Languages of Estonia

Languages of Estonia
Official	Estonian
Minority	Võro, Seto, Russian, Swedish, German, Ukrainian, Polish
Foreign	Russian (56%) English (50%) Finnish (21%) German (15%)
Signed	Estonian Sign Language, Russian Sign Language
Keyboard layout	Estonian QWERTY

The official language of Estonia is Estonian, a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, which is related to Finnish. It is unrelated to the bordering Russian and Latvian languages, both of which are Indo-European (more specifically East Slavic and Baltic, respectively).

Minority languages

Võro

Võro is a language from the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. It used to be considered a dialect of the South Estonian dialect group of the Estonian language, but nowadays it has its own literary standard and is in search of official recognition as an indigenous regional language of Estonia.

Seto dialect

Seto is a language from the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. It is sometimes identified as a dialect of either South Estonian (along with Võro, Tartu and Mulgi) or Võro, some linguists also consider Seto and Võro to be dialects from a common language, Võro-Seto, or Seto to be a language on its own, more similar to Medieval Estonian than the current standardized Estonian, having strong historical traditions, such as the Leelo folk songs. Setos (setokõsõq) mostly inhabit the area near Estonia's southeastern border with Russia in Setomaa, and are primarily Eastern Orthodox, while Võros (võrokõsõq) are traditionally Lutherans and live in historical Võru County.

Russian

Main articles: Russians in Estonia and Baltic Russians

Share of ethnic Estonians by Estonian locality based on the 2011 census

Russian is by far the most spoken minority language in the country. There are towns in Estonia with large concentrations of Russian speakers and there are towns where Estonian speakers are in the minority (especially in the northeast, e.g. Narva).

Ukrainian

Main article: Ukrainians in Estonia

Historically, there have been Ukrainians in Estonia at least since the Livonian War, but their traces have been little documented. However, the University of Tartu has had an important place in the cultural history of Ukraine, where many Ukrainian students came to study in the 19th century, and even the Ukrainian student society Gromada was active in Tartu. More Ukrainians arrived in Estonia again with Soviet-era industrial immigration, but many of them speak Russian. Most of the Ukrainian speakers in Estonia today are Ukrainians who arrived in the country after the 2014 Russian aggression against Ukraine. There have been short-term attempts to teach the Ukrainian language in Estonian schools, and Ukrainian Sunday schools have also operated for a shorter period of time. There is no Ukrainian-language press in Estonia, nor have Ukrainian-language dictionaries and educational literature been published.

Polish

The Polish language has been widely used in Estonia only during the relatively short period of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth rule in Southern Estonia when it was also used as an administrative language. Until now, there have always been a small number of Poles in Estonia. A slightly larger number of Polish speakers immigrated to Estonia in the 19th century, when Polish scholars had freer conditions at the University of Tartu than in Poland under Russian rule, which is why several prominent Polish cultural figures studied in Tartu. Agricultural workers and miners also migrated to Estonia in the period between the world wars, when Polish congregations were also formed in the Catholic Church in Estonia, and even the local branch of the Polish scout movement (the Hartsers) started operating in North-East Estonia. Nowadays, the Polish language is little known in Estonia, it is only taught to a small extent at the University of Tartu, and a few phrasebooks have been published. However, services in Polish are still held occasionally in Estonian Catholic churches, and individual websites operate as media channels in Polish.

German

Main article: Baltic Germans

The Baltic Germans (German: Deutsch-Balten, or Baltendeutsche) were mostly ethnically German inhabitants of the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, which today form the countries of Estonia and Latvia. The Baltic German population never made up more than 10% of the total. They formed the social, commercial, political and cultural élite in that region for several centuries. Some of them also took high positions in the military and civilian life of the Russian Empire, particularly in Saint Petersburg.

Their history and presence in the Baltics came to an abrupt end in late 1939 following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent Nazi-Soviet population transfers when almost all the Baltic Germans were resettled by the German Government into the Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia. Today there are very few Germans living in Estonia aside from some temporary residents from Germany. The German language is the third most popular foreign language among Estonians.

Swedish

Main article: Estonian Swedes

The Estonian Swedes, are a Swedish-speaking linguistic minority traditionally residing in the coastal areas and islands of what is now western and northern Estonia. The beginning of the continuous settlement of Estonian Swedes in these areas (known as Aiboland) dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries, when their Swedish-speaking ancestors arrived in Estonia from what is now Sweden and Finland. Almost all of Estonia's Swedish-speaking minority fled to Sweden during World War II, and only the descendants of a few individuals who opted to stay are permanently resident in Estonia today.

Danish

Danish was spoken in Estonia during the period when it was part of the Duchy of Estonia, which was ruled by the King of Denmark from 1219 to 1346. today, it is spoken by the Danish community in Tallinn, Tartu, and Narva.

Sign languages

The Estonian Sign Language (ESL, Estonian: Eesti viipekeel) is the national sign language of Estonia. In 1998 there were about 4,500 signers out a population of 1,600 deaf and 20,000 hearing impaired. It is widespread in the cities of Tallinn and Pärnu among deaf ethnic Estonians; deaf Russian Estonians in Tallinn use Russian Sign Language, Russians outside Tallinn tend to use a Russian–Estonian Sign Language pidgin, or may be bilingual. In its formative stages, Estonian Sign Language was influenced by Russian and Finnish Sign Language; for example, the ESL sign for 'butterfly' developed from the Finnish sign for 'bird'. There are several dialects, the most archaic of which is the Pärnu variety.

English

Although there has never been a significant Anglophone minority in Estonia, English has become widely used as a language of communication since Estonia regained its independence. Due to internationalization, English has become important both in Estonian pop culture - for example, English songs are often performed at the "Estonian Song" competition - as well as in science and higher education. The constant expansion of English-language curricula in Estonian higher education and the increase in the proportion of English-language scientific publications have sparked a wide and passionate public discussion on the sustainability of Estonian-language science and higher education. English is not very common at lower school levels, and limited opportunities for acquiring English-language primary and secondary education have been considered a problem that hinders the recruitment of international specialists to Estonian higher education institutions, research institutions and high-tech companies. English is also important as a working language in internationally oriented companies that use a lot of foreign labor, for example in the IT sector. Due to the high prestige of the English language, English business names are common and English signs are prominent on the streets, which the Language Board has also begun to criticize due to the lack of parallel texts in Estonian. In addition, English is the only language in which official translations of Estonian laws are systematically published.

At the same time, English has not achieved a very noticeable position in the local Estonian media. From time to time, English-language newspapers have been published with little sustainability, and larger media channels maintain English-language news portals, but their activities are not very active and attention is occasionally drawn to underfunding, although local English-language media could be considered a strategically important communication channel for Estonia. However, English language learning is prevalent in Estonia, English is by far the most popular foreign language in Estonian schools, and the most and most voluminous language learning literature has been published specifically about English.

Hebrew and Yiddish

Main article: History of the Jews in Estonia

The linguistic situation of European Jews has been relatively unique, as they have been a single people with two languages: for everyday use, standard languages ​​influenced by the local linguistic environment (mainly Yiddish around Estonia, but Ladin on the Iberian Peninsula, for example), while Hebrew has been used as a religious language (to which Aramaic has often been added). Since the number of Jews in Estonia has never been very large (the nearly 4,500 Jews living in Estonia in 1918–1940 constituted 0.4% of the population), Yiddish has not been widely used. Despite this, Yiddish has been not only a spoken language, but also a literary and even journalistic language. For example, the Yiddish-language newspapers "Undzer Vort = Meie Sõna: Organ fun estnifn jidntum", "Undzer Veg" and "IKUF-bleter: Eršte oisgabe far baltiše lender" (IKUF) were published in the interwar period. The Jewish cultural autonomy that was in effect from 1926 to 1940 also expanded opportunities.

Jewish schools have also operated in Estonia: at the beginning of 1919, a Jewish private elementary school was opened in Tallinn, later named Tallinn Jewish Public School Ivrit and Tallinn Jewish Private High School, in which it is not clear whether the teaching was in Yiddish or Hebrew; Jewish elementary and secondary schools also operated in Tartu. In the 1930s, the language dispute that had shaken Jewish communities elsewhere also reached here. The situation changed radically during World War II, when practically all of the remaining Jewish community in Estonia was destroyed during the German occupation (some Jews were deported or evacuated to the Soviet Union during the Soviet occupation). Estonian Yiddish has not recovered from this blow. Today, Yiddish is known very little in Estonia, but ancient Hebrew is taught at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Tartu. Estonian Yiddish has been studied by Paul Ariste and Anna Verschik.

Romani

Romani is spoken by the Roma minority in Estonia.