Finno-Ugric tribes reached the Baltic Rim in the mid-3rd millennium BC from the East and became mixed with the forerunners of the Baltic people who had previously migrated here. Estonians have thereafter lived on their land for 5,000 years, being one of the longest settled European peoples. Another member of the Finno-Ugric tribes, Hungarians, travelled a different path and were the last greater ethnic group to arrive in Europe. After they settled down near lake Balaton, the Europe was ethnically formed.
Closest to Estonian are the Finnish languages: first of all Finnish (the separation of Estonian and Finnish into different languages began less than two thousand years from now and that is a relatively small amount of time in the history of a language), but also the languages of several tiny ethnic groups living in the St. Petersburg region such as Karelian, Vepsan, Ingerian, the practically extinct Livonian but the closest well-known relative language is by and far Finnish. Most Estonians, especially those who live in the northern part of the country can understand quite a bit of Finnish.
People often guess that Estonian must be similar to Russian or at least to the languages of Estonia's two Baltic neighbouring countries, Latvian and Lithuanian. This is not so. Contrarily to most of the languages spoken in Europe, the Finno-Ugric languages are not part of the Indo-European family of languages. Thus, Estonian is related neither to the Slavic languages such as Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, or Polish, nor to the Germanic languages such as German, Dutch, or Swedish, nor to the Baltic languages, Latvian and Lithuanian. Not mentioning the Romance languages such as French, Italian, or Romanian.
All this does not mean that Estonian necessarily is a total abracadabra for an intelligent Indo-European. A great many of younger words in Estonian have a German, Swedish, Dutch or Russian origin, and may be recognized with minor effort. One more consolation: differently from e.g. the Icelandic, Hungarian or Finnish, Estonians do not tend to invent own equivalents for all today's new international words.
The first grammars and orthography of Estonian was worked out by the 17th century German clergymen and scholars who started to translate Biblical texts into Estonian. This was based on German spelling and was used until late 19th century when it was replaced by a new system which has been in use ever since. The translation of Bible took more than a half of a century and was completed in 1739 by a pastor, Anton Thor Helle. This translation was a turning point in the formation of the Estonian literary language. It became a force uniting the two main dialects of Estonian to become the single literary language, which helped to create a new all-Estonian identity so important for the formation of a nation. The real boom of literature in Estonian started in the mid-19th century. The first newspaper in Estonian was started in 1806. At that time the rural Estonian population was almost entirely literate - a somewhat rare phenomenon in 19th century Europe.
Estonian is currently spoken by less than a million people in Estonia and smaller communities scattered throughout the world by the whim of the Second World War. The largest Finno-Ugric languages are Hungarian (14 million speakers), Finnish (5 million speakers), Estonian and Mordvin (both around 900 000 speakers).
Two sources were used to draw material for this compilation:
Estonian
Language FAQ and
Estonian
Language fact sheet by the Estonian Institute.