Estonian to Canadian French: longing, shortage and a missed meeting need different readings
Igatsema can express longing rather than simple absence
EKI’s explanatory dictionary gives igatsema a range involving longing and desire. Its examples include missing a loved one, wanting to see somebody, wishing for quiet and wanting a bicycle. These are related attitudes, but they do not all report that a previously possessed object has disappeared.
For an original Estonian message about longing to see a friend, preserve the emotional relationship and the desired meeting. A sentence about wanting a bicycle can instead concern something the speaker has never owned. Choosing a French expression for nostalgia in every occurrence would add an earlier relationship that the source may not establish.
With emotional manquer, the absent person is the subject
OQLF explains the emotional construction tu me manques: the absent person is represented by the subject, and the person feeling their absence by the complement. An Estonian source in which the speaker longs for the listener must therefore be interpreted for those roles before French pronouns are assigned. The source’s first-mentioned person is not automatically the appropriate target subject.
The Quebec guidance contrasts this with reversing the construction under English influence. For this pair, English is a particularly risky intermediate gloss: an English phrase beginning I miss can encourage a French subject choice that changes who misses whom. Identify the Estonian experiencer and the person missed directly instead.
OQLF also notes that Je vous ai manqué can correctly describe failing to meet somebody. That is a different sense, not a blanket prohibition on the French sequence. An original Estonian apology for failing to encounter a colleague and a personal statement of longing should not collapse into the same interpretation just because both might be summarised as missing someone.
Puudu can describe an amount that is insufficient
The Estonian entry for puudu distinguishes shortage, a remaining gap and absence from an expected place. Its examples cover lacking enough money, being short of a record by a small amount and a book not being available. An original source report about insufficient paper therefore concerns a practical shortage rather than affection for absent paper.
OQLF describes manquer de followed by a noun as an expression for insufficient quantity, and illustrates a printer lacking paper. It separately permits manquer à for things absent from a list. The choice of preposition and subject is tied to the actual relationship; it is not a decorative alternative added after one fixed translation of puudu.
For an original Estonian document check, distinguish too little paper for printing from three entries missing in the document. The first concerns a supply, the second the document’s content. Neither entails that the writer nostalgically longs for those items, and neither identifies a missed appointment.
Canadian French guidance is useful here because it explicitly separates these constructions. Read the Estonian predicate for longing, insufficient quantity or an unfulfilled encounter, then preserve the participants appropriate to that sense. A correct French pronoun order in the wrong lexical construction would still give the recipient a different message.
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