Learning slang is the best way to sound like a native Estonian speaker.

Textbooks teach you proper and polite grammar rules.

Daily conversations in Estonia sound completely different.

Estonians use many short filler words, Russian loanwords, and abbreviations when talking with friends.

Knowing these informal words will help you understand casual conversations much faster.

Greetings and agreements in slang

Estonians are generally quiet people, but our casual greetings are very brief.

Tsau is the most common informal greeting in Estonia.

It comes from the Italian word ciao and is used for both “hello” and “goodbye”.

Sometimes people make it even cuter by saying tsauki.

Another incredibly common slang word is davai.

This is actually a Russian loanword.

Estonians use davai to mean “okay”, “come on”, or “let’s go”.

You’ll often hear it at the end of a phone call to quickly wrap up the conversation.

Describing things and situations

You need casual words to describe how you feel about something.

Suva is a great slang word that means “whatever” or “I don’t care”.

It comes from the word suvaline, which means random or arbitrary.

If a friend asks you where you want to eat, you can simply reply with suva.

Lampi is another fantastic slang term used daily.

It literally translates to “into the lamp”.

In slang, lampi means something happened completely out of the blue or randomly.

To say something is cool, you can use the word äge.

Another popular word for “cool” is kõva.

Kõva literally translates to “hard” or “loud”, but younger Estonians use it to describe something awesome.

When referring to a guy or a dude, Estonians casually use the word tüüp.

To talk about a close friend, you can shorten the proper word sõber to sõps.

Common filler words

Filler words give you time to think while speaking.

The most heavily used filler word in Estonian is nagu.

Nagu translates exactly to the English filler word “like”.

You’ll hear young people put nagu between almost every word in a casual sentence.

Päriselt is the Estonian way of saying “really?” or “for real?”.

It’s perfect for showing surprise when someone tells you an unbelievable story.

Kle is a common written and spoken abbreviation for kuule.

Kuule means “listen” or “hey”, and it’s used to grab someone’s attention before you speak.

Regional slang variations

Estonia is a small country, but regional slang differences still exist.

Slang in the capital city of Tallinn is heavily influenced by English and Russian.

You’ll hear many loanwords and English abbreviations mixed into everyday Tallinn speech.

Tartu is a university town in Southern Estonia with its own unique student slang.

Students in Tartu often use older, slightly more poetic slang terms compared to people in Tallinn.

Southern Estonians also have distinct dialect words that act like slang.

For example, people in the Setomaa or Võru regions use completely different casual greetings.

A person from Tallinn might say tsau, but a Southern Estonian might casually say tervist to greet their friends.

Estonian slang summary table

Here’s a quick reference table of all the Estonian slang words we covered.