskonda - “I melt into the group of people”

👆 note the “-n” at the end of “sulandun” indicating the first person (“I”) as the agent

The other thing to watch out for is how you indicate what you are blending into/merging with: for this, you use the Illative (the “into something” case):

Orav sulandub ladvasse - “The squirrel blends into the crown of the trees”

Examples

Keele õppimisega sulandun ühiskonda

Literally: “With language learning I blend into society”

Idiomatically: “I blend into society through language learning”

Keele - Noun - Gen Sg, of language
õppimisega - Noun - Com Sg, with the learning
sulandun - Verb - 1P Sg Ind Present, I blend
ühiskonda - Noun - (short) Illative Sg, into society

Analogies

🇩🇪: “verschmelzen” ~ “to melt [into something]”

This follows similar logic as in Estonian:

• take the root for “melt[ing]”,

• add something to the verb to change the meaning with regards to “who”/”what” is “suffering” from the action

For the ver- prefix in German, we can see this as one of the possible meanings:

denotes a transition of the object into a state, which is indicated by the stem.

‎ver- + ‎lieben (“to love”) → ‎sich verlieben (“to fall in love”)

‎ver- + ‎urteilen (“to pronounce judgement”) → ‎verurteilen (“to convict”)