Can a Finnish speaker understand Estonian? | Mini Challenge
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- Опубліковано 26 кві 2023
- 🤓 The full episode dedicated to this phenomenon → • Can Finnish and Estoni...
Mutual intelligibility within the Finno-Ugric language family is generally limited due to the significant linguistic differences between languages. We created this language challenge to give you a chance to see for yourself how well Finnish and Estonian speakers can understand each other based on similarities between those two languages. If you're a speaker of a Finno-Ugric language do volunteer in for the future videos so we can run more experiments like that. 🤓
📝 You can sign up via following volunteer form→ forms.gle/aZeSFSsFexbmxE7UA
The Finno-Ugric language family is a branch of the larger Uralic language family, which includes languages spoken primarily in Finland, Estonia, Hungary, and regions of Russia. This family consists of two main branches: Finno-Permic and Ugric. Some well-known languages in this family include Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian, as well as various minority languages such as Karelian, Udmurt, and Khanty.
🤗 Big thanks to 🇪🇪 Kristofer and 🇫🇮 Antti for participating in the video.
🇫🇮 You can learn Finnish with Antti here: www.italki.com/en/teacher/874...
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My name is Norbert Wierzbicki and I am the creator of @Ecolinguist channel. You can support my work by volunteering to participate in the future videos or donating to the project.
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#learnestonian #learnfinnish #languagechallenge #languages
![Why Finnish Is One of The EASIEST Language [7 Reasons]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jTKBfy8OHzw/mqdefault.jpg)
🤓 The full episode → ua-cam.com/video/U9uWA_8UIBA/v-deo.html
0:25 I think Antti thought that the Estonian word häbi means joy, because it sounds like the English word happy, but in reality it means shame and is a cognate with Finnish word häpy 'shame, vulva'
Häpeä is shame in Finnish.
@@jyrianttila4394 Yeah, but häpy is also sometimes used... "ei mitään häpyä", "hävytön"...
@@closetmonster5057 don't feminists hound y'all in your country if häpy also means vulva😂? Just curious.
@@infinite5795 I have never heard the word "häpy" being used instead of vulva🤷♀
@@elina7038 Naisen ulkoisiin sukupuolielimiin eli häpyyn kuuluvat häpykukkula, häpykieli eli klitoris, isot ja pienet häpyhuulet, ...
They sound quite similar for me as a non-Estonian and non-Finnish speaker. The only difference I notice is, that Finnish seems to be way more sing songy.
Seriously? Estonian is usually considered the more sing songy one, whereas Finnish is usually more motone as the word stress is always on the first syllable. Although... in reality how vividly you speak varies from speaker to speaker of course.
I have noticed that it is also sort of a resilient myth that Finnish is dull and slow-paced language.
There are many foreign friends in my social circle that try to learn the Finnish language and they say we speak way too fast. And it is very hard to distinguish the words, since people mix up dialect, slang and shorten everything... At least the young people are using slang words and switch between dialects all the time. But that can vary from region to region, I guess somewhere people still talk "like a book" - I come from Karelia and we have the reputation of speaking a lot, fast and jokingly, with a lot of laughter.
@@diiou As someone who speaks neither language I agree. I find Finnish to be harder than Estonian because there are more k's in Finnish than Estonian, and the words are shorter in Estonian, making room for more "melodic" sounds.
I don't know, maybe I worked with Estonians before, that's why I think Estonian is way more melodic than Finnish, but it's good to hear that's a more general observation from Finns as well
Just listening to these two, Estonian seems to sound more like English, in tone and pacing. I've been studying a little Finnish and it definitely seems to have a meter to it, like music or poetry. I'm not hearing that as much in the Estonian here, but of course it is just one example.
I think this guy just has more cadence to his tone than an average Finn
As a Finnish speaker having had a lot to do with Estonians I've always felt that Estonian is the more sing-songy one of the two :D
Great effort! Would be lovely to also have a karelian, võro or sámi speaker introduced to the mix.
Great idea, I'm especially interested in the Sami.
Peace ☮️
Now that would be a challenge!
It could be interesting to have a sámi speaker included. However, sámi is not so closely related to the other languages you mentioned, since they (karelian, võro) are baltic-finnic languages while sámi is not. I don't think they would understand each other at all. But maybe it would be interesting to see.
And also Livonian and Votic speakers. But good luck finding them :D Votic language should be the most similar to Estonian.
@@I_L2878 sami is very different indeed, but not completely, some words can kind of be understood at least for me - a Finn. Most of it tho, not so much
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻Viro on niin kaunis kieli!
As a Finnish speaker I feel that it's often easy to guess what Estonian words mean even when they are totally different than equivalent word in Finnish.
An example word that I have guessed myself is "jalgratta" which is Estonian for a bicycle. It's a compound word from "jalg" (foot) and "rattad" (wheels). In Finnish a foot is "jalka" and "ratas" means a cogwheel. From that it's easy to deduce that the word must be a bicycle. In Finnish a bicycle is "polkupyörä" which comes from verb "polkea" (pump the pedal or stamp down) and "pyörä" (wheel).
@@wish-keeper and many many other similar false friends :)
@@oh2mp yep like ma koristasin ruumid
Takavaraplaani (backupplan) is one of my favorit Estonian word. Finnish word of it is "varasuunnitelma" thought on spoken language we can also say English influenced version of it "varaplääni" which is almost same. And "taka" is easy to understand due we have prefix "taka-" which is used example on word "takalaiton" on Finnish baseball and its means when ball goes to over the boundaries on back of the field and strike is foul. Also Finnish word "takana" means on the back or behind of something.
@@wish-keeper Not as easy to guess, but still completely doable.
Words do not usually appear in a complete vacuum, but they are surrounded by other words and sentences. Estonian "hallitus" is derived from "hall" which is almost exactly the same as Finnish "halla". If Finnish person would come across the word in a text, most people should be able to notice there is something funny going on with the word and then figure out the meaning eventually. It even adheres the same derivation pattern as many Finnish words.
There are some false cognates that are much trickier to figure out. I just can't think of any at the moment, sorry. 😄
As Estonian I would not get "polkea" I would assume polka as in dance. But "pyöra" which in Estonian would be "pööre". Which means "turn" would hint.
I love these videos 🇫🇮🇪🇪😍
This is so cool 🥰
Мне, как русскому, кажется, что, несмотря на свою "похожесть", эстонцу и финну не так легко понять друг друга.
Тоже не владею ни финским, ни эстонским. Но показалось, что оба были просто очень осторожны в своих догадках и не хотели ошибиться, а языки, что касается лексического наполнения по крайней мере, очень близки.
Да конечно не понять!
Похожи лишь некоторые слова, но не более того.
Общаться совершенно не возможно! Я сама из Эстонии, но в Финляндии говорить пришлось по английски...🤔
I don't speak either of the languages and I am impressed, how they managed to communicate, I thought it would be more complicated
Finnish is more sylabic and melodic languague, more like Japanese or Italian about construction of words, Estonian sounds more Germanic.
Finn here with no understanding of Eesti.
"Kui sa tunned kurbust"
"tundeid nagu häbi vöi pettumus"
"sa tunned pahasti pärast"
What I got from these:
"You can feel it in your throat (Kurkus)"
"The feelings can be ??? or regret"
"You feel bad after"
I thought it was going to be 'sorrow'.
In Finnish we have a saying of "itku kurkussa" which translates something a kin to "holding the cry in your throat".
That's why I thought it was going to be 'sorrow'.
"itku kurkussa" - in Estonian it would be "nutt kurgus". But you could also say "itk" instead of "nutt". "Itk" is an old word that we don't use anymore in everyday life but we understand what it means.
@@keegiveel Pretty cool.
There is a joke there about nutts in throat, but that's beneath me. :P
I wish I could volunteer, but I am too eager to guess based on assumptions and not actually listening XD
An Estonian can understand Finnish better, mainly because Finnish is spelled way morw clearly, while Estonian has plenty of these fake friend words and the words are spelled with weak letters like b or d, that usually are p and t in Finnish.
Indonesian and Malaysian are based on the same language, Malay, and yet in their spoken forms, generally Malaysians are able to understand Indonesians better than vice versa, because Indonesians generally pronounce words more clearly.
or could it be both ways wrong?
Actually in Finnish you pronounce these letters wrong. In Estonian p, t, k are strong like in most other languages. But in Finnish they are pronounced like b, d, g.
There are two reasons why Estonians understand Finnish better than Finns understand Estonian. Finnish is more archaic. Estonian has more new and loan words. Many Finnish words are like old Estonian words that no one uses any more or are only used in some dialects. For example an Estonian told a Finn "Anna nuga" ("Give me the knife"). The Finn didn't understand. Then the Estonian tried to say "Anna väits". And the Finn understood. Because knife in Finnish is "veitsi". And "väits" is and an old Estonian word for knife, that no one uses in everyday life (maybe only in some local dialects).
The second reason is that Finnish language and Finland are much bigger. Estonians are exposed to Finnish more than Finns are to Estonian. For example I was in a shop in Finland and the cashier asked: "haluatko pussi?" ("do you want a bag?"). It's not at all similar to Estonian "kas soovite kotti?" and there are no similar words with similar meanings in Estonia. But after thinking a little I understood what they asked. Because I just have heard these words somewhere, I don't know where. And most Estonians who lived in North Estonia during the 80s can understand and speak Finnish. Because they all watched Finnish television.
@@keegiveel This is good intel!
Finnish p, t and k are of course not pronounced exactly like b, d and g, but they lack the aspiration that would make the difference more distinctive. In practice this doesn't really cause intelligibility issues since the voiced plosives b, d and g are so much more limited in use.
@@keegiveel Yea I heared stories that Estonians favourite thing to do with the TV was to watch Finnish S/K-market adverts which showed fresh foods that were often missing from Estonian stores themselves
Kiitos!
As a native speaker of Hungarian I'm quietly mourning we just can't take part in any of this... Could we have a video on language isolates please? (OK, Hungarian is of course a Finno-Ugric language, so it's related to Estonian and Finnish... about as closely as English is to Persian.) 😢
As a Polish speaker I enjoyed watching this challenge (and many others), I liked the melodies of both languages a lot, even though I couldn't understand either of them. And of course I tried to solve the challenges in English 😊 I'm so impressed every time I see people from different countries holding effective conversations in their respective languages, so big thanks to Norbert for running this channel! 😊
Finnish almost has a Roman-commander sounding tone.. or at least that's what I imagine is the tone of Latin😂
I have heard that native finnish speakers pronounce latin as it was most likely pronounced during classic times
It would be interesting if someone who speaks Hungarian joined this conversation,as these 3 languages have the same root.
Hungarian is so much older branch that we don't understand it at all. I am a Finnish speaker.
I'm afraid the Finns and Estonians wouldn't understand much of Hungarian, and vice versa.
@@wish-keeper yep. I knew those words, and it's easy to imagine that those words are really old. From the stone age at least.
Finnish has a lot loan words from Swedish and Russian and quite many from Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian) too.
@@wish-keeper long time ago I got an etymology book "Sanojen synty" by Veijo Meri. I was surprised how many every day words are from Baltic languages.
I like it that some people don't understand how exactly Finno-Ugric languages have the same root. To add Hungarian in such a comparison is like to make a comparison between Armenian and Irish(they also do have the same root).
I hear clearly the difference and that pretty fun
We want more
This one was easy. I understood 90% of what Kristofer said (I'm from Finland and I don't know Estonian)
Blond central asians we have here
Make one with Hungarian. 🙂
hyvää
As a Hungarian native speaker, I can confirm that I understood NOTHING.
So which one is which?!
Estonian to the left, Finn to the right.
Estonian dude needs a new mic - sounds like idk... 2007 ventrilo
haha, exactly
With Finnish, they carry their “N’s”
🤷
Hämmentävää
Finnic is the exact same concept as Germanic
I thought it was guilt.
It is. Katumus means guilt.
@@namelessghoul615 No, translator says regret.
@@Nekotaku_TV That's basically the same thing?
@@namelessghoul615 No... That's why I made my comment haha.
@@Nekotaku_TV Wait how are they different?
Now do it with Lithuanians and latvians
Is he a true Estonian guy? He sounds just a little bit with Russian accent.
sounds exactly like all estonians
1st
yksi
@@guitargresurrect2117 no, right word for "first" is "eka"(spoken form) or "ensimmäinen"
@@ralepej Ekam is one in Sanskrit lol.
@@infinite5795 nice.
Следующее видео: мордвин и финн пытаются понять друг-друга)