Eesti Keel

28 days · 646 words · 505 exercises

Learn Estonian
in 28days

Not a phrasebook. Not viis kasulikku fraasi. All fourteen cases, real conversations, and a voice that actually sounds Estonian. One focused hour a day, for four weeks.

Day 1 you order a coffee. Day 28 you read the news.

Start Day 1

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Day 1 · Block 1 Try it now

Tere!

Hello, at any time of day, to anyone

TEH·reh

Real recorded Estonian, not your browser's robot reading Estonian with English spelling rules.

You've been here long enough to have a favourite kohvik, a Swedbank login and an Estonian ID card.

And you still say sorry in English when someone holds the door. Everyone speaks English back to you, which is kind, and which is exactly why three years can pass without a single Estonian sentence. Four weeks is short enough to actually finish.

Four weeks, and you can feel each one land

Every day is one hour, seven blocks: sounds, words, grammar, a dialogue, drills, speaking, review.

  1. Week 1 Days 1 to 7

    Survive

    Greet, introduce yourself, order, shop, tell the time. Four of the fourteen cases, and the sounds English never taught you.

    Kaks kohvi, palun. Two coffees, please.

  2. Week 2 Days 8 to 14

    Speak

    Plurals, the conditional, comparison, modal verbs, questions, opinions, plus the formal register the bank will use on you.

    Kas teil oleks aega? Would you have time?

  3. Week 3 Days 15 to 21

    Handle

    Perfect tenses, participles, word formation, the last four cases, numbers and money, narrative, business email.

    Ma olen siin kaks aastat elanud. I've lived here two years.

  4. Week 4 Days 22 to 28

    Belong

    Relative clauses, spoken versus written Estonian, small talk, real newspapers, the quotative mood, idioms and false friends.

    Ta olevat Tartus. Apparently he's in Tartu.

Three things the free apps don't do

01

It teaches the cases as a system

Fourteen cases sounds like fourteen things to memorise. It isn't. Learn three forms of a noun and the other eleven fall out of the genitive stem by rule. That's the whole trick, and it's Day 4.

02

It hears the difference between lina and linna

Estonian has three lengths, not two, and the second and third are spelled identically. No amount of reading will teach you to hear it. Minimal pairs, in carrier sentences, with a native clip for each side.

03

It knows what you're about to forget

Every word you meet enters a spaced repetition schedule that fits the review into the day it's about to slip. You never revise what you already know.

And then

There's a Day 29.

The course doesn't end with a certificate. Day 28 ends by looking at where your Estonian actually stands and telling you what to do tomorrow, because Day 29 is the one where you stop studying Estonian and just use it.

Start Day 1

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