ESTONIAN

[Virtuous]

This is purely not for trollish reasons, just that a curiosity arose.

So lets say the Soviet Republic of Russia had been successful at imposing the Russian language on at least half of the population. 400 Years pass and the Estonian language becomes a mix of Russian and Estonian, having Russian function words. The Estonians would of course still retain their culture and all, and the Russian influence in their genepool is minor.

Would you consider Estonians to be Russians?

Would the Estonian language be Russian? Or called Rustonian?

[Aunt Hilda]

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[Temujin]

Estonians cousins Veps living just east of Estonians are fully Russian speakers. They don't speak any Ruvepsan. Oh! Not only they are fully Russian speakers many of them are fierce Russian patriots. Vladimir Putin comes to mind.

[Virtuous]

lol, really, this thread isn't to troll Mark, actually I created it because I can identify with him. Plus it has nothing to do with how Estonia is now, just a "What if" in History.

[Pure ja]

Estonians cousins Veps living just east of Estonians are fully Russian speakers. They don't speak any Ruvepsan. Oh! Not only they are fully Russian speakers many of them are fierce Russian patriots. Vladimir Putin comes to mind.

Veps are only a good analogy.
Veps have not had strong connections with the circum-Baltic Sea region.
For Kremlin to succeed, it would have had to cut all maritime connections to and from Estonia as well, for centuries.

As a generalisation, continental finnics were more likely to switch from finnic to indo-european (russian) language and culture.
Maritime finnics have been much more resilient (esp so in Estonia), although we have had our losses (livonians / curonians, Alanders, fennoswedes, coastal saamis on the coast of Bothnia). It has had much to do with population densities. Saaremaa had the highest population density of any region of finnics (with the possible dubious exceptions of Samland and Gotland), probably soon after it rose from the Baltic Sea some 7000 years ago. I gather that veps had a rather low population density.

So I would say that 400 years would not be enough, at least 1000 years would be necessary and one would need russian immigrants.

[Pure ja]

This is purely not for trollish reasons, just that a curiosity arose.

So lets say the Soviet Republic of Russia had been successful at imposing the Russian language on at least half of the population. 400 Years pass and the Estonian language becomes a mix of Russian and Estonian, having Russian function words. The Estonians would of course still retain their culture and all, and the Russian influence in their genepool is minor.

Would you consider Estonians to be Russians?

That depends on what THEY would have called themselves.

Would the Estonian language be Russian? Or called Rustonian?

Russian is russian.
There are no vibrant russian dialects in northern Russia, at least not any that are widely known.

[Talvi]

That depends through what people start to identify themselves with. It could be language, but it can be also culture or religion. There are people (some setos I suppose) who see themselves more closer to Russians due to being orthodox.

Mostly it seems that people who are fully Russian speaking even though not Russians mostly identify themselves with being Russian, since this is how they receive most of their information about the world.

If Estonian and Russian came to mix on a large scale, but religion and culture and population remained mostly Finnic, they would not see themselves as Russians.

For example most Irish people still see themseves as Irish rather that British. I suppose. (During my travels I met 2 girls - one from Ireland and one from Scotland. They were friends. The Irish one considered her to be Irish but the Scottish one preferred to introduce herself as British)

[CrystalMaiden]

This is purely not for trollish reasons, just that a curiosity arose.

So lets say the Soviet Republic of Russia had been successful at imposing the Russian language on at least half of the population. 400 Years pass and the Estonian language becomes a mix of Russian and Estonian, having Russian function words. The Estonians would of course still retain their culture and all, and the Russian influence in their genepool is minor.

Would you consider Estonians to be Russians?

Would the Estonian language be Russian? Or called Rustonian?

Same as you?

Are you an Ayrab?

[sevruk]

if Russian people wanted to assimilate Estonians, from Estonians nothing left after 100 years.

I think the majority of Russian in Estonia also will be assimilated within 100-200 years, except in the north-east of Estonia.

[Pure ja]

if Russian people wanted to assimilate Estonians, from Estonians nothing left after 100 years.

Can you give any successful examples taking only 100 years?
I can't think of any.

I think the majority of Russian in Estonia also will be assimilated within 100-200 years, except in the north-east of Estonia.

Majority, perhaps. But not all. Complete assimilation will usually take about 1000 years, it is what happened to the eastern baltic-finns and to the western volga finns.