With Oktoberfest fast approaching, it is absolutely necessary to revive the Language Detective column and study some very important words and expressions in Estonian.
Õlu sounds like a genuinely Estonian word, as well as a genuinely Estonian beverage. We actually share both the word and the taste for what it denotes with our fellow nations from the shores of the Baltic Sea: Latvians (“alus”), Lithuanians (also “alus”), Finns (“olut”), Swedes (“öl”), Norwegians (“øl”), and some bygone peoples such as Prussians, Livonians, Vepsians, and other smaller Finno-Ugric groups.
