Estonian Online – Level 1

The language of Estonia has a history of ancient song and rhymes, preserved down the ages verbally from generation to generation.

Spoken by just 1m people in Estonia, they have one of the biggest collections of folk songs in the world, with written records of about 133,000 folk songs. The most famous local singers throughout history were able to recall up to 20,000 rhymes, earning the title “Seto Mother of Songs.”

The Tallinn Song Festival Grounds in the capital hosts an extravaganza of music every five years, celebrating their regivärss, i.e. rhythmic verse and folk songs.

Did you know? Estonian is closely related to Finnish, but beware, there are many false friends that sound the same but mean something different!