The Estonian coastal dialects were spoken on the coastal strip of Estonia from Tallinn to river Narva.

Treating the northeastern coastal dialect as a single unit dates back to Arnold Kask's classification of Estonian dialects from the year 1956.

[2][3] The characteristics of the dialect group are mostly shared with the Northern Finnic languages.

According to some authors, the "Finnish-like" features of the coastal Estonian dialects are archaisms (conservative traits), rather than Finnish or Ingrian influence.

[4] The northeastern coastal dialect of Estonian is nowadays alternatively split into two dialects, the coastal dialect and the Alutaguse dialect, the former being more closely related to southern Finnish dialects (the sound õ [ɤ] is absent like in Finnish), the Ingrian (Izhorian) and Votic languages, whereas the latter has also been influenced by the central dialect of the Northern Estonian group.