Try Learning Estonian!

Estonian is the official language of Estonia, and is spoken by about 1 million people. It is a Uralic, Finnic language, but borrows many words from German and Russian, so the vocabulary might not be as daunting as it would seem if you’ve studied or speak other Indo-European languages. There are many dialects, but the two main groupings are the northern dialects, associated with the city of Tallinn (left), and the southern dialects, associated with Tartu (right). Standard Estonian is based on the one in Tallinn, so that’s probably what you’ll find in most language programs for it.

If you want to give it a try, the Estonian government started a language program called Keeleklik where you can take courses for free in Estonian. Aside from that, one of my favorite ways to practice language is watching cartoons.

On Youtube, you can find many Estonian cartoons from the 1970s made by Tallinn Film Studio, or Tallinnfilm, such as this one. These are fun to watch, and the Estonian is simple and slow, so you can try and keep up!

There’s also loecsen, which has lessons on basic phrases for traveling to Estonia, along with other languages you might want to learn.