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Beauty Contest With An Estonian Difference

January 16, 2008 at 9:00 AM | 0 Comments

Any language that gives cute names to national tourist attractions--like Kiek in de Kök--is a language we're prepared to love, and the language we're talking about is Estonian. Strictly speaking we have a feeling that Kiek in de Kök isn't a correct part of the modern language, but there are still oodles of cool-looking words in Estonian.

So we're more than happy that the Estonian government has launched a Beauty Contest for Languages. The whole contest idea apparently came about like this:

The idea for the contest arose out of an Estonian story that the country's language was once crowned the second most beautiful language in the world after Italian. The winning phrase then was "soida tasa ule silla" which means "go slowly over the bridge".

The contest will involve kids from around the world recording a phrase in their language of seven words or less, and judges will decide which language sounds the prettiest. It's all timed to coincide with Estonia's 90th birthday as an independent state, so we can presume that some cute Estonian phrase will rank highly in the winners' list.

Related Stories:
· Estonia Announces Language Beauty Contest [Vagabondish]
· Estonia Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Tallinn: Let Me Kiek in Your Kök [Jaunted]

[Photo: Not A Ballerina]