Uralic · ISO 639-3 est · et
Estonian Language eesti
Estonian is an Uralic language spoken by about 1.3 million people in 2 countries. It is an official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Estonian is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Language family
- Uralic
- Finnic
- Coastal Finnic
- Estonian
Writing system
Latin script
Related languages
About the Estonian language
Estonian (eesti) is spoken by about 1.3 million people. It belongs to the Uralic language family and, more precisely, to the Coastal Finnic group within the Coastal Finnic branch.
Where is Estonian spoken?
Estonian is used in 2 countries. The largest communities live in Estonia (847,590) and Finland (6,189). More than half of the population speaks it in Estonia — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Estonian: Estonia 71% (847,590) and Finland 0.1% (6,189).
Estonian is an official language in 1 country: Estonia.
Writing system and status
Estonian is written in the Latin script.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Finnish and Standard Estonian.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 et, ISO 639-3 est.
Frequently asked questions about Estonian
How many people speak Estonian?
Where is Estonian spoken?
In which countries is Estonian an official language?
What language family does Estonian belong to?
What is Estonian called in Estonian?
Is Estonian an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.