Estonian is the official language of Estonia. The Estonian language is a very unique Uralic language which is completely distinct from the Indo-European languages spoken in the neighboring countries, namely Russia and Latvia.
Estonian language has several dialects spoken in different parts of Estonia, which include the North Estonian and the South Estonian languages. North Estonian is closer to the standard variant of Estonian than the South Estonian, while the latter has several dialects such as Voro, Seto, Mulgi, and Tartu.
The Voro language is spoken by around 74,499 people in Estonia. Voro is an Uralic language of the Finnic branch, recognized as a dialect of Estonian from the South Estonian dialect group. The Voro-speaking people are mainly concentrated in south-eastern parts of the country, with scattered speakers also found in other parts of Estonia.
Seto is a dialect of the South Estonian group spoken by about 12,549 Estonians. Speakers of the Seto language are mainly found in the Setomaa county near the country’s border with Russia. Mulgi and Tartu are the least widely spoken languages out of all the regional Estonian languages, with 9,698 and 4,109 speakers, respectively.
The minority languages spoken in Estonia include Russian, German, and Swedish. These three languages are the most popular foreign languages spoken in Estonia by about 66%, 50%, and 22% of the population, respectively.
The national sign language of Estonia is the Estonian Sign Language, or ESL. There were about 4,500 signers out of a population of 1,600 deaf and 20,000 with hearing impairments in 1998. Estonian Sign Language was influenced by Russian and Finnish Sign Language. There are several dialects within ESL, such as Parnu, the most archaic variety.
