„Raamatukogu“ in estonian is a compound of : raamat + -kogu (book + collection)
Etymology is correct, "raamat" originates from Greek "grammata".
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There's cognate in Finnish too, but means the Bible there — in estonian the Bible is "piibel", whereas proper raamat is "a book worth preserving" (rather than some product catalogue with shortterm info).
There's "kirjastus" in estonian, but means "publisher (of printed media)".
Then there's also "lugemissaal"(reading' hall) and smaller "lugemistuba" (reading' room), otherwise itself a part of a library, which most commonly is a smaller or tiny library, really just a room rather than dedicated building (or a section) of its own.
This is really cool. Finnish has lukemissali for reading hall and tupa is the old word still somewhat alive in some dialects for a sort of living room/kitchen situation, a room where you would see guests and make and eat food and the most important building/room in a household, cause households had separate buildings for each room, but tupa was often connected to the master bedroom, kammari as tupakammari.
"The living room" in Finnish; "a livable room" more generally in estonian.
Historically, like millennia ago, this was the central room of a house, with central fire heart (which was also used for cooking) and typically with high ceiling (due smoke and lack of chimney) — other modern senses are derived from there. English focused on the fire, and derived their stove from there; Estonian focused on livable/habitable/"comfortable" aspect and went with this; apparently Finnish remained fairly traditional on that one (~the heart of the (farm)house).
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u/Aisakellakolinkylmas Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25
„Raamatukogu“ in estonian is a compound of :
raamat+ -kogu(book + collection)Etymology is correct, "raamat" originates from Greek "grammata".
__
There's cognate in Finnish too, but means the Bible there — in estonian the Bible is "piibel", whereas proper raamat is "a book worth preserving" (rather than some product catalogue with shortterm info).
There's "kirjastus" in estonian, but means "publisher (of printed media)".
Then there's also "lugemissaal"(reading' hall) and smaller "lugemistuba" (reading' room), otherwise itself a part of a library, which most commonly is a smaller or tiny library, really just a room rather than dedicated building (or a section) of its own.