The heaviest external contribution, nearly one third of the vocabulary, comes from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon during the period of German rule, and High German. The percentage of Low Saxon and High Germanloanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent.
''Ex nihilo'' lexical enrichment
Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein tried to use formationex nihilo, Urschöpfung, i.e. they created new wordsout of nothing. Examples are Ado Grenzstein's coinages kabe ‘draughts, chequers’ and male ‘chess’. The most famous reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik, also used creations ex nihilo, along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords. Aavik belonged to the so-called Noor Eesti movement, which appeared in Tartu, a university town in south-eastern Estonia, around 1905. In Aavik's dictionary, which lists approximately 4000 words, there are many words which were created ex nihilo. Consider • ese ‘object’, • kolp ‘skull’, • liibuma ‘to cling’, • naasma ‘to return, come back’, • nõme ‘stupid, dull’, • range ‘strict’, • reetma ‘to betray’, • solge ‘slim, flexible, graceful’, and • veenma ‘to convince’. Other Aavikisms ex nihilo include • nentima ‘to admit, state’, • nördima ‘to grow indignant’, • süüme ‘conscience’, and • tõik ‘fact’." Note, however, that many of the coinages that have been considered as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items, for example words from Russian, German, French, Finnish, English and Swedish. Aavik had a broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek, Latin and French. Consider • relv ‘weapon’ versus English revolver, • roim ‘crime’ versus English crime, • siiras ‘sincere’ versus English sincere/serious • embama ‘to embrace’ versus English embrace, and • taunima ‘to condemn, disapprove’ versus Finnish tuomita ‘to judge’. Consider also • evima ‘to have, possess, own’ versus English have; • laup ‘forehead’ versus Russian лоб lob ‘forehead’; • mõrv ‘murder’ and mõrvama ‘to murder’ versus English murder and German Mord ; and • laip ‘corpse’ versus German Leib ‘body’ and German Leiche ‘body, corpse’. These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item. The often irregular and arbitrary sound changes could then be explained not as subconscious foreign influence but rather as conscious manipulation by the coiner. Aavik seems to have paid little attention to the origin of his neologisms. On occasion, he replaced existing native words or expressions with neologisms of foreign descent. Therefore, Aavik cannot be considered a purist in the traditional sense, i.e. he was not ‘anti-foreignisms/loanwords’ as such.
"Finno-Samic" words have known cognates at furthest in the Samic languages.
"Finnic" words have known cognates only among the Finnic languages.
All these groups correspond to different proposed subgroups of the Uralic languages. However, the historical reality of most groupings is disputed. In principle e.g. a "Finno-Permic" word may be just as old as a "Uralic" word, just one whose descendants have not survived to the modern Samoyedic and Ugric languages.
