Northeastern coastal Estonian


The northeastern coastal dialect is a Finnic dialect traditionally considered part of the Estonian language. The Estonian coastal dialects were spoken on the coastal strip of Estonia from Tallinn to river Narva. It has very few speakers left nowadays.
Treating the northeastern coastal dialect as a single unit dates back to Arnold Kask's classification of Estonian dialects from the year 1956). According to some authors, the coastal dialects form one of the three major dialect groups of Estonian.

Features

The characteristics of the dialect group are mostly shared with the Northern Finnic languages.
According to some authors, the "Finnish-like" features of the coastal Estonian dialects are archaisms, rather than Finnish or Ingrian influence.

The northeastern coastal dialect of Estonian is nowadays alternatively split into two dialects, the coastal dialect and the Alutaguse dialect, the former being more closely related to southern Finnish dialects, the Ingrian and Votic languages, whereas the latter has also been influenced by the central dialect of the Northern Estonian dialects.

Footnotes