What Languages Are Spoken In Estonia? (Revealed!)

The main language of Estonia is Estonian. This is the official language and there are around 1.2 million native Estonian speakers. There are a variety of minority languages spoken in Estonia, including Voro, Seto, Russian, Swedish, Polish, German and Ukrainian, as well as widespread foreign languages like English and Finnish.

Estonian is a diverse linguistic melting pot, then, with a great many different languages being spoken in the country.

Estonian is by far the most common though large populations from bordering nations also make up a significant portion of the national languages.

Let’s look further into this.

In This Article

What are the top three languages spoken in Estonia?

The most common languages in Estonia are Estonian, Russian and Finnish.

Estonian is the official language and is spoken by the vast majority of the population at least as a second language if not as a first.

Interestingly, Estonian is also a broader language of the European Union.

Estonian is spoken natively by just over 1 million people, about 920,000 of which are in Estonia itself. With Estonia’s total population only around 1.3 million, it’s very easy to see what the top language in Estonia is.

The next most common languages spoken in Estonia are those by Estonia’s considerable expat and immigrant population.

Russia, by a long way, is the most widely spoken of the minority languages in Estonia.

In some towns in Estonia, Estonian speakers are even outnumbered by Russians.

The country is a direct neighbor of Estonia, so the Russian population is not surprising.

English is the next most commonly spoken minority language.

Though it is generally spoken as a second language rather than a first, it is nonetheless known by very large parts of the population.

Given Estonian’s relative obscurity as a language, it’s very often necessary to learn English for the sake of business or international relations.

There are only a very small number of British people living in Estonia—around 1,400.

Compared with the Russian population of around 300,000, you can see the difference and why Russian is as dominant as it is among the minority languages.

So the three most common languages in Estonia are Estonian, Russian and English.

You’ll hear these languages spoken in many parts of the country whether as a first or second language, and many people in Estonia will know two or more of these languages.

But these languages, other than Estonian, are naturally not considered native languages.

Though Estonian is the official language, there are more native languages used in parts of Estonia.

How many languages are spoken in Estonia?

Besides Estonian, there are a couple of languages which are closely related but considered now to be distinct languages of their own rather than Estonian dialects.

As always, there is a certain amount of debate about whether they are strictly languages of their own or if they are merely dialects of Estonian, but the general consensus is that the Voro language at least is a distinct language and not a dialect.

Voro is a language from the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages.

It was previously considered an Estonian dialect but is now seeking recognition as a separate indigenous language of Estonia.

Seto is more commonly thought of as a dialect of Estonian, though many still argue that it is a distinct language of its own.

The Seto people are concentrated mostly on the country’s southeastern border in the Setomaa region and are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christian.

These are all the indigenous Estonian languages.

Beyond these languages and the others already mentioned, you will also find large populations of people speaking Ukrainian, Polish, German, Swedish and a small minority of Romani speakers in Estonia.

In other words, there are many languages spoken in Estonia—but Estonian is by far the dominant language.

Is Estonian similar to Russian?

Despite the proximity of the nations, Estonian is really not at all like Russian.

Russian is an Indo-European language—as are the vast majority of languages spoken in Europe.

Estonian is not, and is a Finnic language meaning it comes from the same family as Finnish.

If there was one language to compare it to, it would be Finnish, though naturally the two languages are still very different.

Indeed, they are as different as French and Spanish from one another, both of which are Romance languages.

Is Estonian hard to learn?

Estonian is generally considered quite a hard language to learn for English speakers.

As mentioned, it is part of an entirely different language family, meaning most of it will feel entirely unfamiliar to you.

English and other Germanic languages are much more similar and this makes them easier to learn, but learning languages is still hard in any case.

Estonian becomes even more difficult because it is more distantly related.

That said, English is often difficult for Estonian speakers to learn, too.

Many learn from a young age in school and with bilingual parents, but for those who try to learn as adults it can be very difficult.

So, it goes both ways in that sense.

Estonian is one of the very few languages spoken in Europe that is not part of the Indo-European language family.

This makes it fascinating in and of itself as it really bears little to no resemblance to most other languages which you might be more familiar with.

Estonia also houses many other languages in its population, whether from the bordering countries like Finland and Russia or countries further afield.

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Founder - @PollyWebster

Polly Webster is the founder of Foreign Lingo and a seasoned traveler with a decade of exploration under her belt.

Over the past 10 years, she has journeyed to numerous countries around the globe, immersing herself in diverse cultures, traditions, and languages.

Drawing from her rich experiences, Polly now writes insightful articles about travel, languages, traditions, and cultures, sharing her unique perspectives and invaluable tips with her readers.

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