LEARNING ESTONIAN

  • 2008-01-30
Learning Estonian in Estonia requires patience and study, as other languages require. But it also requires a lot of money if you do not have a patient, Estonian-speaking friend as teacher, or the luck to work in the couple of international companies that provide free courses for their employees.

In Tallinn, the average rate of a lesson of Estonian (in English language) is higher than the rate of  other languages such as Spanish, German, Italian or Swedish (taught in Estonian or Russian). This situation could be determined by market laws: maybe there are not so many people interested in learning Estonian.
Since the Estonian language is so important for the Estonians that they even dedicate to it one day of the year (March 14th, Emakeelepaev), I wonder why no language or educational companies are using EU funds to provide free Estonian language courses. A similar business is run successfully in many EU countries (Germany, France and Italy for example) by both profit and no-profit companies that teach the local language, providing a cultural service, but more important a significant help to enter the labor market.

The Estonian language is a beautiful one, but it would be more beautiful if you would have the opportunity to learn it for free (and more people would be interested in learning it)!
 
Marco Evolini, Tallinn
 

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