eesti tähestik
The Estonian alphabet has 32 letters in an unusual order: š, z, ž come right after s, and õ, ä, ö, ü, x, y close the alphabet. Only 23 letters are used in native words, and sounds can be short, long or overlong.
Tap a letter to hear it; the small ▶ plays the example word. Practice mode hides names and sounds until you tap a card.
Estonian sorts š, z and ž right after s, before t. After w come õ, ä, ö, ü, and the foreign letters x and y are at the very end. Dictionaries and phone books follow this order, so look for zooloogia after šokolaad.
Native words use 23 letters. F, š, z and ž appear only in loanwords: foto (photo), šokolaad (chocolate), garaaž (garage). C, q, w, x and y are used only in foreign names; in ordinary words their sounds are spelled with other letters: taksi (taxi), sebra (zebra).
Vowels and consonants can be short, long or overlong. Short and long are shown in writing (a single or a doubled letter), but long and overlong usually look the same: linna can mean “of the town” (long) or “into the town” (overlong). You learn the difference by ear.
B, d and g are not voiced as in English; they are short, soft versions of p, t, k. P, t and k between vowels are longer and stronger. So kade (envious) and kate (cover) differ in length and strength, not in voicing.
Õ is a vowel that English does not have: keep the tongue where it is for “oo” but spread the lips. It is common in native words: õun (apple), jõgi (river), sõber (friend).
Native words are always stressed on the first syllable. Many loanwords keep their original stress: šokolaad (chocolate) is stressed on the last syllable. Stress is never marked in writing.
Audio is synthetic speech generated with Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (Chirp 3: HD voices). Letter inventory checked against Unicode CLDR.