The self-assessments of respondents' own language skills, on which the survey is based, may be less accurate than official language tests, while the results may also be influenced by the political context, pollsters Kantar Emor said in the report.

However, the 2023 survey shows for the first time that the proportion of people of other ethnicities and/or nationalities who actively use Estonian, i.e., speak it fluently, understand it well, read and write – which is now at 46 percent – has risen to the same level as the proportion of Estonians who speak Russian well, which is now at 45 percent.

About half of Estonians speak Russian, and this proportion has remained the same since 2008.

The percentage of Estonians who do not speak Russian at all has fluctuated between 4-8 percent over the years.

On the other hand, the proportion of people of other ethnicities and/or nationalities who speak Estonian has increased from one-third to one-half since 2008, and the proportion of people who do not speak Estonian at all has dropped from 20 percent to 4 percent.

A person's ethnicity, on the basis of which respondents in this survey were classified, their mother tongue and their main language of communication do not always coincide. Among the respondents of this survey, 56 percent or 870 people identified themselves as Estonians, 33 percent or 522 people as Russians, 3 percent or 47 people as Ukrainians, 1.3 percent or 20 people as Belarusians.

About 6 percent of Estonians said that Russian is their mother tongue, and 9 percent of people with a Russian mother tongue identified themselves as Estonian.

Russian is the main language of communication for 6 percent of Estonians, and the main language of communication for 91 percent of Russians.

77 percent of Ukrainians who responded to this survey communicate primarily in Russian, whereas 9 percent communicate mainly in Estonian. 95 percent of Belarusians communicate mainly in Russian, and only 65 percent of Finns say they mostly speak Estonian in Estonia.

8 percent of native Russian speakers and 25 percent of native speakers of other languages identified Estonian as their primary spoken language.

A major concern is that more than half of Estonian youths aged 15-29 rate their Estonian language skills as fair or poor. Even native Estonian speakers rate their passive reading skills higher than their active communication skills, while only one-third of young people of other ethnicities and/or nationalities rate their Estonian communication skills as good. This may indicate that the school environment does not provide a high enough level of Estonian language instruction, the report states.

It is also interesting to find that the proportion of Estonian speakers is higher in the 30-49 age group, indicating that some language development continues after school in the workplace.

People of other ethnicities and/or nationalities rate their passive Estonian language skills – reading – highest at 58 percent. About 41 percent can understand spoken Estonian well and 41 percent can write Estonian. Active communication in Estonian is rated the lowest, with only 35 percent of people of other ethnicities/nationalities rating it as good and 36 percent rating it as poor.

Compared to previous surveys there has been a steady increase in the proportion of people who rate their level as good across all skills, with the fastest increase in the proportion of people who can read Estonian, and a gradual increase in the gap between the more difficult skills: writing, listening, and, most importantly, active communication.

This also explains the nearly 10 percentage point gap between people who can read Estonian and those who have active language skills.

The 30-44 age group has the highest proportion of people with active knowledge of Estonian, or 56 percent.

The majority of the youngest age group, who have only attended school at this age, has passive language skill only, with merely 4 percent consider themselves to have a good command of language.

Young people mostly rank their reading skills as good or very good, but a much smaller proportion assess their communication skills as good.

At the same time, only one in every five in the youngest age group says they have no or just limited reading and listening skills in Estonian. 25 percent say their communication skills are weak, and 28 percent say their writing skills are weak.

In Tallinn, half of urban residents of other ethnicities and/or nationalities have active proficiency and half have only passive skills; in Ida-Viru County, one-third have active knowledge and two-thirds have passive only; and in Estonia as a whole, 57 percent have active and 40 percent passive knowledge of the language.

In Ida-Viru County, the relationship between language skills and opportunities for language practice is also the most obvious: 50 percent evaluate their reading abilities as good, 27 percent rate their oral comprehension as good, and just 20 percent rate their communication skills as good.

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