Tallinn University (TLÜ) linguists Anna Verschik and Helin Kask analyzed texts from more than 40 blogs, 10 video blogs and eight podcasts, examining hundreds of thousands of words to see how younger adults in Estonia mix English into Estonian.

The researchers found clear differences across platforms: video bloggers, or vloggers, mixed languages about twice as often as bloggers in written content and podcast hosts.

Compound nouns accounted for 85 percent of all mixed-language expressions, including terms such as "bomber-jakk" ("bomber jacket") and "trummi-set" ("drumset"). English verbs and longer phrases such as "ära friikima" ("freak out") or "must-have asjad" ("must-have items") were much less common.

English-derived terms also often outcompete their official Estonian equivalents online.

Google searches returned about 3.5 million results for "foto-shoot," ("photoshoot") compared with 173,000 for the recommended Estonian term "fotosessioon." "Auto-trip" ("roadtrip") appeared nearly five times more often than the Estonian "autoretk."

The researchers say speakers may turn to English because it can better convey a particular meaning or emotional tone more naturally. For example, "üli-happy" ("incredibly happy") can sound more casual and expressive in everyday speech than the formal Estonian "üliõnnelik."

Original grammar still intact

Despite the influx of English vocabulary, the researchers found no evidence that language mixing is disrupting the mechanics of Estonian grammar, with English elements generally being adapted to fit within Estonian sentence structure and inflection rules.

The two languages also share a tendency to create new words by combining existing ones, making it relatively easy for native speakers to seamlessly slot English word stems into their Estonian.

The findings were published in the International Journal of Bilingualism.

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