Flashback to emade/päev (Mothers’ Day): In English you say that someone is the apple of your eye.

In Estonian, someone can be the tera of your eye; your silma/tera. Literally, the silma/tera is the pupil of the eye and that’s why kids at Tallinn’s Kopli laste/aed (kindergarten) painted themselves as being inside, or the pupil of their mother’s eye.

The dedication on the lower left reads: Kallis ema! Olen sinu silmatera! Lisete There is no such thing as a silent-e in Estonian, so this girl’s name is pronounced “li-seh-teh”, just as Estonians pronounce the name of the new baby Princess Charlotte of Cambridge printsess “Shar-lo-teh”.

The word TERA actually has many meanings, one being grain, as in a grain of nisu (wheat) or liiv (sand). The pupil of an eye was most likely named due to its similarity to a grain of wheat, rukis (rye) or the like.

The other meaning is blade. Noa/tera is the blade of a knife. The expression See läks üle noatera means “that was (cutting it) close”.

Mother is ema and father is isa, but younger kids in Estonia usually call their parents Emme (Mommy) and Issi (Daddy). And many continue to use these terms of endearment way past childhood.

Photo and text:

Riina Kindlam,

Tallinn