Beware! Do not even try to tell an Estonian that you love them. This is not something that’s commonly done in Estonian culture. It is a very intimate thing to say, unlike in America where you have to assure your friends and family members several times a day that you love them. Plus, this expression is not grammatically that interesting.
If you want to tell someone you really like them, the thing to say in Estonian is: “Sa meeldid mulle!” (literally: “You are pleasant for me”). Note that the sentence starts with the object of the utterance, that is “you.” Syntax (the way one builds up sentences) is far more flexible in Estonian than it is in English. In English one must start with someone who does the thing, then say what it is that she or he is doing, then add the object of action, and save the references to time and place for the last part of the sentence. In Estonian, you simply start a sentence with the most important thing you want to emphasise—in our example, “you.”
According to this sentence logic, the English “I love you” makes it sound like the person saying it is the most important one and “you” is merely an object towards whom the first person’s radiant feeling is directed.
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