What each letter sounds like
Estonian uses the alphabet you know plus four new vowel letters. Learn what each letter sounds like, and which handful of consonants read differently from English.
Estonian lessons
Learn to read Estonian.
We’ll go through the letters and their sounds, some words you’ll need, and the endings Estonian uses where English has little words.
Then you can try two short stories and see how much you understand.
13 core chapters · 3 optional references · Free, at your own pace
Starting from scratch
Start with the sounds, then the letters, the words and the endings. The cards below let you try a first sentence or look at the new letters first.
Start with the sounds →Try saying helloA first hello
Four letters English
A first hello
in Estonian.
Say who somebody is, with no word for a and no word for the. The pronunciation and English are there to help.
Try the lesson A reading-first approachFour letters English
never uses.
Estonian writes four vowel letters you have never had to read. See what each one sounds like, and which consonants read differently from English.
See how the letters workChapter 1 of 16 · Explore the Estonian path
Start here · Chapter 1 of 16
How this path works
See how the Estonian, the pronunciation and the English sit together, and try one word before anything is explained. The habits here carry through every chapter.
≈ 2 min of reading · Practise at your own pace
What’s in this chapter
- This path starts from no Estonian and ends with a short story whose pronunciation and English begin hidden.
- You attempt a word before revealing how it is said and what it means.
- Estonian is written as it is said — nothing is silent, and the loud beat is nearly always the first one.
- What stops an English reader is the endings on the nouns, not the sounds.
- Stop after any checkpoint. The three lookup sections are for looking things up, not memorising.
This is short preparation for reading a book, not a grammar course. It teaches how the letters sound, what the endings on a word are doing, and enough recurring words for a first page. Three characters run through it — Tobi the rabbit, Tika the yellow bird, Dara the fox — the cast of the fable collection this path hands you at the end.
forest
mets
mets
The large word is the spelling. mets
How to use a checkpoint
Look at the Estonian first and try to say it. Then reveal.
- mets
One beat. The e is the e of bed, and the ts is said as one push, as in cats.
Show answer +Hide answer −
metsmets “forest”. Say “mets”, to rhyme with the English word bets.
The chapters
What do you want to work on?
If you’re starting from scratch, follow the chapters in order. Otherwise, pick the bit you need. You can skip the reference pages and come back to them.
Your first sentences: there is no a and no the
Estonian has no word for a and no word for the, and nothing carries a gender. Learn the six forms of the is-word, then say what something is.
The words the two stories are made of
A short list the two readings are built from: the outdoors, the three animals, the question words, and the small words that hold a story together.
The verbs a story runs on, and how to say no or ask
A verb is the word for an action or a state. Estonian puts the person on the end of it, and denying one takes ei plus a single short form that serves everybody.
Read a story with help: two animals meet
Read Tika ja Dara one line at a time, with the pronunciation and the English under every line. Estonian speech marks open low and close high, so meet those first.
Come back to these chapters whenever you need them.All Estonian chapters ↗