Estonian Alphabet & Special Letters

Estonian is written in the Latin alphabet with six extra letters: š ž õ ä ö ü. They are letters in their own right, not decorated versions of s, z, o, a and u, and they have their own places in the alphabet. The official order, used in the Õigekeelsussõnaraamat (the spelling dictionary, ÕS), runs A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S Š Z Ž T U V W Õ Ä Ö Ü X Y. So Z and Ž sit between S and T, and the four vowels Õ Ä Ö Ü come after W: in an Estonian dictionary õun (apple), ämber (bucket), öö (night) and üks (one) are found near the very end.

Native Estonian words need only 23 letters: a b d e g h i j k l m n o p r s t u v õ ä ö ü. F, Š, Z and Ž come in with loanwords such as foto, šokolaad and žürii, and C, Q, W, X and Y appear only in foreign names and a few loanwords, which is why the core alphabet is usually given as 27 letters. Estonian spelling is very regular: a single letter is a short sound and a doubled letter a long one, as in koli (junk) and kooli (of the school, or to school).

Õ: the Estonian letter õ and its sound

Õ õ is the letter that makes a page look Estonian. It stands for a vowel English does not have: an unrounded back vowel, written [ɤ] in phonetics, made with the tongue placed for o but the lips spread rather than rounded. Learners often start from the vowel in English foot said with a smile, and correct it by ear. It is a different sound from o and changes meaning: kõrv is an ear and korv a basket. Everyday words are full of it: sõber (friend), jõgi (river), õhtu (evening), tõesti (really) and õnn (luck, happiness), the root of Palju õnne!, happy birthday.

The letter was brought into Estonian writing in the early 19th century by the pastor and linguist Otto Wilhelm Masing; before that the sound had no letter of its own. Finnish, Estonian's closest big relative, has no õ at all. The same glyph is used in Portuguese and Vietnamese, but there it means nasality or a tone, not this vowel; the Võro language of south-east Estonia and Livonian in Latvia write the Estonian-type sound with õ as well.

Ä, Ö and Ü in Estonian

The three letters with two dots look German but carry Estonian sounds. Ä ä is the open vowel of English cat: päike (sun), tänan and aitäh (thank you), ära (don't). Ö ö is the rounded front vowel of German schön: öö (night), söök (food). Ü ü is the vowel of French tu: üks (one), süda (heart), tüdruk (girl). Doubled, they are simply long: ää, öö, üü.

Because doubling marks length, Estonian can pile identical vowels up: jäääär, the edge of the ice, has four ä in a row. Leaving the dots off gives a different word: tüli is a quarrel but tuli is fire, and säär is a shin but saar an island.

Š and Ž: the caron letters for borrowed sounds

Š š is the sh sound and Ž ž the sound in English measure, though most speakers say ž much like š. Both are used in loanwords and foreign names: šokolaad, šampoon, Šveits (Switzerland), žürii (jury), garaaž, žanr. The English ch sound is written tš: tšello, Tšehhi (Czechia), Tšaikovski.

Where a system cannot show š and ž, people sometimes type sh and zh, but these are not standard Estonian spellings; that is why you still see shokolaad in old web addresses and usernames. In normal text, use the real letters from the grid above.

How to type õ, ä, ö, ü, š and ž on a keyboard and phone

On the Estonian keyboard layout (add it in Windows or macOS language settings), ü and õ sit on the two keys to the right of P, where English has [ and ], and ö and ä on the two keys to the right of L, where English has ; and '. On the Windows Estonian layout, AltGr+S gives š and AltGr+Z gives ž. On a US keyboard with no layout change, hold Alt and type on the number pad: Alt+0245 õ, Alt+0213 Õ, Alt+0228 ä, Alt+0196 Ä, Alt+0246 ö, Alt+0214 Ö, Alt+0252 ü, Alt+0220 Ü, Alt+0154 š, Alt+0138 Š, Alt+0158 ž, Alt+0142 Ž, Alt+0132 „, Alt+0147 “ and Alt+0128 €. The US-International layout does õ with ~ then o and ä ö ü with " then the vowel. In Word, type 0161 or 017E and press Alt+X for š or ž.

On a Mac with the US layout, Option+N then o gives õ, Option+U then a, o or u gives ä ö ü, and holding s or z down opens a menu with š and ž; Option+Shift+W types „ and Option+[ types “. On iPhone and Android, hold o for õ and ö, a for ä, u for ü, s for š and z for ž, or add the Estonian keyboard, which has õ ä ö ü keys of their own. In HTML, õ ä ö ü š and „ work everywhere, and ž is ž.

Estonian quotation marks, numbers and where Estonian is spoken

Estonian quotation marks open low and close high, like German: „Tere tulemast!“ (welcome). Many Estonian texts close with ” instead, and straight quotes are common online. Numbers take a decimal comma and a space between thousands, 1 000,50, and prices put the euro sign after the amount: 12,50 €. Estonia adopted the euro in 2011.

CLDR estimates about 850,000 speakers of Estonian in Estonia, where it is the official language, and around 6,000 in Finland; there are also Estonian communities in Sweden, Canada and elsewhere. Estonian is a Finnic language, not Indo-European, and its close relative is Finnish, with which it shares ä and ö (see the Finnish collection). Many people in Estonia also speak Russian, written in Cyrillic (see the Russian collection), and the Estonia collection gathers the flag 🇪🇪, the blue-black-white hearts and the other emoji people use for the country.