TIMED PRACTICE · Eesti
Estonian typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Estonian typing speed
Estonian uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 4 characters beyond a-z — ä, ö, õ, ü.
The awkward part of Estonian is not the alphabet, it is the 4 characters these practice words put outside it: ä, ö, õ and ü. Whether your layout gives them a dedicated key or builds them from a modifier, the reach has to become a trained motion rather than a decision — they turn up in 24% of the practice words.
A frequency count of the bank explains why early progress feels fast and later progress does not. The top ten characters cover about 76% of everything these Estonian words contain; past that you are learning characters that turn up once in a paragraph, which takes as long to automate and pays back far less often.
Two modes, timed and word-count, plus the option to paste your own text. The words come at random from 94 common Estonian words. What you get back is not just a number: net and raw WPM, accuracy, consistency across the run, and the keys you got wrong most often.
The temptation in Estonian is to skip the accents while drilling and add them later. It does not work — the accent is part of the motion, and a hand that has practised the word without it has practised a different word. Drill them from the start, awkward as the first week is.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 94
- Distinct characters
- 23
- Average word
- 4.4 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Estonian practice words
- ä11
- ö8
- õ8
- ü2
Counted across the 94 practice words. 24% of them need at least one.
ja on ei see ta ma aga kui ka mis oli siisÕ, and a language related to Finnish rather than its neighbours
Estonian is Finno-Ugric, closely related to Finnish and unrelated to the Latvian and Lithuanian spoken immediately to the south. Its keyboard, however, is Scandinavian in shape: ä, ö, ü and õ sit to the right of the letter block.
Õ is the distinctive one — a close-mid back unrounded vowel, a sound with no English equivalent, written as an o with a tilde. Finnish does not have it, so it is the letter that most immediately marks text as Estonian rather than Finnish.
Estonian distinguishes three degrees of length in both vowels and consonants, which is rare. Only two are written, so the third is carried by context and is one reason Estonian spelling looks simpler than the language is.
Questions about typing in Estonian
Do I need an Estonian keyboard?
No. The characters beyond a-z in these practice words — ä, ö, õ and ü — are reachable on the keyboard you already own once the right layout is selected in your operating system's settings. Some layouts give them their own keys, others build them from a modifier; either way the hardware is unchanged.
Which Estonian keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 4 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 94 practice words between them use 23 of those 30, so 7 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Estonian?
94 of the most common words in Estonian, drawn at random. They use 23 distinct characters between them and average 4.4 written units each, with the longest running to about 9. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Estonian hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 24% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 4 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Why is my Estonian speed lower than my English speed?
Because you are doing two things at once: finding the key and recalling what it writes. Speed in a script you have typed for years is one motion; speed in a new one is a lookup followed by a motion. The lookup is what disappears with practice, and when it does the gap closes faster than most people expect.
Is the Estonian typing test the same every time?
No. Words are drawn at random from the Estonian bank on every run, so there is nothing to memorise and a second attempt is a fresh test rather than a rehearsal. You can fix the duration or the word count, turn punctuation and numbers on, or paste your own text.
What is the difference between raw and net WPM?
Raw counts everything you typed; net subtracts what you got wrong and left wrong. A large gap between the two is the most useful signal on the results screen — it means the speed is there and the accuracy is not, which is a different problem from simply being slow, and a faster one to fix.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Estonian: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hausa. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- The top rowQ through P sit one row up from home, and every key there is a reach and a return. Which fingers do what, and why E and R feel different.
- How to type fasterSix changes that raise typing speed, in the order worth making them. Most people's fastest gain is not typing faster — it is stopping mistakes.
- Average typing speedWhat the commonly quoted typing speeds are worth, where the famous 40 WPM figure came from, and how to find out where you actually stand.