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 societyAnalogies
🇩🇪: “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”)