How Estonian are you?

There are over a billion Chinese speakers in the world, but there are only a bit over a million speakers of Estonian. In Estonia, 68% of the population speaks Estonian as their mother tongue. Estonian is a state language and one of the official languages of the European Union. It is used in every sphere of life, from higher education to information technology.

Estonian belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family, which includes Finnish and Hungarian. Estonian is not an Indo-European language like neighbouring Latvian and Russian.

Sauna is a small building or room where steam and a high temperature make bathers perspire. Although the world knows that 'sauna' is a Finnish word and phenomena, Estonians actually have the same tradition. Estonian has many words in common with Finnish, but Estonian words are usually a bit shorter: sauna-saun (sauna), koira-koer (dog), päivä-päev (day), etc. 

Öö means 'night'. One famous Estonian tongue twister featuring the word is Jüriöö ülestõus, which refers to the Saint George's Night Uprising of 1343–1345. Estonia is also infamous for a names that are hard to pronounce like Mäe-Kõoküla, Peräkõnnu, Ihändü, Jõeääre, Hotõmäe, etc. Test your Estonian pronunciation skills at game.estonia.ee.

Nearly all languages in the world have at least three vowels, usually i, a and u. Estonian, however, has nine vowels: a, e, i, o, u, õ, ä, ö and ü.

Jäääär (or jää-äär) in Estonian means 'the edge of ice'. Yötyö means means 'night job' in Finnish (öötöö in Estonian). As you can see from these examples, Estonians like long vowels.

Esperanto, the most widely spoken constructed language, is based on Romance languages. The Dothraki language is spoken by a fictious, nomadic people in the series Game of Thrones. Dothraki's vocabulary was created by linguist David J. Peterson, who drew inspiration (among other languages) from Estonian. Words like 'hesa', 'valar', 'maan', 'lain', and 'ko' certainly sound like Estonian (but don't actually mean anything in Estonian).

In Estonian, täht means both a star (an astronomical object) and a (printed) letter because in printed text as well as in the sky, there are multiple small objects which, when connected together, create meaning. There are 27 letters, or tähte, in the Estonian alphabet.

Estonian indeed has 14 noun cases, while English has only three: subjective (he), objective (him), and possessive (his). This might explain why Estonian has been named the world's fifth hardest language to learn for English speakers (after Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Arabic). However, Estonian does not have a grammatical gender (no distinction between she and he) nor a future tense.

The flag of Estonia (in Estonian: Eesti lipp) is a tricolour with three equal, horizontal bands of blue (top), black, and white. Estonians call it sinimustvalge (blueblackwhite). The flag was first used in 1918 but was banned during the Soviet occupation and officially re-adopted in 1990. Blue allegedly symbolises the sky, black the fertile soil and white a winter snow. It is hoisted each morning at sunrise from Pikk Hermann tower in Tallinn and signifies that all is well in Estonia.

Music, specifically choral singing, has a strong cultural and historical significance in Estonia. The largest event in the country is the Song (and Dance) Celebration, which is held every five years. Taking place since 1869, it is recognised by UNESCO as tradition of Intangible Cultural Heritage. This year, around 100,000 Estonians (every tenth person) gathered to celebrate it together. You can catch the next one in summer 2024. Estonians also like folk music festivals, with the biggest one being held in Viljandi each July since 1993.

The long period of foreign rule in Estonia from the 13th century to 1918 by Germany, Sweden, and Russia resulted in few literary works written in the Estonian language. The first known book printed in Estonian was a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism from 1535 by S. Wanradt and J. Koell.