Learn to read Estonian
A short, active path into reading Estonian: four new vowel letters and nine real words decoded before anything is explained, endings where English has little words, the verb that never changes after ei, and two short stories before your first book.
Letter lookup: the whole alphabet, and the sounds in full
- Open this when a letter blocks you; nothing after it depends on this section.
- The letters in Estonian dictionary order, which is not the English order.
- The consonant cards carry the memory hooks the short tables left out.
- The three lengths, laid out in one table for the curious.
The alphabet, in Estonian dictionary order
- aah, as in fatheraegAH-ehg“time”
- ba soft, unvoiced psõberSUH-ber“friend”
- da soft, unvoiced tsadaSAH-dah“hundred”
- eeh, as in bedtereTEH-reh“hello”
- ff — borrowed words onlyfilmfilm“film”
- ga soft, unvoiced kmägiMA-gi“hill”
- hh, and always soundedhiirheer“mouse”
- ithe i of sit, tighterilusI-loos“beautiful”
- jy, as in yesthe same job German and Finnish give itjänesYA-nes“rabbit”
- kk, harder and longer than gkasskahss“cat”
- ll, as in Englishlindlind“bird”
- mmmetsmets“forest”
- nnnimiNI-mi“name”
- ooh, as in more, cut shortkoerKOH-ehr“dog”
- pp, harder and longer than bpuupooh“tree”
- rtapped or rolledone flick of the tongue — say the tt of butter fast and you have itrebaneREH-bah-neh“fox”
- sthe s of sunsuursoohr“big”
- šsh — borrowed words onlyšokolaadshoh-koh-LAAHD“chocolate”
- zthe z of zoo — borrowed words onlyzoozohh“zoo”
- žthe s of measure — borrowed words onlygaraažgah-RAAHZH“garage”
- tt, harder and longer than dteetehh“road”
- uoo, as in bookuusoohs“new”
- vvvesiVEH-si“water”
- õuh, as in cut, with flat lipsthe letter English never had: an o with the roundness taken outõunuhwn“apple”
- äthe a of catmägiMA-gi“hill”
- öthe ur of fur, lips roundedööurr“night”
- üthe ew of fewüksewks“one”
The last four are the reason a dictionary surprises you: õ ä ö ü sit at the end, after v, so öö is filed near the back of the book and not next to o. The letters š z ž sit inside the s–t stretch, in that order. Five more letters — c, q, w, x, y — are kept for foreign names and are left out above.
The three lengths, in full
| Length | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| short | a single letter, said quickly | kalaKAH-lah“fish” |
| long | a doubled letter, held | kaalubKAAH-loob“weighs” |
| overlong | held longer still, and spelled the same as long | kooliKOHH-li“into the school” |
Estonian is famous for having three lengths where most languages have two. Almost nothing in reading depends on hearing the third — it separates a few pairs of grammatical forms, and the sentence separates them for you anyway.
The soft consonants nobody writes
Punctuation and print
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
| „…“ | the Estonian quotation marks: the opening pair sits on the line, the closing pair floats |
| ‚…‘ | a quote inside a quote |
| – | the dash Estonian uses between parts of a sentence, spaced on both sides |
| Capital letters | names and sentence openings only — Estonian does not capitalise its nouns, and it does not capitalise the names of languages or months |