Estonian is worldwide spoken by 1.1 million people. When it comes to similarity to other languages, Finnish spoken in neighboring Finland should be mentioned. It is believed that these two along with 14 other languages trace back to a Finno-Ugric protolanguage spoken in the area currently known as Central and Northern Russia west to the Ural Mountains. People speaking this language were scattered all over the Europe upon arrival of the Slavic speaking tribes.    It is estimated there are roughly 24 million people speaking 16 different Finno-Ugric languages, among which Finnish and Hungarian are the best known due to the population of their respective countries. Language relations certainly aren’t so much about a similar vocabulary as much the structure and unique characteristics of the language. Compared to the Indo-European languages, one would immediately pinpoint the lack of gender, future tense,  articles and the verb “have”. As you would learn from Estonian history, this small country has been for centuries controlled by the foreign powers. So for a long time being Estonian didn’t mean statehood, but keeping the mother tongue and age-old traditions. As true survivors, Estonians were able to preserve their language and achieve statehood as well.  Characteristically to a small nation, Estonians know other languages very well and the visitors who speak only English, Russian, German or Finnish would have hardly any trouble getting by in Estonia. Nevertheless, there is no surer way to the hearts of Estonian people than speaking their language or knowing some of the basic phrases. This introduction aims to offer an overview of Estonian language by discussing the basics of grammar without getting overly technical.