Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
But despite a sometimes fitful adjustment to its post-Soviet reality, Estonia
is a welcoming place. Younger Estonians speak English—it's the first choice
these days at school. Estonian is similar to Finnish and equally difficult. Only
a million people speak Estonian worldwide. Two useful phrases to know
are
“Tänan”
(TAH-nahn; “Thank you”) and
“Terviseks!”
(TEHR-vee-sehks;
“Cheers!”). If you'd like to learn a few more phrases, see the Estonian surviv-
al phrases on
here
. The farther you go beyond the touristy zones, the more you
see that Russian is still Estonia's second language. If you know some Russian,
use it. It's the mother tongue of more than 40 percent of Tallinners (many of
whom have no intention of learning Estonian).
