Estonian belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of languages: it is closely related to Finnish and distantly to Hungarian. Despite the importance of Germans, Swedes and Slavs in Estonia’s history, the language itself has remained remarkably free of foreign-influenced words, and its relative purity is regarded as a powerful symbol of the nation’s ability to survive hundreds of years of foreign domination with its culture relatively unscathed.

The alphabet contains a handful of letters which are tricky to pronounce in English:

• ö a shortened version of the ‘u’ in ‘fur’
• õ no equivalent in English; midway betwee the ‘u’ in ‘fur’ and the ‘i’ in ‘sit’.
• š ‘sh’ as in ‘shiny’
• u ‘oo’ as in ‘fool’
• ü a combination of ‘u’ and ‘e’ that sounds like the French ‘u’ in ‘sur’