People who say in the comments that your Õ was perfect just try to be supportive. I clearly heard Ö instead. Although when you said "Õpilased" it was indeed perfect, best i've heard from a foreigner. Happy more people discover the Estonian language and thank you for spreading the strangeness of it. There are a lot more strangeness that can't all be covered in one video, like how Estonians, when saying they need to get (buy/borrow/find) something, lets say a pencil, they often say "Ma pean muretsema endale pliiatsi" which means literally "I have to worry myself a pencil". Just goes to show the pessimism of estonians and how they always "worry" :D

As a native English speaker living in Estonia I've picked up so many Estonian words but struggle with conversation, must get out more and practice. Love it here, would love to be able communicate better.

My native languages are Ukrainian and Russian, I've been learning Estonian for some half a year in a very relaxed way and in general it's easier to learn than I was expecting from "one of the hardest languages in Europe" (I put it in quotes because I believe it depends on your native languages and the ones already know). So far I found the case system quite easy - yes, you better learn each word in 3 basic forms but for all other cases (except sisseütlev) you just add the same ending to every word. In Ukrainian there are 7 cases, same as in Polish and probably most Slavic languages, it may sound easier but each case can have few options for endings depending on gender, ending in nominative, etc. I don't even know all these rules and didn't like to learn them at school either because they are quite complicated. The letter Õ is not hard for me because we also have this sound, I struggle more with Ä (which shouldn't be a problem for native English or German speakers). We have a unique letter in Ukrainian - Ї, which is pronounced like "yi" (English) or "ji" (Estonian). I didn't meet this letter in any other language, seen in some French words but in French it's not a letter but just these two dots above any vowel mean that this vowel should be pronounced as it is and shouldn't go into any vowel combinations. And speaking about French (I was learning it as well) - its pronunciation is somewhat more logical than English. Yes, you need to learn a lot just to be able to read (whereas in Estonian I didn't need to do it almost at all) but the rules usually apply to all words. I.e. if it's "ou" it will be pronounced in the same way in most cases, not like in English with "cut", "future", "put" - why "u" is different pronounced differently in those words? Nobody knows :D P.S. I don't speak Turkish but as far as I know from Turkish people - they have a future tense but it's rarely used, so kinda similar feature with Estonian.

Actually Estonian is not written exactly the way you speak (also my Estonia teacher said it many times) for example there are words like “müüa” “süüa” “lüüa” then many people want to write instead müüja or süüja or süüjja and so on because it sounds like that(there are more words like that)

8:29 I am from Estonia's neighboring country, Latvia. Regarding the Russian word "davaj," we Latvians sometimes use this word as well, but we definitely don't consider it a Latvian word. The same applies to the English word "okay," which is used much more frequently, I believe. So, I am very skeptical that there exists such a word "davai" in Estonian. I would rather say that sometimes Estonians speak a mix of Estonian and Russian. Additionally, Latvian lacks strong rude words, so speakers may resort to using a foreign language as well (and it is not French 😊).

I have been teaching English as a foreign language for years, and recentrly I have started teaching Estonian as well. It is very interesting to see what a language learner notices about Estonian :) The famous "jää-äärse kuu-uurija töö-öö" is just an example what you can do with Estonian. Linguists and language learners love it because it is a cool sentence, but really, when would you ever need it? Maybe when you want to practice your pronunciation? Estonian is very different form English for sure. But if you dive into English, it really isn't an easy language either. The whole world revolves around English and it is easy to learn because everyone else is learning it, there are so many materials to learn it, there are so many good teachers to teach it. And most of all - you have the whole world to practice speaking with. Estonian has, of course a completely different logic. Not easier or more difficult, just different. Of course it is extremely complicated if you are used to the "English" way of thinking about grammar, syntax etc. Since most of the "big" languages learned as foreign languages are indo-european (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian), it is even more diffcult to switch to the finno-ugric language logic. But if for some reason everybody decided that Estonian or Finnish should be the new lingua franca (which will never happen most likely), people would be a lot more motivated to learn it and in consequence the materials would get better, there would be more teachers and learning it would be much easier. And most of all - you would have so many people to speak with :) The cases are weird but like you said, most of the time you need to learn the first three cases and the rest just comes from "omastav". So in a way you could treat the -s, -st, -l, -lt etc like prepositions in English -s = in; - st= from etc Lack of gender is something i find very politically correct in this day and age. I don't think Estonians have ever though about what their preferred pronouns are :) Future? if we dive into english deeply, there are situations in which Englis doesn't have "real" future . - I am meeting my friend tomorrow (present continuous); - The train arrives at 5 pm (present simple) Also, "will" is actually a modal verb just like "must" "have to" "can" etc. Will mainly indicates future now. But what about "will I answer the phone?" - is this future? Maybe? Maybe not? What about the Estonian forms "Saab olema" ja "hakkab tulema"? This is used as future, but itsn't strictly a future form Sorry for the long comment! Just geeking out about languages :)

No sex, no future? I feel like I'm being personally attacked right now

Interesting.. I just started learning Estonian. Personally, I don't have to unlearn anything, I'm trying to create a third brain now. "Create" is the keyword. That includes not associating words with native lang names, but rather as baby does - object and etc.

In Estonia, we have this word "aated", which means "values" or "ideals" or "principles". I was in my 30-s when I discovered that "ateist" is a foreign word meaning "non-theist", rather than someone who lives by ideals ("aated - ateist") instead of worshipping a deity...

Thanks for the informative video! It's a pleasure to see in the comments that Estonian is studied abroad. I am a native Finnish speaker living in Finland and currently studying Estonian. Because of the close linguistic relationship between Finnish and Estonian, I could already understand quite a lot of Estonian without ever having really studied it. The sound of the language is familiar from childhood, Eesti TV, and many trips to Estonia. Now that I am actually trying to learn the language, I find it both familiar and fascinating. I feel that I have some kind of a Finno-Ugric intuition that helps with both vocabulary and grammar. I pick up new words quite easily. It is definitely an advantage. The logic of the two languages is mostly identical, but there are lots of differences, too, that make things a bit complicated. For example, the pronunciation is quite different, and written Estonian is spelled a bit differently. There are lots of false friends in vocabulary. I can't possibly think of what kind of a challenge it can be for a native English speaker to overcome the enormous linguistic and cultural differences. For us it is mostly intuitive. And it often sounds funny, too. However, the sound 'õ' is hard for us Finns, too. It doesn't exist in our language. Probably the best advice I've heard is to raise the back of the tongue and try to pronounce 'ö' at the back of the mouth by widening the cheek muscles. :D Estonians, on the other hand, have a hard time mastering the Finnish double vowels at the word end. They usually know Finnish better than vice versa because many Estonians work or study in Finland and the older generations used to watch Finnish TV during the last decade of Soviet rule. Finns who have never studied or heard much Estonian have a much harder time understanding. Maybe 30-50% of mutual intellegibility, in that case. Written texts may or may not be easier to understand. Some exposure to the language and knowledge of the most commonly used words that are different may increase mutual intellegibility up to 70-90%. One example of the similarities: Estonian: - Tere! Ma sooviksin homme õhtuks laua kinni panna. - Tere! Mitu teid tuleb? - Kuus inimest. Standard spoken Finnish: - Terve! Mä haluaisin varata pöydän huomisillaks. - Terve! Montako teitä tulee? - Kuus ihmistä. What a Finn without any or much previous exposure to Estonian might literally understand: - Tere!/Terve! (Hello!) Ma/mä (I) sooviksin/sopisin (I would like to / I would make an agreement) homme/huomenna (tomorrow) õhtuks/ehtooksi (for evening, a dialectal word) laua/laudan (table/wooden board) kinni/kiinni (closed) panna/panna (to put), - Mitu/Mitä or miten (How many/What or how) teid/teitä (of you all) tuleb/tulee (comes)? - Kuus/kuus (six) inimest/ihmistä or immeistä (people).

Hi !! I'm from tanzania zanzibar....and I'm so interesting about Estonian and I want to learn how to speak .my mother language is Swahili

When you say õ, then it sounds like ö. When you said õpilane than it sounds like õ. I'm not good at giving advice, so idk how I can help, but a fun thing to do (for me) is I will do aaaa out loud and hold it and then I put my mouth in different positions while still doing aaaa and see what different vowels I can do. I found out that when your mouth is in a resting position (teeth together/smile) with your lips apart and try to say aaaa, then it kinda sounds like õ and if you change the sound you're making than it's õ. Also, with the reading, yes, it is really nice, and I always say that I like Estonian reading more than English reading cause I say as i read.... but everything has exceptions, sadly. Like one of the most common examples, "kärbes" (fly as in the bug) and "kärbsed" (flies). The base form one (?) you read it like you say it, but with plural, it sounds like there is a p, but you spell it with a b

Someone commented Estonian language really does have much sex in it. Lots of words end with -seks, which means sex. This is what Estonians use for the preposition for.

Very nice Video , about import from other languages I must say that the 20% of words influenced by German is really helpful for me ( Belgian with very good knowledge of Dutch / Flemish + A2 In German)

I am a native American English speaker and learned German in colege. Some years ago I became interested in Estonia (mostly because of the Singing Revolution) and started looking at the language. I cam across the word "eesel," found out that it meant "donkey" and that it sounded very much like the German word for the same animal. Doing a little research, I learned that, due to past cultural and political influences, about 20% or so of modern Estonian vocabulary has German roots. This is sometimes useful in trying to learn Estonian.

Technically, Estonian has rules for the first three cases, too, but they're highly convoluted. Word stems are divided into a couple hundred different conjugation groups ('käändkond' / 'tüüpsõna', depending on source), which you can theoretically look up in an Estonian dictionary. But nobody I know who speaks Estonian actually uses these. They aren't like Latin conjugation groups; they're so complex that at best, they can serve as aid for somebody who isn't fluent in Estonian to translate into Estonian. In practice, people just learn the conjugation of the common words, like you did, and eventually get some intuition for the not-yet-seen ones. I don't think even the computational linguistics folks use these rules.

😅 your Õ is the famous Saaremaa Õ. That means you said Ö. Saarlased ütlevad "pöösas, önn, önnetus", eestlased ütlevad "põõsas, õnn, õnnetus". Tervisi Hiiumaalt 😂

There was a joke we had, that if somebody wanted quick pass Estonian language exam (to get citizenship), they'd just need to perfectly pronounce "Jüriöö ülestõus" (a famous uprising in 1343-1345,) as it's something russians and germans cannot prononce witout accent

How we teach children to write - we ask them to say the word out loud and also read louldy the word they wrote. The issue normally is to get the length of the letter correct - short, long or extra long (sometimes it changes the maning of word totally). We use 2 a bit different sounding "L" letter. Normally its not an issue but there are some words that depending the sound of letter L can mean different things. For example PALK can mean either wage or a log, KALLA sweetheart or to pour

It is hard to say that English has authentic future tense: basically, it is replaced by standardized auxiliary constructions. If you are about to learn some language where future tense is absent, you can rephrase any idea about future by choosing words from other category: * INTENTION, because any intention implies an action which is going to happen in the future. Compare "Some day I will repair my bicycle some day" and " I intend to repair my bicycle": in both cases same idea is conveyed, however, "WILL" highlights willingness, but "INTEND" highlights existing intention. * DECISIVENESS, because decisiveness implies certainty of future events. Compare: "Some day I will visit doctor" and "I have decided that I must visit doctor". * INTEREST IN RESULT OR CONCERN ABOUT RESULT, because there are only few instant results in the world that doesn't require time, but time consumption excludes that action is going to happen at the current moment, so it is futuristic by nature. Compare: "I'm interested in finishing that project" and " I will do that project"; * INCLINATION OR ASPIRATION: whenever you express your inclinations or aspirations, you are conveying indirect messages about your actions in the future, even if whole sentence is rendered gramatically by other tense. Compare: "She is inclined to do sudoku puzzles" and "Perhaps, she will do sudoku puzzles ".

1. Your R should be stronger 2. Your Ö is sometimes Ö and sometimes Õ

And even as someone who’s mother language is Estonian I make lots of spelling mistakes when I write or read also sometimes I make mistakes with cases for example madu (snake)then when I want to write with snake then i would write koos maduga but it’s actually koos maoga and there are many more words lika that for example word “gild” I would write giluga but it gildiga

Öö töö = night work töö öö = work night Öösel töötama = work at night

One thing i see foreigners struggle with constantly is ä ö and ü. To me its so simple, but to them its like trying to beat dark souls.

Your pronunciations are great and you're good, but :D when you say Õ it sounds like Ö, when you say students(Õpilased), it's almost.

Vabandust, aga "I will speak Estonian language" does not translate to "Ma räägin Eesti keelt"! Word Räägin means I already speak! You can translate it like "I will speak Estonian" = "tulevikus ma räägin Eesti keelt" (strait translation is: In the future I will speak Estonian) or "ma õpin rääkima" = I'am learding to speak ! Keep up the good content ;)

You say Ö instead of Õ. These are so similar that even some estonians say it wrong and I dont even know how to teach it. Its like with Ö you let air out horizontal vertically and with Õ it goes out horizontally :D

have a little more practice with "Õ" because you more sounded like "Ö"... I heard few more not important mistakes but otherwise I would say that you are doing very good job! With 9 years you have learned much much more than most russians with more then 50 years so I would say that you are doing very very good job ;)

I WILL SPEAK ESTONIAN LANGUAGE - ma hakkan (õpin) eesti keelt rääkima. Söna HAKKAMA on tulevikus toimuvat tähistav söna.

No Sex, No Future - pretty accurately describes Estonia, considering it's birth rate.

There are some examples where you pronounce a word differently than you write. The example is "müüa", it means "to sell". You pronounce it like there's an "i" between "ü" and "a", so it becomes "müüia" or more like "müia", the "ü" is short. The same is with "süüa", "juua" and so on. The other example is "müüja", which means "a seller/salesman/saleswoman". With that word the pronounciation is "müija", "ü" is short again. If some people say the word "müüa", you will also here a "j" sometimes, it's very hard not to pronounce a "j" in those words. :D

I’m married to an Estonian woman and my kids speak Estonian but I’m struggling to learn, how did you learn and do you have any resources or apps that helped?

About Õ you were going back and forth between pure Õ and some Ö, exactly like one of my friends from Saaremaa, who after spending years in the civilized world has started to understand the concept of Õ. The "smelling a bum" example was pretty spot on, but in a few other spots it went back to Ö. I think the issue is that you can produce both sounds with fairly similar mouth shapes so if you don't understand the correct pronunciation, it's easy to blend the two together. Ö is Pretty much how your face should look when saying it (ö) and your tongue is forward. While with Õ you do the 😬 and the tongue is way back.

Aitäh, Manan! Nii vahva on Sinu klippe jälgida. Edu, ole terve!

damn its confusing me as a hungarian but its very similar but I feel I would have to swap the words, so its harder for me than english or german.

What would you recommend as the best way to learn Estonian?

Actually, English doesn't have true future tense either, not like past and present. For past and present we use verb forms but future doesn't have its verb form conjugation, it uses auxiliary verb will. Without the the will, it would not be clear if this is future or present: I [will] do homework. You can also express future with present tense in English as well: the train leaves in 10 minutes. We use present simple here but we understand it talks about future, not present.

ma räägin eesti keelt in the futrure: ma hakkan eesti keelt rääkima

Thanks for the video, for me as an estonian, it was quite interesting to watch. Ö and Õ needs some work, otherwise I would say perfect pronunciation. My name is also palindrome. 😅

:) - Manan - Sa vöid iiu ja saare keele peris äste selgeks saada, sest Õ tuleb sul välja nagu iidlestel ja saarlastelgit, Sa ääldad: Ö. Hiiumaal ja Saaremaal keeles Õ-häälikut ei ole. Vaid kitsal alal Ida-Saaremaal oskavad saarlased Õ-d hääldada.

hi from Latvia! I would really want to learn Estonian! Which is the best source for learning it?

i am from Greece and I am learning Finnish with a teacher I would like to learn some Estonian on my own because it is similar to Finnish but neither Duolingo nor Mondlly have Estonian and all the other apps I have found that have Estonian require payment

I'd like to learn the Võru language

just curious, whats your profession here in Estonia? love your take on us.

Estonian is decidedly _not_ written like it's pronounced. Palatalisation of t, l, s and n is not marked. Difference between long and overlong syllables are usually not marked.

Hello Manan. Those first Estonian examples seamed quite terrifying !… after learing Estonian, I’m sure you can learn anything in this world … 💪

Estonians juse alot of slang words that are Estonianised from other languages or russian words. Like Davai,pakaa or tšau !

Great video! I am Estonian and I would just like to point out that your Õ sounds like something between Õ and Ö. Try stretching out the corners of your mouth even more for it to sound perfect. For Ö, the shape of your mouth should be the same as for O. This is what differentiates the two vowels.

Thanks! I agree with all points you brought out. And your pronounciation to “Õ” sounds like “Ö”

"I will speak Estonian" would rather be "Ma hakkan Eesti keelt rääkima" though.

Ö and Õ difference is probably something only Estonians appreciate but at times in this video you pronounce Õ as Ö. This is however intended as constructive criticism not to mock. On Saaremaa or Võru it would not even matter.

Your Ö actually sounds like Õ. Slavic and Baltic languages have both cases (the number is smaller though) and prepositions. And for Estonian, learning cases isn't hard, but prepositions can be a nightmare. And, unlike prepositions, cases make it very clear, what do you actually mean. So, everything is relative. They also have genders, but when in Russian, you usually can get it what the gender is, in Latvian it can be any gender in several cases, almost like in German. And, I guess Latvian E can be read in 3 different ways, E, Ä and something in the middle. But, from what I've heard, Latvian is still an easy language compared to Lithuanian. Also, Estonian has lost a lot of diphthongs, especially including the vocals with dots. How would you like "pyöreä käyrä" in 15 cases of Finnish (Y=Ü)? Would you prefer "köysi" to "köis"? And, the language Estonians actually speak is pretty close to standard, while in Finland no-one speaks standard (it's an artificial integration of Finnish dialects, and not a successful one). As well as I know, there are 3 languages in Europe the speakers themselves say that even the native speakers can't be fluent, Basque, Lithuanian and Hungarian.

Interesting vid! To express some future forms you can also change to "ma hakkan rääkima eesti keelt" so there is some wiggle room :D

about vesi - wasser - water - vanduo (vandens) - udens; i've heard theory, that this is one of oldest word roots and that it can be found in finnougric and indoeuropean languages indicates very old finnougric substrate to indoeuropean languages. maybe. example about töö-öö etc was not about vowel lengths... all lengths in this example are same, middle long. it gets funny and complicated, when same vowel makes different meanings by being different length. kooli (middle long) - gen., 'of school' vs. kooli (very long) - illat, 'to school, into school'. like english sheet and shit or beach and bitch and can't and ... etc. 😉 so true about 3 first cases. in all abundance of cases in estonian, there is one very notoriously lacking: estonian has no accusative case, present in most languages. and so estonian makes do, in meaning of accusative, all those 3, nominative, genitive, partitive. and yes, there is no rules. Manan, you got it very right. after listening and learning you might feel as if there is, but it's more like quasi-rules, with more bugs than features. about õ sound as you say it: at beginning of vid, when you tried to say ö, i think, töö-öö, for me it sounded more like õ. and when õ letter was on screen and you tried to say it, it sounded more like ö. but true is, it is thin line to walk there. maybe vowel chart is of some help? no need to know exactly what are meanings of open, close, near close, etc, just seeing familiar vowels and then unfamiliar ones in comparative positions, has helped some ppl to learn õ and ü and such. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel obv, this chart is too complicated, having all possible vowels of all human languages. estonian one is bit simpler, only 3 levels. and õ is somewhere central and middle level.

7:16 It sounded like "ö", not "õ".

"Terviseks"(Cheers!). "Öö"(Night.). And probably the most funniest word: "Ananass"(Pineapple.).

I hear you saying more ö than õ. But these are the most difficult letters in Estonian õäöü. Otherwise your pronunciation in Estonian is quite good 👌

One trick I use to get my friends to pronounce "Õ" is to start with "U" and then without changing tongue position start spreading your lips wide.

Vägev video!

Night work - öötöö :P I think it fits better

7:14 - you literally sayd Ö , not Õ :D

To me Estonian language is not strange at all. But some other languages are strange indeed. Like that write as you speak rule, isn't it common sense? That French and also English contain two separate languages, written language and spoken language, that's strange instead.

Great video. The accident is the hardest to achieve.

A good way to learn Õ is to start with Ö and then push your lower jaw forward. Like an underbite. Not perfect but it works for a start.

Genders make things more complicated, because what is male in Polish, may be a female or neutral in German, for example: cat, spider - male Polish, female German girl - female Polish, neutral German There are some endings and few small rules, but oftentimes, one have to learn genders by heart, because there is no logic behind it. Without knowing genders in German, you can't use cases properly. Lack of gender in Estonian is a blessing - fewer things to worry about. Imagine if you had all cases modified by genders. This is what happens in Polish language, making it very complex. So, there are 7 cases, 8 pronouns, which gives 56 possible endings of each verb, from which there are a lot of irregular verbs and exceptions... Add to it at least 4 tenses, you will make it 224 possibilities for each verb or more. Even in English, some genders are different, and it's problematic, because there are many clear male pronouns, which are neutral in English, so this leads to many errors.

05:20 grammatical gender is one thing and natural gender is other thing. Estonian language does not have gendered pronouns and also not grammatical gender. When Estonian doesn't have gendered pronouns, prefixes or suffixes, then it means that in Estonian language is unnatural to distinguish or emphasize subject's _natural gender_. If you need to do that then you must say something in addition to "ta/tema" like "tema mehena" or "tema, olles mees" what you hear very rarely. If Germans say that dog is "der Hund" then that's grammatical gender and whole different story. Assigning masculine grammatical gender article "der" to noun Hund doesn't mean that all dogs are considered to be male dogs, or that dogs are considered to be more masculine specie of animals than, for example, horse (das Pferd). German article just defines grammatical set of rules of noun. Grammatical gender is very loosely bind to natural gender, if at all - as one Polish person here already made some good examples.

õ in Estonian is the same letter and pronunciation than Russian ы or Turkish ı (i without dot). So the pronunciation isn't really just Estonian btw ;-) Also your pronunciation of ä is way off. You should pronounce it exactly like a in "apple", not in the "car".

Wawels

if you dont hawe a smail then its ö if you du ten its õ

Terve pere - whole/entire family Terve Pere - The Whole Family (on) pere terve - (is) family well/healthy/wholesome? pere on terve - the family is/does well! Lõvi nimega kuningas - the king with the lion's name Lõvi, nimega Kuningas - the lion, named King. „Liiderlik/liiderdav Mussolini“ in articles about private life of a certain historical figure!? Why „rattur“(ratta+r) doesn't equate in „rotator“; why cyclist isn't „ratastaja“ for like „ratsutaja“ is „ratsu“ rider?

There is one thing why Estonian language may have no future. It is because of estonian old religion - when you start predicting future You must back it. And it is very unique thing and fades fast. So belif is when you say something about the future it has promise tied to it and also it changes the future - so when you make it public you terminate ideas of others - so it is kind of rude to use future without context. When you think about making your own destiny is something extraordinary then in Estonian language it is baked so that everyone has it and it is rude to spoil other way/future with Your words. Also because of that there is no written text found before Christianity because when something is written then it is not dynamic so it was like post modern thinking in steroids baked in language and religion - everyone had his own truth. So my truth is always changing so let not wrote it down because it changes things and prevents new ideas when You ask then i say why - and I back it because - You asked. So that explains also why Estonians are not so talkative.

Only 14 cases. Different ways to prounounce the same word to give it other meanings or word already having many other meanings

your kwait klous sa ri ütle kuuuurja vaid kuuurja

Ma hakkan Eesti keelt rääkima 😊

Your 'Õ' is spot on! How about "Ma hakkan rääkima eesti keeles?" It's a future tense?

davai is alrite

Your pronunciation of "õ" is not quite correct. It sounds "ö" when you say "õ". It's tough. Even some native Estonian struggle with it.

Vanapaganarahapada is another funky Estonian word to add to your collection - means old man Nick's money pot

and here's proof that I'm Estonian Tere ma elan Tallinnas ja mulls meeldib kartulsalat

Hea video

Your Õ sounds Ö :d

Ühe tähendusega sõna,näiteks KIRIK.

To pronounce O and Ö your lips have to be rounded, but for Õ the lips need to be in a more horizontal position, like for the English pronounciation of "E" - [i] ("ee" sound) - and then, without moving the lips, attempt to make an [o] sound. The back of the tongue goes up while the front stays at the bottom. Additionally look up the "pronouncation of /ɤ/" video by "Ubc VISIBLE SPEECH" and try to get your sound as close to that as possible. Once you have that you have nailed the sound for pretty much every word that has Õ.