Editing Estonian language (section)

==Classification==
By [[Convention (norm)|conventions]] of [[historical linguistics]], Estonian is classified as a part of the [[Finnic languages|Finnic]] (a.k.a. Baltic Finnic) branch of the [[Uralic languages|Uralic]] (a.k.a. Uralian, or [[Finno-Ugric languages|Finno-Ugric]])<ref>"Finno-Ugric" is sometimes used as a synonym for "Uralic".{{Cite journal |last=Bakró-Nagy |first=Marianne |author-link=Marianne Bakró-Nagy|date=2012 |title=The Uralic Languages |url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_2012_num_90_3_8272 |journal=Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire |volume=90 |issue=3 |pages=1001–1027 |doi=10.3406/rbph.2012.8272}}</ref> [[language family]]. Other Finnic languages include [[Finnish language|Finnish]] and several [[endangered language]]s spoken around the [[Baltic Sea]] and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. 

Alongside Finnish, [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] and [[Maltese language|Maltese]], Estonian is one of the only four (out of 24) [[Languages of the European Union|official languages of the European Union]] that are not [[Indo-European language]]s.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}} 

In terms of [[Morphology (linguistics)|linguistic morphology]], Estonian is a predominantly [[agglutinative language]]. The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more [[Fusional language|fusional]], especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ehala |first=Martin |date=2009 |title=Linguistic Strategies and Markedness in Estonian Morphology |journal=STUF – Language Typology and Universals |volume=62 |issue=1–2 |pages=29–48 |doi=10.1524/stuf.2009.0003 |s2cid=121233571}}</ref> The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system.<ref name=":0">{{cite book |last1=Rehm |first1=Georg |last2=Uszkoreit |first2=Hans |title=The Estonian Language in the Digital Age |chapter=Language Technology Support for Estonian |date=2012 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-642-30784-3 |series=White Paper Series |location=Berlin |pages=47–64 |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-30785-0_9}}</ref>

Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is [[subject–verb–object]].