Soft Consonants (Palatalization)

Level 2

Estonian l, n, s and t can be soft: said with the middle of the tongue raised toward the palate, so a short i-like glide comes before the consonant. Spelling never shows it.

How It Works

Palatalization (Estonian peenendus or palatalisatsioon) means saying a consonant with the middle of the tongue raised toward the hard palate. The consonant gets an i-like colour, and you hear a short glide before it. Standard Estonian has soft versions of four consonants: l, n, s and t.

You hear soft consonants in two places:

  • Before i, where the softening happens by itself: the ll in palli (a form of pall 'ball') is soft.
  • In some short words where an old i has disappeared but left its softness behind. Here the softness can be the only thing that separates two words.

The best-known pair is palk: palk, palga 'salary' has a plain l, and palk, palgi 'log' has a soft l. In the same way tulp, tulbi 'tulip' is soft, while tulp, tulba 'post' is plain. Everyday words such as kass (cat) and kott (bag, genitive koti) are soft too. In each of these pairs the soft word is the one whose genitive ends in -i.

Because the nominatives of such pairs are spelled the same, the genitive and the context tell you which word is meant. Only a few words depend on softness alone, so a missing soft sound rarely causes a misunderstanding. It is still part of a natural accent, so listen for it and copy it.

Examples (5)

  1. Ta sai eile palga kätte.

    He got his pay yesterday.

    Palk 'salary', genitive palga, has a plain l.

  2. Mees saagis palgi pooleks.

    The man sawed the log in half.

    Palk 'log', genitive palgi, has a soft l.

  3. Vaasis on punased tulbid.

    There are red tulips in the vase.

    Tulp 'tulip' has a soft l in all its forms.

  4. Kas sul on kass?

    Do you have a cat?

    The question word kas has a plain s, while kass has a long, soft s.

  5. Poiss viskab palli.

    The boy throws the ball.

    The ll before i is soft.

Common Mistakes

  • Mixing up the genitives of the two palk words.

    Ma sain palgi kätte.
    Ma sain palga kätte.

    If you mean your salary, the genitive is palga, with a plain l. Palgi is the genitive of palk 'log', so the sentence would be about a log.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

Soft Consonants (Palatalization)Level 2

Learn This First

Palatalization shows up in gradation pairs such as palga and palgi.