Enese refers to oneself. In most cases, sentences are understandable even without “enese” inserted to appropriate places in correct forms, but it sounds better if you know what to do with this word in Estonian.
Enese is a weird word because it does not have a nominative form. Not at all, believe it or not. In a way, the nominative form is not that essential to the Estonian case system anyway, because all the cases (except nominative and partitive) are formed on the basis of genitive—the case that indicates relation or belonging. Words in the genitive case always end with a vowel. For example, all Estonian place names are actually in genitive form, indicating that the name belongs to a certain location—town, village, hill, bay, bend in a river, etc. There’s only one exception, and I’ll leave it to you to figure out what place that is.
“Enese” is a personal pronoun that refers to the person themselves. It takes various forms when it becomes a subject of declension: end, eneste, endid, endisse… It has two functions according to the explanatory dictionary of the Estonian language (EKSS). First, it can be associated with a verb in order to emphasize that the action is related to the same person engaged in the activity: Aja ennast püsti! (“Straighten up!”); Jättis endast hea mulje (“Left a good impression of themselves”).
Second, it can underline the relationship of belonging: küüned enese poole (lit. “nails bent towards oneself”, meaning: “trying to keep all wealth to oneself”); Võta enda pliiats! (“Use your own pen!”).
… in Estonian, the relatedness to oneself and one’s own agency is clearly visible. When you are in trouble, first try to find a solution on your own. Exercising self-discipline may come in handy.
And now a couple of essential words containing the reference to oneself. Eneseabi (“self help”). Enesedistsipliin (keeping oneself disciplined). Enesekindlus (“confidence”). All quite different words from each other in English, right? But in Estonian, the relatedness to oneself and one’s own agency is clearly visible. When you are in trouble, first try to find a solution on your own. Exercising self-discipline may come in handy. As you realize that you can solve a number of different life problems with your own strength and wits, it gives you confidence in yourself.
All of the aforementioned notions come to help when you realize you have been doomscrolling away another couple of hours, and it hasn’t really made you happier than before. (Side note: I don’t think there’s a good Estonian word for doomscrolling yet. Just the English one is used as a “raw” loan word.)
My own little personal remedy has been that, if I catch myself digging into increasingly depressing news, I try to make the effort of exercising enesedistsipliin. That is, I turn away from news and go back to the past. I’m still surfing the web, but in different places. The cultural resources that Estonian memory institutions have digitized and made accessible online, are remarkably voluminous. For example, one can go to muis.ee and search for artifacts from one’s own home parish. Digar.ee and dea.digar.ee, as well as etera.ee and kreutzwald.kirmus.ee have digitized images of printed matter. Jupiter.err.ee offers films to be watched free of charge.
I also like the film archive webpage meediateek.ee a lot, because they have funny newsreels and short films. Many of them are silent, so one does not even need to have a working knowledge of Estonian to watch them. But if you enjoy the sound of Estonian, the radio archive at vikerraadio.err.ee offers endless possibilities. Treat yourself to an episode or two of Päritud laul (Song Heritage). Its creator Lauri Õunapuu just received a state decoration from the President for his work in popularizing folk culture. Or follow the instructions of Virgutusvõimlemine, the short stretching exercise program. Hoia end vormis! Keep yourself in shape!
