World Language Map

Where is South Estonian spoken?

South Estonian is an Uralic language, spoken in Estonia. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
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  • Afro-Asiatic
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  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where South Estonian is spoken

South Estonian is spoken in one country: Estonia. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Estonia5.7%68,046

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

South Estonian has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak South Estonian?

Wikidata gives about 80,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where South Estonian sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies South Estonian as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Uralic
  2. Finnic
  3. South Estonian

More about South Estonian

Codes: ISO 639-3 vro, Glottolog sout2679. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about South Estonian

Where is South Estonian spoken?

South Estonian is spoken in Estonia. Unicode CLDR puts it at 5.7% of the population of Estonia, which is about 68,046 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak South Estonian?

Wikidata gives about 80,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is South Estonian in?

Glottolog places South Estonian in the Uralic family, in the branch Finnic.

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