ema

‘mother’ · runosong lemma · Estonian noun

English gloss	mother
Part of speech	noun
Language	Estonian
Total occurrences	25,917
By corpus	SKVR 0, JR 0, KR 0, ERAB 25,903

The counts in this table cover all attested spellings of this lemma, not only the headword form; all are word occurrences, except the KR figure in the By corpus row, which counts poems and is not part of the total.

Full dictionary entry · Search in the corpus · Geographic distribution

Attested wordforms

ema, emä, imä, emake, emale, emal, emada, emata, emäle, imme, immä, emani, imäle, imäl, emäl, emad, emalt, emaga, jemä, emäke, eme, emalta, emagi, emätä, emaje, emat, imäldä, emekene, emädä, emade, emala, emäje, jema, emaksi, emasid, emägi, emät, emäte, imale, emalla … and 154 more of 194 attested forms

In Estonian dictionaries

Definitions are shown in Estonian: the source dictionaries are Estonian-language works.

EKSS

ema · 11

1. naissoost vanem, naine oma lapse v. laste suhtes
2. emane loom oma otseste järglaste suhtes
3. pereema; vanem lugupeetav naine
4. (mitmetes ühendites vananenud v. vananev:) mingil alal eeskuju andev, juhatav v. hooldav naine

(+2)

ema- · terminoloogias viimases tähenduses emas-

(kui põhisõnaks on looma- v. taimenimetus, väljendab terminoloogilises kasutuses ema suhet järglasega, mitteterminoloogiliselt aga hrl. sugu [terminoloogias viimases tähenduses emas-])

EMS

ema

(üks lapsevanemaist)
ema
(mitmesuguseis väljendeis)
(võrdlused)

(+38)

ema-

emane, ema(s)-

Idamurre

ema

esemete osa

Sources: EKSS — Eesti keele seletav sõnaraamat, Eesti Keele Instituut (CC BY 4.0) · EMS — Eesti murrete sõnaraamat, Eesti Keele Instituut · Idamurde sõnastik, Eesti Keele Instituut

English words in the AI translations

How often the AI analysis used each English word when it translated the uses of this word. Forms of one English word are counted together, and one translation can contain several words, so the shares can add up to more than 100%.

English word	Uses	Share
mother (mother's, mothers, mothers')	46,580	97.4%
dear	1,629	3.4%
little	1,231	2.6%
motherless	305	0.6%
grandmother (grandmother's)	266	0.6%
mom (mom's)	191	0.4%
granny (granny's)	135	0.3%
mommy	89	0.2%
ema	86	0.2%
old	84	0.2%
Uses counted	47,800

Example verses

ema akkas võid tegema (AES, MT 3, 4 (10)) read in context
Mother began making butter,
kuivatas mind ema käsi (AES, MT 3, 7 (20)) read in context
Dried by my mother's hand.
mis lubad oma emale mua pojukene (AES, MT 3, 12) read in context
What do you vow to your mother, my little son?
mul on maal üks ema viel (AES, MT 3, 13) read in context
I still have a mother on land,
tõuse ülesse mu emake (AES, MT 7, 23) read in context
Rise up, my dear mother,
mis ta ema ehitand (AES, MT 27, 16/31 (6)) read in context
Which her mother had adorned
noko isä emä surnud (AES, MT 28, 10/1) read in context
Your father, mother are dead,
oh minu isa ja minu ema (AES, MT 36, 3/5) read in context
Oh my father and mother,

Companion words

Words that co-occur with this lemma inside the same verse line more often than chance predicts, ranked by log-likelihood (G²) over verse-level co-occurrence in SKVR, KR, JR and ERAB; only pairs seen at least 3 times.

Word	Association (G²)	Co-occurrences
memmeke	8,992	1,286
isa	6,730	1,835
enne	4,784	1,384
haud	2,994	696
tütar	2,187	832
tundma	1,720	588
poeg	1,607	691
enneaegne	1,564	211

Song types

Song types of the poems attesting this lemma, as catalogued per poem in the source corpora (ERAB type names are in Estonian, SKVR names in Finnish; JR and KR poems carry no song-type record).

Song type	Poems
Ema haual	678
Venna sõjalugu	464
Sõjalaul	323
Vara vaeslapseks	189
Hiljuke	186
Memme vaev	184
Kasvatus asjatu	163
Lauliku lapsepõlv	159

Collection places

Where the poems attesting this lemma were collected; each count is the number of attesting poems recorded at that place.

Place	Poems
Paistu	501
Karksi	457
Setumaa	379
Haljala	374
Kolga-Jaani	372
Kuusalu	361
Helme	334
Tarvastu	316
Halliste	312
Viljandi	267

Attestation over time

Poems attesting this lemma by decade of collection or publication; undated poems are not shown.

Decade	Poems
1800–1809	1
1820–1829	6
1830–1839	1
1840–1849	6
1850–1859	5
1860–1869	95
1870–1879	802
1880–1889	2,430
1890–1899	3,110
1900–1909	739
1910–1919	832
1920–1929	963
1930–1939	898
1940–1949	72

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Karl Voldemar Rosenstrauch	280
Karl Viljak	251
Mihkel (Tori) Ostrov	224
koguja teadmata	163
Gustav Seen	160

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 10,668)

ERAB: AES, MT 3, 4 (10), AES, MT 3, 7 (20), AES, MT 3, 12, AES, MT 3, 13, AES, MT 7, 23, AES, MT 27, 16/31 (6), AES, MT 28, 10/1, AES, MT 36, 3/5, AES, MT 40, 9 (12), AES, MT 40, 10 (14), AES, MT 40, 14/6 (18), AES, MT 40, 16/7 (19), AES, MT 40, 25 (34), AES, MT 40, 31 (42), AES, MT 43, 56/7, AES, MT 43, 74, AES, MT 43, 80/5, AES, MT 44, 1, AES, MT 44, 1, AES, MT 44, 2, AES, MT 49, 11/2 (3), AES, MT 49, 17/8 (7), AES, MT 59, 5, AES, MT 59,17/8, AES, MT 62, 17, AES, MT 62, 17/8, AES MT 287, 4/14, AES, MT 88, 33/5, AES, MT 102, 20 (2), AES, MT 102, 22/3 (1), AES, MT 117, 57/8 (11), AES, MT 141, 4, AES, MT 141, 6/7, AES, MT 141, 7, AES, MT 141, 10/1, AES, MT 141, 16/17, AES, MT 141, 18/20, AES, MT 141, 21/22, AES, MT 141, 32/3, AES, MT 141, 34, AES, MT 152, 3/6, AES, MT 154, 6, AES, MT 154, 7, AES, MT 154, 7/8, AES, MT 154, 9, AES, MT 154, 10, AES, MT 154, 16, AES, MT 163, 3/4 (2), AES, MT 163, 4/7 (3), AES, MT 163, 10/12 (6), AES, MT 163, 15/17 (8), AES, MT 171, 1/3, AES, MT 174, 40, AES, MT 183, 1, AES, MT 183, 16, AES, MT 186, 112, AES, MT 186, 113, AES, MT 186, 113, AES, MT 197, 5/8, AES, MT 200, 59/61

Related lemmas

Finnish cognate: emä

← elää emo →

About this profile

The counts and examples on this page come from the lemmatized text of four Finnic runosong corpora: SKVR, JR, KR and ERAB. The table of English words comes from an AI analysis of the corpus; song types, collection places, collectors and dates follow each poem's own catalogue record.

The table of English words is counted from the translations kept in the AI analysis files, which hold only the most frequent translations of each word or spelling, so rare translations can be missing. Words that carry only grammar (such as the, to or didn’t) are left out, and so are English words used fewer than 5 times or in less than 0.1% of the uses counted. The analysis files can group two closely related words, which then show the same table.

Verses are found by the spellings listed above, so an occasional verse may show a different word spelled the same way.