Keelade

Keelade is not a standard lexical item in Estonian. The word keel means language or tongue, and the language generally uses keeled in the nominative plural and keelte in the genitive plural. The form keelade is seldom listed in modern dictionaries and is typically regarded as nonstandard, a misspelling, or a historical/dialectal variant rather than a distinct linguistic term.

When encountered, keelade is usually a spelling error or a nonstandard form rather than a separate concept. In standard usage, phrases about multiple languages employ either the genitive plural keelte or the nominative plural keeled, depending on the syntactic role. For example, saying “erinevate keelte õppimine” means “learning of different languages,” while “paljud keeled” would translate to “many languages.”

Because keelade lacks a fixed, widely accepted meaning in contemporary Estonian, there is little specialized literature about it. The term is primarily relevant to discussions of orthography, spelling variation, and the careful handling of inflected forms in Estonian. For accurate language work, authors typically rely on the established forms keeled (nominative plural) and keelte (genitive plural).

See also: keel, keeled, keelte, Estonian language, language plurality.