It’s a common misconception that Estonian must be like Russian. In truth, English is more closely related to Russian than Estonian is. Estonian belongs to the Finno-Ugric family of languages, while most other European languages are members of the Indo-European family. Estonian if fairly similar to Finnish, and Hungarian is in the same family, although they are not very similar.

Even though the language is historically different to English, you may find some familiar sounding words in modern Estonian. It isn’t difficult to guess the meaning of words such as buss, banaan, raadio or teater. Older loan words came from Russian, Swedish or German. In fact nearly one-third of Estonian words are derived from Germanic sources. For instance the Estonian word for castle is loss. This is as close as they could get to schloss, as the “sh” sound was not present in Estonian.

Estonian has a lot of vowels sounds, which can be tricky for an English speaker. In addition to the 5 vowels you already know, Estonian also has Õ, Ä, Ö and Ü. As these sounds aren’t present in English, it can be difficult to say words with these letters. However hard it may be, it is worth learning a little. A few words of Estonian by a foreigner can put a smile on an Estonian’s face. And given their cool exterior, you might not see an Estonian smile otherwise.