Can Finnish and Estonian speakers understand each other?
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 23. 04. 2023
- Imagine an Estonian and a Finn trapped in a sauna. Would they be able to communicate to find a way out? đ€
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. đ€
đ You can sign up via following volunteer formâ 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.
đ€ Big thanks to đȘđȘ Kristofer and đ«đź Antti for participating in the video.
đ«đź You can learn Finnish with Antti here: www.italki.com/en/teacher/874...
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#learnestonian #learnfinnish #languagechallenge #languages
The episode 2 is finally out â czcams.com/video/FRFhO84DFsY/video.html đ€
Suomalaiset ymmĂ€rtĂ€vĂ€t helposti kirjoitettua virolaisten kieltĂ€. Virolaiset ymmĂ€rtĂ€vĂ€t yleensĂ€ suomenkieltĂ€. ĂĂ€ntĂ€minen on tosi erilaista nykyÀÀn.
â@@sn2a1..ir kÄ jĆ«s Äia taip paraĆĄÄt, gerbiamasis (gerbiamoji?)? Manot, kiti negali atsakyti nesuprantama kalba?:))...
@@sn2a1ma ei saa palju aru
â@@sn2a1Seems like estonian has a bit more of scandinavian than the finnish. Like kelder (norwegian "kjeller" / english "cellar / basement"). And "ruum" (norwegian "rom", finnish "huone", english "room")
I'm the Estonian speaker in this video. I really liked participating, it was fun.
Unfortunately, halfway through the challenge, I started thinking about pantry instead of cellar, so I got them mixed up. Cellar is not next to kitchen, but oh well.
And Ă€ikesetorm is lightning storm not thunder storm, mĂŒrin is thunder, but because we never say thunder storm, I got them mixed up also. It seems trivial now later that Ă€ikene, another form of Ă€ike, and ukkonen are cognates.
I am a Finnish speaker I guessed both your words very easily. It may have been little helpful that I saw the Estonian text while you were speaking.
Finnish and Swedish speaker here. I understood quite a lot of what you said, but I do think me speaking Swedish also helped seeing that Estonian apparently has tons of German loanwords that Finnish doesn't have.
I do have to ask, do you speak any particular dialect or do you also speak Russian? I thought I picked up a few Russian influences in your pronunciation - mostly some hints of palatalisation - that I haven't heard before. Not that I've heard a lot of Estonian through the years, but still.
@@maaritlarinen9056 in my pointwiew pretty regular Estonian, nothing unusual but yes we have in Estonian language ton's of loans word which makes Finnish And Estonian Language so appart
Southern Osthrobothnia here. Just wanted to say hello and to tell you have a nice day, kalevipoeg are strong! :)
Guys, ukkonen is related to skygod Ukko, which in Estonian also was the skygod Uku, as it was written in our many stories two centuries ago, our oral heritage. Mythologically indeed the connection is there, but quite obscure.
Finnish and Estonian: Visible understanding
Hungarian: I think I might sit this one out đ
I speak Hungarian as a Polish man but I do not undestand a word of Finnisg nor Estonian.
@@robertkukuczka9469 yeah precisely my point. Although there are 100s of words present in hungarian that are cognates with both finnish and estonian, most are too different to initially realise their commonality. Either way, this doesn't make the languages mutually intelligible
Is the relationship of Hungarian with Finnish/Estonian like comparing German to Spanish/Italian, or even worse, Hindi to Spanish/Italian?
@@lissandrafreljord7913 yeah pretty much. Maybe something like polish, Russian or indo-iranian languages to English. They're fairly distant since hungarian split from proto-finno-ugric like 3000 to 4000 years ago
Having grown up bilingual in Estonian and Finnish and being of a generation where almost everyone spoke Finnish rather fluently, seeing Kristofer being completely at a loss is a good reminder that our languages are absolutely riddled with false friends (huone/hoone, etc).
In Estonian:
* Kodu; Koda. (home; a shelter, a workshop).
* Kott/koti/kotti (a bag / of bag's / into the bag.) đ°
Those two words aren't exactly false friends, i think, because the meanings are still related and similar :) You can see how they might have drifted from the shared original meaning of 'to house something', so 'huone' = room, 'hoone' = building. There are a lot of these, actually. 'Talo' = house, 'talu' = farmhouse; 'puhua' = to speak (a language), 'puhuma' = to blow air from the mouth, but Estonians even say 'juttu puhuma' = to have a chat.
Hallitus/hallitus is a good example of false friends, though, because the meanings (and origins, as far as I know) are completely different (government/mold).
â@@pinkbabycrocs5577 Many "false friends" are of course cognates, but the original meanings are sometimes preserved in certain phrases, and in dialectal words, too:
e.g. FI "pÀivÀnpaiste" = "sunshine", modern FI "aurinko" = "the Sun" = "PÀike" EST
@@pinkbabycrocs5577 There is definitely a connection in the puh-part, there are words like 'puhkua' and 'puhista' which are describing different ways to blow air and still related to speech.
@pinkbabycrocs5577
Hallitus/halitus
Mould/mold - growing within and fixing sand in two halves of a moulding box so that the sand doesn't fall apart when the two halves are brought together?
Government, holding the country together, in a way of thinking?
Also, see my comment further up the page, about connections between numbers in Finnish/Estonian and Greek.
Also - Olympus - written in Ancient Greek with the symbol for the smooth breathing - so, pronounced with an initial 'h' or very similar. From the ancient halls and 'impos' - imposed authority?
In German, Rathaus - no common origin with what some wanted to say about people they didn't like?
The cadence of Finnish is really something. Love the way it sounds. Their poetry must be on another level.
That cadence is exploited to its full extent in the Finnish (pseudo-)folk song Ievan Polka.
paparapapaaaa :D
I find this so interesting to hear, can you describe what's so special about it to you? I find it so hard to understand how it sounds special since I'm Finnish, hahah
Finnish words are actually spoken in pretty slow sequence but most foreigners catch syllables instead of whole words and think that Finns speak really fast. When native speakers pronounce words, every syllable has frequency that goes from higher frequency downwards during the syllable and the pitch is again raised higher when new syllable starts. Double vocals (e.g. "aa") are pronounced as diphthongs with lowering pitch, too. Most Finns do not seem notice this and claim that you pronounce short vowel vs long vowel instead because that's how they mentally think about it while speaking but they are actually doing diphthongs.
@@naukumaija7056 I can tell you that I find it to be one of the most beautiful languages on earth, because of its gradual rising and falling pitch, itâs continuous flow (in terms of vocal emphasis), smoothly encroaching creaky voice near the end of syllables, clear syllables, pleasing combinations of vowels, and rhythmic long and short vowels. To me, if English can be considered like a clarinet with sharp but decently smooth turns and with inconsistent, jazzy rhythm, then Finnish sounds like a violin. German may be more like a trumpet since it stops abruptly after each emphatic phrase, for comparison.
I once learned basics of Estonian, and then when I was cycling outside of Helsinki and needed directions, I asked one old man, and we were able to communicate in a mix of Estonian and Finnish :) that was pretty awesome
Are Russian?
@@robleyusuf2566 I'm from Belarus so I speak Russian if that's the question
@@realmahadeo Yak Spravie? Don't worry that is only Belaruskiy I know. I have been in Belarus before in Minsk, Grodno and Vitebsky. I am from Somalia and people in Belarus often stare at me because of my skin colour, but besides from that they were very kind and generous. If people ask me how would I describe Human, my answer would be "Belarusian"
@@robleyusuf2566 thanks, spravy dobra :) I agree we have nice people, and hope things go well in our country. People stare at you because we don't have too many immigrants and are not used to diversity.
@@realmahadeo The problem Belarus has is the political conflict between Russia and the West(EU and USA) and no one is winning. I hope Belarus would not be like Ukraine. There is a dire situation in Ukraine. The world is on the verge of worldwar 3. These powers are also wrestling in Africa by using proxies.
As a Finn, I understood the exactly same words as Antti so I think this is quite representative of the intelligibility from Estonian to Finnish. It's a guessing game that relies on hearing some keywords that the languages share.
And even those key words can be tricky sometimes, it seems. Like in this video; "Huone" and "Hoone" sound almost exactly the same, but one means a room and the other means the entire building.
The basic words are pretty easy to understand, the more specialized the vocabulary gets the more clearly you can see how the languages have evolved in different directions since the middle ages.
I understood more than Antti. Most of finns can more than Antti. In video you cant like guess
Mun on vaikee olla ymmÀrtÀmÀttÀ ton eestilÀisen kertomusta
I'm Finnish speaking, living in Helsinki. For me, every visit to Tallinn is like an Estonian language course. Every time, even without trying, you learn new Estonian words and start understanding more.
Which is why the languages are close enough to be naturally aquireable (rather than truly needing to learn), while mutual intelligiblity out of blue can be challenging - almost at the reach. Actually learning the language is much quicker though.
Is it difficult for you Estonian language? As for me Russian, it seems crazy hard!
@@Mediaflashmob Of course not. Estonian is for Finns what Polish is for us. Even though Polish is objectively a hard language, for us Russians it's very easy since it's already so close to our native language. The same is almost certainly true for Finns learning Estonian.
@@maxkho00 indeed that sounds right
@@maxkho00 rather the same experience that I (native speaker of Italian) felt while first approaching Spanish. I wonder if there's a name for this sort of linguistical vicinity (other than "high mutual intelligibility"). Maybe "sister languages" is what I'm thinking.
Man I wish us Hungarians could somehow participate in this series... But there is not anything remotely close to us. There are only those approximately 100 words which are still similar in Finnish/Estonian and Hungarian, but grammatically, vocabulary-wise and even the logic of the languages evolved so differently as we have all been exposed to very different types of languages since we parted around 4000 yrs ago.
It is nice to see that Finns and Estonians still share mutual intelligibility to some extent :)
It would still be cool to see you represented though . To compare and contrast the words you share, and also, the ones you donât
@@littlemy1773 there's a great video by bahador alast called "hungarian and estonian similarities" where two participants, kinda similar to this video, try and guess the corresponding cognate in the other person's language. It's super interesting but also highlights just how difficult and unrecognisable so many of these words are from one another
@@mortenoconnell7977 Iâm subbed to his channel as well, so Iâll go and find that video . Thank you đ
Welcome to the club...
Of course we would. The accent when speaking English is very similar but we (Hun-Fin) share only a few conjugate words. However, I had a Hungarian-born piano teacher in Finland, and I loved her, and my niece speaks quite fluent Hungarian. But in the context of Uralic languages, we have to remember that Hungarian is still about as distant to Finnish as Swedish is to Greek. I.E. they belong to the same language family, but they're quite different.
It's great to see Finnish and Estonian being so close as to _almost_ mean the same exact things, but being _just_ far away enough to confuse each other the first time around. It reminds me of that Breaking Bad meme where Walter asks Jessie wtf he's talking about. They're clearly communicating on a level of basic understanding, but the finer details get lost and cause some pretty funny misunderstandings.
One of the prime examples (that we're taught via jokes) of that would be the word "hallitus" which in Estonian means "mould, like on food etc) and in Finnish it means the "government"- which in turn in Estonian would be "valitsus" :D
@@greendude96 The government is the worst kind of mould, I have to agree LOL
There Are same words - but with different meaning - piim IS maito / raiskamine IS kuluttamista / soida IS ajaa autoa / laskemine IS ampumista ! There IS no maito - so drink vesi !
Ăike and ukkonen are almost cognate. The root words are "Ă€i" and "ukko", both meaning "old man" (Finnish still has the word "Ă€ijĂ€" that also means "old man"). The old Finnic god of thunder was shared by Finns and Estonians and his name was various forms of "old man". Ukko, ĂijĂ€ or Ăijö in Finnish and Uku in Estonian (and clearly he was also called some form of "Ă€i").
So in both languages, the word for thunder is the name of the thunder god (meaning old man) plus a diminutive suffix (Ă€i-ke, ukko-nen).
The most common meaning of the word "Ă€i" in Estonian is father in law.
In Estonian, "Ă€tt" (also dialectal variation "Ă€it") means an old man.
@@vulc1 But eit means an old woman :D
Rspct â€
vÀike Àike pÀike :D
Ă€i doesnt mean old man ... why are you lieing lol :D
"vana Àtt" or just "Àtt" would be what finnish use ukko...
Ă€i is like relational title
Both languages are beautiful. In this video, the Finnish speaker put much more effort into clear articulation.
As an Estonian my first guess for the korrusmaja/kerrostalo was also a shopping centre. I was thrown off by it being a building that's only in cities/towns. Estonian countryside is full of blocks of flats from the soviet era.
Hello from the other branch of the Finno-Ugric tree (I am Hungarian). I just want to add here, that however I do not understand a single word what you say here, I stopped it for several times and checked the English captions too, to understand and possibly find anything to cognate, but no success (but even you guys have a hard time, whose languages are much closer, I don't know, what did I expect :D ). However I find these languages somehow close to mine, the way you guys say the words, the tune... It's like I have a grasp on it, but somehow it always slips away. It was a super interesting video for me, thank you for uploading it!
Iâm from Finland and I surprised that I actually was able to guess both of those Estonian words right, I understood pretty much and it was really cool!
An Aurora fan! Jee!
@@deithlan Weee!
I started to learn finnish 2 years ago, and this summer I will go to Helsinki and Tallinn (at last, my trip was initialy screduled in... 2020). I was very curious to see the differences between finnish and estonian, and this video was very fun to watch. And I was able to understand 70% of the finnish, which is a great win for me as I only have 80 hours of lessons for adults per year (and the help of Yle Kielikoulu).
Heyy! Glad you made it! I purchased the tickets to go back in 2019, but then 2020 happened. Neither my Finnish lessons nor my trip survived that, unfortunately
Two of the most beautiful languages in the world.
đ€ It makes me think of Norsemen discussing something about hunting.
Finn here. I tended to understand everything around the key words pretty well đ Like "it has a ??? and when you go into it, you'll see ??? it has ????" Probably pretty indicative of which thing in a language change faster and which slower.
Especially with the "tent" I got a pretty good picture about how you can take with you while travelling etc. but got on the wrong track for a while because at the start I though he said it's made out of glass. Actually he said "thing"=asi, which is asia in Finnish but I misheard it as Lasi which is glass. But really perhaps even more than 50% of the words in that were pretty much the same words or very similar in Finnish. Forest, travel, set up, make/do, be, can. Whole sentences really that were totally understandable especially on my second round also seeing the words written. Lightweight and fits into a backpack happened to be a sentence with almost totally dissimilar words. Edit: Actually not really "ja see mahub" is "ja se mahtuu" for instance.
I wanted a proper challenge and only listened, seeing the words written makes understanding A LOT easier.
Such conversations between estonian and finnish can be hilariously confusing because the meanings of similar/same words have changed into _slightly_ different directions, but not completely. It can be more confusing than if they meant totally different things. Like hoone/huone is house/room, estonian "maja" means house while in finnish "maja" is a small cabin or something kids build from sticks outside or from blankets inside. Linna I think means city/town in estonian? But in finnish it's castle. Mis/missÀ is "what"(?) in estonian but "where" in finnish. These sort of minute differences can be super confusing.
Est: kodu(home), koda (dwelling; workshop; ...)
Similar appearing/sounding: kott, koti, kotti - bag đïžđ°
Castle in Estonian is loss, coming from German schloss. But a fortress is called linnus, and I guess linn originally came from the fortress.
Surprised Dutchman here!!! There are a number of words in Estonian that were intelligible to me (like kelder (cellar) , room (ruimte), hyttesystem (hittesysteem/verwarmingsketel), torm/storm and many more! I would like to know if this is because of the Hanseatic trade....
Unfortunately I couldn't pick up Finnish words other than music, guitar and piano ;)
I'm 99% sure that I recently read something about how Estonian has very strong but somewhat obscure influences from dutch/germanic dialects due to, you guessed it right! The Hanseatic League and that trade influence in old trade towns like Reval(tallinn), PĂ€rnu and other such centers along the Gulf of Riga!
There are lots of loan words from Low German (similar to Dutch)
The heaviest external contribution, nearly one third of the vocabulary, comes from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon (Middle Low German) during the period of German rule, and High German (including standard German). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22-25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Oh and Swedish as well. And what fascinates me even more is that there are Proto Indo-European words in as well. For example the word for sky in Estonian is "taevas" which is thought to have come from the Indo-European word "deiwos" ("deus" in Latin) which means the god of the sky. Its thought it came from the time when Finno-Ugric people and Indo-European lived close to one another near the Eurasian Steppes. It actually even sounds very similar!
As a Dutchman you should clearly understand Estonian word "kuningriik". Do you?
@@HK-su3ud Yes, sure, it's almost similar to (dutch) "koninkrijk", kingdom in English...
In my native Dutch we have exactly the same word for cellar as in Estonian. I learned that Estonian has a lot of (low)German influences due to trade through the Hanseatic League.
@@paganismfe Finnish also has the word Reissu.
The main Estonian dialect has a lot of influence from the German/Swedish language. For example köök (kitchen) comes from Köket which is from Sweden. HÀrra (mister) comes from Herr, which comes from German.
kiitos!
would be interesting to see how much mutual intelligibility there is with a Karelian speaker too. đ
And also with a Hungarian speaker
â@@roman_pokora That is 0. There is unfortunately no intelligibility.
@@roman_pokora like 100 words are still similar, and that's pretty much it.. unless we throw in casual loanwords from Germanic languages and Latin
+SĂĄmi, would be awesome! < 3
(...maybe VÔro & MeÀnkieli too?)
As a Finn I can say that Karelian is fairly easy to understand, at least after getting used to it for a while. I can understand ~70-90% of words in spoken language and 85-95% in written, so basically you can just guess the rest based on the context.
There's also some variety to how strong the accent is when talking, so whenever the speaker has a strong russian accent, the spoken language can be harder to understand.
Hungarian, on the other hand, is practically impossible to understand. Some words share the same origin, yes, but the main similarities are, as far as I know, in the grammar, which doesn't really help as naturally vocabulary is way more important when understanding a language.
This is great! I love that you are starting to feature more non-Indo-European languages on the channel.
Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian are the original Old-European langauges and nations.
There is not a language like Indo-European. It's all false idea. Read Sri Aurobindo. All Indian words came to European languages through Greeks along with their religion. Greeks were good familar wih Vegas and Upanishads. Only 300 or 400 years ago Europeans were leading wildlife knowing not what is a soap or savon, sabyn from Turkish.
@@user-qv9lj8jn2b (updated)
No that is conspiracy fringe theories that have no support in linguistic science. Read actual texts in comparative linguistics and archeological works by the likes of David Anthony like Horse, wheel and language.
Indo-European is proven by regular sound law correspondence and and grammatical correspondence.
What you say here makes no sense as Sanskrit and Germanic rooks very different routes from the common Proto-Indo-European language and it cannot be taken from Sanskrit as Sanskrit merged PIE e and o to a, while this did not happen in Greek, Germanic or Romance languages etc. Sanskrit is a satem language that merged PIE labio velars(k-like sounds) with plain velars but palatalized the palato-velars to sillibant sounds. Greek and Celtic did the reverse of that they merged the front or palatal velars with the plain and initially kept the labio velars so called centum languages. IE languages also shares patterns of inflection, vowel alteration etc.
So no there is an indo-European language family.
It is the same type of fools who deny that Hungarian for nationalist reason is related to Finnish.
Also Indian words? No direct cognates of basic vocabulary and affixes.
Not all languages in India is indo-European like the Dravidian languages.
So please stop spreading conspiracy bullshit.
Sri Aurobindo was a nationalist ideologue and not an linguist and many radical nationalists do deny comparative linguistics when it does not work with their beliefs.
Other Indian nationalists do accept indo-European languages but they refuse to accept the current evidence that the language family did not originate in India and spread into India and that family most likely originated in the Eurasian steppes between Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
@@LexMadafaka No, Uralic aka Finno-Ugric languages do not have deeper history in Europe than Indo-European and both replaced paleo-European languages aka pre-IE and pre-Uralic languages of the Neolithic. The languages of Caucasus and Basque are survivors of these.
IE developed in the Eurasian steppes of modern Ukraine.
@Jasmine Karam we can't contradict to Sri Aurobindo who is a fully self-awakened, God- realized person, an avatar, whose third Eye can see the past, present and the future all at once. I personally had this experience in opening the third eye for a very short time. Asians have passed by several evolution loops, whereas Europeans still remain barbaric by nature. Indians and Europeans don't have and can't have common link because of this evolutionary difference. To be sure read Sri Aurobindo
I lived in Finland for a year in 93-94, learned the language there and still love it. I visited Estonia in 2017 and was amazed at how similar yet not mutually intelligible Estonian sounds in relation to Finnish. Still, when you delve deeper into both and pay closer attention to structures, some things are quite similar. Both are fascinating languages.
Opit suomea vuodessa?
I'm a Finn who doesn't speak Estonian and I understood about 80% of the Estonian introduction. So many words are close enough to form understanding of what is being said as the word is in a sentence.
1 st time in finland i didnt understand anything, im from south estoniait was 2000 y or so when i visited finland 1 st time
This, I "totally" understood what was being said, with some words missing. Or could phonetically guesstimate when I clamp together the words. I donÂŽt know how Antti didn't get cellar. Like "maja all, kĂŒlm jah pime" mikĂ€hĂ€n voisi olla
nah to me it sounds like asfdsfuhsdfdsfhjdsf WORD asidjasoidjasoisd WORD asfihdaopifjwpejwgp WORD
Were you reading the subtitles? That felt like cheating. If I just tried to listen, I couldn't understand almost anything.
80% sounds very optimistic. I didn't understand that much.
What stood out to me most is that while the grammar and vocab is obviously very similar, the pronunciation is very different despite them being right beside each other. The way Estonian is pronounced it just has a general European sound, but Finnish sounds basically magic like every sentence is going to summon some ancient elves.
You have no idea what a nuisance the ancient elves ("haltija", sometimes written "haltia") are over here. If you ever visit Finland, check out how many signs specifically require you to obtain permission from the ancient elves ("...haltijan luvalla").
.
.
.
:
(just kidding)
Finnish would actually sound very close to estonian today but we had a language reform that imported a lot of rules from latin. Sometimes I actually prefer the og pronounciations of some really old words. :D
The oldest piece of written Finnish was on a birch bark, found nearby where nowadays lies the border between Finland and Russia. And that written piece was a spell. đ
Thank you for our kind words about Finnish :) I feel the same way about my mother tongue
I think the main reasons that make Finnish sould "different"to Estonian are boundary gemination (affecting the rhythm) and vowel harmony. Apart from the standard language, Soutwestern Finnish dialects in general sound closer to Estonian (some of them not featuring boundary gemination for instance.) This makes sense because I think those areas historically had more connections to the southern side of the Gulf.
I speak both Estonian and Finnish, so watching Kristofer with no knowledge of Finnish still be able to pick up some meaning from what Antti was saying is quite impressive. Good job both of you, I honestly expected there to be less common understanding.
As an italian mothertongue I just adore these languages especially finnish: so distant yet with a familiar pronunciation and our double consonants
La prosodia del finlandese mi ricorda troppo il sardo, non so perchĂ© đ Ăš una lingua che adoro e abituata allo studio dell'inglese, ma anche del francese mi fa cosĂŹ strano che esistano altre lingue in cui si legge come si scrive đ
Yes, I agree as a Finn, somehow it would be much easier to learn to speak Italian (compared to how different and difficult it is to speak e.g. English)
Wow, this is so interesting to hear. Apparently there is a thing called raddoppiamento sintattico which is a phonetic feature shared by Finnish and Italian
Probably due to the Finnish languageâs writing system being adopted directly from Latin around 500 years ago. Should share a lot of similarities in pronunciation with Italian having being the âsuccessorâ of Latin.
For Finns Latin would be much easier to learn than English, if it wasn't all over the media. Or at least the pronunciation
I wish you guys would have talked more about the similarities and how you perceive the other language in the end.
At least for me, as a Finnish person, it is usually quite natural and easy to grasp the grammatical components of Estonian sentences. I mean to recognize the verbs, nouns, particles and word endings, which usually are similar. Even if you don't understand the words, you can kinda get alongđ it's a funny feeling when you feel like you're supposed to understand.
Fun video anyways! Been waiting for a Finnish and Estonian one!
Yeah it felt to me like the grammatical components as you said are the same, but probably most nouns or verbs aren't.
Like you can easily spot prepositions or noun cases or verb conjugations but you can't really understand what is being said because of the different etymology of the nouns and verbs.
Is that correct?
@@Zestieee yeah exactly! Usually I can't fully understand spoken Estonian at all, but it does help however when I can read text, because then I can more easily spot similar words that I might have missed hearing.
Most nouns and verbs are completely different but there are also a lot that come from the same root or clearly are similar or the same.
And then, just like in the video, every now and then you can spot a familiar word or two, and it suddenly gives you a lot of information about the context so you can make some guessesđ
It's just very fascinating to me!
A d I'm so happy we have this sibling language in the big sea of Indo-European languages, so we can have some fun by ourselves in our own special little club đđ«đźâ€đȘđȘ
As a Finn I could understand the Estonian man very well when reading off the Estonian subtitles even.
Reading the subtitles was much easier than listening. It felt like cheating.
That was very interesting. My mother tongue is English and a struggle with Finnish. I asked my husband if he could understand Estonian, he is Finnish, he said he heard familiar words but to our surprise they sometime mean some other thing. I was sort of smiling to myself when the Estonian speaker heard Ukkonen, going back to the thundergod. Very ancient.
That's mostly due to semantic drift or words which just happen to be similar but aren't actually related, like hallitus (government in FI and mould in EE). In Finnish it derives from the verb hallita, which is haldama in Estonian. But by the power of happen stance the word for mould in Estonian is written exactly the same as the Finnish word for government. The Estonian word for mould derives from hall (grey) which became the verb hallitama (to grey up/ to mould) which became hallitus.
It's the same with Swedish and Norwegian. That the same word sometimes means something else. For example, in Swedish "roligt" means fun, but in Norwegian it means calm.
If you come up with synonyms for the words, like enjoyable in stead of fun, and peaceful or pleasant instead of calm, then they start coming closer together in meaning. But this difference in how words are used in everyday speech could still be enough to cause misunderstandings.
One another interesting thing. The word for hammer in finnish is "vasara", which comes from ukon vasara, which is the weapon of the thundergod ukko, which is similar to thor's hammer. The word comes from sanskrit vajra and avestan vazra. In sankrit the word vajra means thunderbolt and it's the weapon of the thundergod indra in hinduism.
â@@notuxnobuxalso related is the word viagra
For an estonian, living in Finland for 2 years, this feels just absurd how it's possible not to understand those sentences. Funny thing about learning finnish is that, once it "clicks" , it's permanent and the language is basically unlocked. But some years ago I was exactly as clueless as the estonian guy in the video.
This Kristofer fella was obviously not the fastest puzzle solver. First he aknowledges it usually occurs in spring and summer. Then proceeds with "is it snow?" đ€Ł
@@john2335 i don't think he understood that it's in spring or summer, since the words for those in estonian and finnish are quite different. i think he just understood that it happens in estonia and finland
@@watermelooneboi8465 iirc the guy literally said something like " ok so it appears at spring and/or summer right?" Followed with " is it snow? ". I should rewatch but really not in the mood so got to rely on a month old memory đ
â@@john2335 it can get snowy here in springs too, not often but possible
@@kane3825 are you related to the Kristofer by any chance? If you were trying to get to snow, would the first questions on your mind be "is it at spring AND summer?" đ€Ł
Whenever I hear these two languages they sound practically the same to me (even in this video, spoken one after the other, really), so it was very interesting to see how intelligible they actually are.
They seemed to understand each other fairly well, enough to have a conversation and ask to rephrase something when they didn't get it the first time.
As an English-speaking observer, it seems the Finnish is a bit more formal & Estonian a bit more understated, but it could be the individual speakers.
@@catholicdad the Finn is using a very proper articulation and deliberate announciation, the Est is a bit more relaxed. A bit like reading aloud a childrens book, I think in everyday speech they are more similar.
Two beautiful sounding languages I must say.
Hey! This video is amazing! As a Latvian speaker, for me it would be really intersting if Lithuanian speaker could understand our language. I know that Latvian is really influenced by Finnic Livonian so that's why for us it's so hard to understand Lithuanian speach.
I'm a Finn who learns the Estonian language as one of my minor subjects at the university I have a little bit Estonian blood in myself also and I love the Estonian language and Estonia!â„ïž Ma armastan Eestit ja eesti keelt!â„ïž
After 6 months of doing Finnish Duolingo lessons I could understand a lot more. I am Estonian so that makes it easier. I got all the Finnish ones, because I understood enough words to fill the caps.
I just looked up the etymology for kelder and kellari, and it's crazy how much this word travelled! I wouldn't have guessed it for such an everyday word.
It comes from latin!
For finnish:
1) latin: cellÄrium
2) middle low german: keller
3) swedish: kÀllare
4) finish: kellari
Wikipedia doesn't know from which language precisely estonian borrowed the word "kelder". Maybe from dutch?
1) latin: cellÄrium
2') middle dutch: kelre, kellere
3') dutch: kelder
My guess is Danish - kĂŠlder.
By memory, should be attributed to middle low German. In dialects "kelder" is "keller" - something I even still often tend to do...
Or vice-versa! Latin was an universal language created to understand each other in Europe. It is a blunt, simple language, but not so original.
Dutch people never came to Estonia
"Kellari" and " kjallari" is old norse, before that from Latin. However, in some Norwegian dialects that are closer to Norse it is often pronounced as various variations of "kjeldar".
Great video! Just wanted to let you know that there's still an audience that loves these videos. Would love to see more of these, including language combinations that already happened.
We need more videos of finno-ugric languages or Uralic languages!
The two languages seem farther apart than I expected. I come from the Philippines, where there are somewhere between 150 and 180 indigenous languages. I speak Filipino/Tagalog, which doesn't have any very close relatives, and I also speak Cebuano, one of 25 Bisayan languages spoken in the Central and Southern islands. I got the impression that Finnish and Estonian are farther apart than any of the Bisayan languages, and probably farther apart than Bisayan and Tagalog, both of which are part of the larger Greater Central Philippines grouping of about 60 languages in the Philippines (more in Indonesia). Perhaps it is like the distance between Tagalog or Cebuano and one of the languages of the Northern Philippines, like Ilocano (the language of maternal grandparents, which I can sometimes recognize) or Pangalatok.
Finn here, I'm pretty sure that Estonian guy used non-formal version on Estonian language or at least he doesn't try to emphasis every word. Finnish guy used pretty much "standard Finnish" (not 100%) which is not really spoken in real life. It's a language for the president and news anchors.
For expamle: two (2) is kaksi in Finnish and kaks in Estonian. But in every day life, we Finns also use "kaks".
Estonian:
ĂŒks
kaks
kolm
neli
viis
kuus
seitse
kaheksa
non-formal Finnish (depends where you live, this is one example)
yks
kaksi
kolome
nelijÀ
viis
kuus
seittemÀn
kaheksan
Even more non-formal Finnish
yy
kaa
koo
nee
vii
kuu
sei
kasi
ysi
Standard Finnish
yksi
kaksi
kolme
neljÀ
viisi
kuusi
seitsemÀn
kahdeksan
@@kukkaistyttoiik to those wondering what is ysi in formal finnish, it is yhdeksÀn (9), in non-formal sometimes also called yheksÀn or ysi
As a Russian I am so much in love with Finland and Estonia very cool and originally sounding language and awesome people honest and practical at the same time very good experience. Though those ethnic Russians that living in Estonia are kinda weird sometimes LOL.
ĐŃ! ЧŃĐŸ ŃŃĐ°Đ·Ń ŃŃŃĐ°ĐœĐœŃĐ” ŃĐŸ?))
My Hungarian brain throughout this challenge: why this sounds like something I should understand and why I'm not understanding O.O
Because Hungarian evolved in constant contact with neighbouring countries and kingdoms. Hungarians are same Finno-Ugric tribe, but the language in general is just totally different these days.
Finns were isolated in forests with no contacts to speedily evolve the ancient language
There are still some old words that are same
Been waiting a long time for this video. It's really startling how different Finnish and Estonian are. You assume because of geographic proximity and the fact that basically all Finns and Estonians have are each other there would be a much higher level of mutual intelligibility. But yeah they really struggled. Hoping soon for Baltic and Celtic language comparisons đ
And putting the language aside Estonia and Finland are totally different and it's quite vice verse with Sweden though Swedish still spoken in Finland.
Been waiting for this one! Would love another one of these with Finno-Ugric languages
I feel like, the misguessing of the question number 1 has something with 'Nordic way of thinking', rather than actual linguistic difference between Estonian and Finnish.
Macte virtute! (that's Latin for 'Good job!) HyvÀÀ työtÀ! Since Antti pretty obviously has never studied Estonian, it turned out to be rather difficult for him to get the very few key words that would have improved his understanding drastically.
I think it would be interesting to redo the whole thing with two people who have already had more exposure to the cognate language. Now, Antti understood maybe about 30-40% of what Kristofer was saying. Someone else with some knowledge of the key differences between Finnish and Estonian would be able to understand at least 60-70%. :)
I've been waiting for this comparison for quite some time. Thank you!
It's really amusing how the Kristofer the Estonian asks "Mis" where he means "what", but in colloquial Finnish "mis" means "where". It is short for "missÀ". If it was me, I would have leaned into these "false friends" for humor.
The Finnish guy speaks very close to Standard Finnish, which is not untypical of Tampere. I would have liked to speak in a dialect and see how an Estonian is able to take that in.
Colloquial Finnish doesn't exist. It's really arrogant to say that your dialect is the default spoken language.
@@tommytowner792 The part about saying "mis" when meaning "missÀ" is very common across Finland, though there's probably some dialects that don't do it.
Of all the dialects of Finnish, the way people speak in Tampere is actually very close to Standard Finnish and there's a fascinating history as to why that is.
The distinction between standard Finnish and forms of colloquial Finnish is apt, because standard Finnish uses certain forms of words that are barely used in the vernaculars of any region. "MinÀ" and "sinÀ" , meaning "I" and "you", being the prime examples. Most dialects use either "mÀÀ", "mÀ", or "mie" instead of "minÀ", for example.
The Finnish guy has a really good voice for learning Finnish, very clear and expressive in the words, as a northern English speaker it sounds more palatable than Estonian, really enjoyed the video...
He was mostly speaking Standard Finnish and articulating extra clearly.
He was purposefully articulating the words very clearly and speaking pretty slowly, so yeah.
Interesting that you appreciate the clarity of the Finnish speaker's voice, but at the same time it doesn't occur to you that this mumbling Estonian speaker is a very bad general representative of the language. And you proceed to making conclusions which language is more palatable...
One of the funniest false friends I have heard of as a Finn is the word "hallitus", which means "government" in Finnish but "mold" in Estonian
Ruum/Ruumi is also good. Ruum (EST) means flat, Rummi (FIN) - dead body.
@@kyberorg I have never heard the word rummi. Ruumis is the common word for dead body in Finnish
@@Mustavariz yes, I got typo. Ruumis means same as laip/surnukeha in Estonian.
@@kyberorg Ruum means room, not flat. Flat would be korter.
đ€ A Bonus Mini Challenge for you guys! â czcams.com/video/iB60SyXSZk0/video.html
Can Lithuanians understand latvians? Would be cool to see this kind of challenge!
@@ainaras33 JĆ«s esate Lietuvis, jums reikia tai ĆŸinoti. đ
â@@RichieLarpa Tai ir ĆŸinau :D Suprasti latvius lietuviui iĆĄ tiesĆł ÄŻmanoma, bet tikrai ne visada. Kaip giminingos kalbos, turime nemaĆŸai panaĆĄumĆł, bet man asmeniĆĄkai latviĆł kalba skamba kaip germanizuota lietuviĆł. Visgi bĆ«tĆł ÄŻdomu iĆĄgirsti kitĆł nuomone ir paĆŸiĆ«rÄti ar ir praktikoje ĆĄios dvi baltĆł kalbos yra tarpusavyje suprantamos.
Miksi kÀytÀt tekoÀlyÀ?
I've been waiting for videos like this! Thank you for making this.
Ihan sairaan siisti video đ€ Oon ite Virosta kotoisin alunperin ja oli mielenkiintoista kuunnella, josko vielĂ€ ymmĂ€rtĂ€isin viroa đ. Kyl mĂ€ aika paljon lopulta ymmĂ€rsin. Aivan mahtava idea videolle!! đ
Alunperin you're more likely from chelyaba.
As a Finn I'm a bit surprised how little they understood each other. Then again my starting point for the assumption is that large portion of capital area Finns, and probably also Estonians in Tallinn are aware of a bit of vocabulary on the other country. For the purpose of this task that, of course would be a bit of a cheat, but with that maybe 50-200 word vocabulary (including some of those famous false friends) that at least many Tallinn-going Finns have absorbed it becomes dramatically easier to understand Estonian, and same goes the other way around too...
the finn spoke in a very book finnish, he would haw propably understood better if he spoke more in a spoken language pecos estonia has that kind of finnish more than the book finnish
Did you read the text while trying to guess the words? It's much easier that way, I'm sure that they only had to rely on their hearing.
I like that you, Norbert, trying different language families, it's very interesting to observe all different languages of the world. I don't speak any Uralic language, but subtitles helps. It was very interesting!
Kristofer said high-rise building(KĂRGHOONE), which is not wrong. We can also finish "Kerrostalo" translate a house with floors (KORRUSMAJA), but it is not used in spoken Estonian, but it is an understandable direct translation. We say fot that apartment building(KORTERMAJA.)
Everyone did well but I'd like to point Antti's English accent!
He really nailed dropping the syncopation and the rolling R and nailed our boring R and more monotone pattern! Hyve.
As a Finnish person who hasn't studied any languages other than the mandatory, all of these were pretty easy for me to get. A lot of the Estonian words are so similar to Finnish.
May I ask: Which languages are mandatory in Finland?
@@NantokaNejako Finnish, Swedish and English.
@@jerkkub While this is true for 99,99% of Finns, English isn't really mandatory. It can be replaced with any language but it's de facto mandatory.
@@kukkaistyttoiik What? In what level of schooling can you just say "no, I won't be attending the English class"?
For me (also finnish) it was easier to understand when I read it - but when I hear it, it's near impossible to make out what is being said.
Over a thousand years of separation across the Baltic Sea, bridged here very well.
please make more of these! id love to see these guys again
this video was so expected in so many places in youtube As a colombian immigrant raised up in sweden , i grew up with friends with finish background this very interesting..
Estonian= French; Finnish= Italian.
That was my impression knowing neither language at all but having heard varying reports of their intelligibility. This is how I came to that conclusion:
They are obviously very closely related but:
Estonian has much shorter words generally, and far more monosyllables. But it is phonologically more complex. It loses a lot of final vowels and syllables present in Finnish, and what final vowels remain are often reduced to a schwa-type sound, which rarely seems to happen in Finnish. It also changes many other vowel sounds, in particular the Finnish "uo" versus Estonian "oo" or "ÔÔ" is strongly reminiscent of French/Italian pairs like "coeur" and "cuore". These combine to give Finnish a much "clearer" sound compared to "muffled" Estonian, again like Italian and French.
So you get a pair of languages that clearly spring from the same comparatively recent source, but one seems to have undergone far more changes that prevent them being intelligible to a high degree. However they can still decipher each other to some degree with effort and will have a big advantage learning the other language.
I think it's more like Spanish and Portuguese.
Finnish is like Spanish and Estonian is like Portuguese, Finnish and Spanish are more conservative while Estonian and Portuguese have become more detached from their source language.
While Spanish has very clear sounds Portuguese doesn't, for example in the word "information":
Spanish: informaciĂłn
Portuguese: informação
Absolutely! In Hungarian sources, you can follow how the words lost their final vowels: early Medieval writings still have them.
That was so interesting to read! (I'm estonian).
@@Myke_Oxlong199 I, as a native speaker of Spanish and Catalan, cannot understand Portugal's Portuguese at all. It doesn't go both ways.
I expected way more intelligibility to be honest, not only because they are the same family of languages, but also both countries are so close to each other one thinks they would've been more in contact and have exchanged a lot of vocabulary. Interesting!
They diverged thousands of years ago. I'm having a hard time understanding even 1500's Finnish so imagine how hard Estonian is
@@TheAlex29494 Spanish and Italian also started diverging a couple of thousands years ago, give or take, and they are mostly mutually intelligible.
â@@TheAlex29494 1500's Finnish isn't actually hard at all once you get used to Agricola's goofy orthography and archaic vocabulary. Grammatically there's no difference whatsoever.
this was so great! really interesting video. cheers from Finland!
This was very fun to watch. Please make more videos like this! Studying languages is fascinating and brings me joy. Estonian language have special place in my heart.
Eesti, Eesti, sinne tahan vaid...
This is just a fun and interactive Finnish-Estonian mind game
Ha, my Finnish is absolutely dreadful (at least by the standards I impose myself) and I still understood that "Kellari" was the first word. That was a fun exercise given I'm quite familiar with Finnish but hardly at all with Estonian.
As a native Finn, I did kinda guess it but wasn't sure at all.
You don't usually keep kitchen appliances in the basement, nor is it that closely associated with a kitchen.
He said home appliances, probably meaning a washing machine and a dryer.
@@evahallik do people have those in basements? where they also keep food?
that's the thing, I was kinda going kodinhoitohuone from that
Finally a video about Finnish! I've been learning Finnish for about eight years now, so this was really fun to see how much I could understand. đ The language is so fascinating. And Antti is even from Tampere! I love it there. đđ€ Rakkaus Kanadasta, Suomi. đ«đźđšđŠ
I'm from Ukraine and i don't understand what guys said, but i want to say to estonian and finnish people - thank u for support!
đđđđ
Hey, all the support we can afford. Take care dude!
đđđ€
No one is supporting Ukraine!!đđ Only people who make money in this war support.
@@misva2rkon what is your problem where are you from why you hate ukrain
So nice đ„° Thanks, Norbert, Kristofer and Antti đ
Thank you for this video. It has been quite a while since I last watched a video in its entirety and truly enjoyed it from start to finish, but this one was remarkably captivating! As a Finn, I found this video exceptionally fascinating.
Been waiting for this!! đ
I did guess first one right!
I'm Finnish btw. Well Savonian, aka Eastern Finn so in our dialect might be bit closer someway etc.
There is also theory that Western and Eastern Finns where originally two different Finno-Ugric peoples which then mixed up in Finland and Savonians are mix of Tavastians (western finns), Karelians (eastern finns) and Sami....
Most likely Western Finns came through sea from Western Estonia meanwhile in Eastern Finns have come through land.
@@christianheikkonen That might be legit....
We stan the Ugrofinnic nations!â€ïžâđ„đ«đźđȘđȘđđșđ
As a finn I have been waiting for this episode. Thanks for you of making it! đđ
wow this is very well made video!!! Tilattu ! :)
Imagine if Norbert actually got a Mansi/Khanty speaker on this show to compare it to Hungarian. Would probably be the toughest one to pull off so far
Watching this as a Hungarian is really fascinating. Speaking the 3rd big uralic language as native, I really paid attention if I understand something. I have to say I understood some words and phrases! KĂŒttesĂŒstem - HƱtĆrendszer (rendszer meaning system). Matalia - Magas. Ăö on sa taga magada - Ăld meg magadat. Problem is the first pair means heating system - cooling system, second: short - tall, and third: Night is over, go sleep - Kill yourself. Beautiful đ
As Estonian, I wish that I could see similar with Hungarian and Mansi/Khanty (all being Ugric languages).
There's similar video about similarities between Estonian and Hungarian (word comparsion rather than mutual intelligibility)
Volgaic languages would be so interesting - we hardly get to hear anything about those.
Wonder how Finnish and Estonian would compare against Vepsan ("Sanskritâ of Balto-Finnic) like this.
And those with SĂ mic
@@KohaAlbert I`m a Finn and VepsÀ is much closer to Finnish language than Estonia or Saami
Ăö and yö are cognate with our Ă©j, but they don't sound alike at first glance. At second, they are one-syllable light-harmony words with the same meaning. A lot of our cognates work this way: you need to listen to harmonies and know the voice shifts. It's so fascinating to me that our harmonies rarely change.
Hungarian is in fact the largest Uralic language, not the 3rd largest
@@csaba9285 3 nagy urĂĄli nyelv van, a magyar, a finn Ă©s az Ă©szt. A videĂł a finnrĆl Ă©s az Ă©sztrĆl szĂłl, Ăgy Ă©n a harmadikat beszĂ©lem. Nem azt Ărtam hogy 3rd biggest.
As a Finnish to me it was so easy to understand Kristofer. I have never learned Estonian, but I do visit there many times in a year
This video was really interesting to watch! Iâve spoken both of those two since I was a child and didnât really know how much the citizens of Estonia understood Finnish. Thanks for sharing the experiment!
There once was a challenge like this in the finnish version of Taskmaster, I'm pretty sure in the brittish (?) original the task was to communicate with a swede instead!
Estonian sounds to me (I'm finn) like colloquial finnish that you feel like you are supposed to understand but just don't most of the time. Estonian words mite sound like the shortened forms in spoken finnish that can differ greatly from formal spoken or literal finnish. Some of the vocabulary reminds me of certain finnish dialects, for example "kyökki" is one colloquial word for kitchen (keittiö), an old sounding word that is mostly used locally or on the other hand can in some cases refer to a certain kind of kitchen.
Then again some words are close enough in cathegory, say, a food item, but are only homonyms or at leas very closely formed words with different meaning. "Piim" is milk in estonian, in finnish milk is "maito". "PiimÀ" in finnish would be a whole separate sour dairy drink that resemples very thin yogurt in consistensy. "Mahl" is juice in estonian, which is "mehu" in finnish. "Mahla" is the finnish word for tree sap, specifically the watery sap of birch trees, which is sometimes consumed like juice and is therefore un understandable association. "Puuviljamahl", fruit juice, is particularly funny estonian word for me (and something you quite often run into on producs that have ingredients listed in finnish, swedish and estonian for example) because directly translated the word "puuvilja" in finnish would be "the grain/corn of a tree" (although the nominative would technically be puuvilju, I think). It's a funny image and very different from the finnish word "hedelmÀ" for fruit. It sounds so delightfully obvious and simple: Now what would a fruit be if not the grain of a tree? That sort of association chain just doesn't happen to appear in finnish in this case.
Comical sounding cases of estonian words and phrases like this aren't uncommon to come accross as a finnish speaker. I don't actually speak any estonian myself but my knowledge about particular words in particular contexts like this is somewhat wide purely due to circumstances and it's nothing I would have intentionally searched out. I feel like it would be relatively easy to learn estonian like that if I were to spend time among estonian people, picking up familiar sounding words and structures and learning the actual meaning from context clues.
Loved it! Was surprised how much i understood Estonian as a Finnish.
For me it is so strange, that estonian dont understand finnish. But i am soviet time kid form Tallinn, who watched finnish tv a lot. But still...it is so similar.
A Swedish-speaking Finnish woman in a Dutch class we were taking said that, when she was young, she and her sister used to listen to Estonian radio and laugh ...
because to them it just sounded like bad Finnish. (1) The Dutch name for it is 'Kelder': loanword. (2) ? (3) Danish 'telt', Old Englsih 'teld' (4) Ukko is top god in Finnish mythology.
wow nice well im actually a swedish finn too
Did you mean that 'kelder' is a loanword into Estonian? Since it's not a loanword for Dutch.
@@baronmeduse Kellari looks like a loanword from maybe Swedish as well.
@@egbront1506 Bingo!
@@egbront1506 hard to say you might say all of them borrow words from each other
Finish sounds so melodic and smooth. Itâs like a mixture of Swedish and Japanese. Estonian has a pretty unique sound, I had never heard it before. I barely understood anything that they were saying, but it was downright fascinating to watch!
Funny how many words in Finnish and Japanese sounds alike, few examples:
- Tori (a bird in Japanese/a marketplace in Finnish)
- Ase (a sweat/a weapon)
- Koe (a sound/a test)
- Haka (a cemetery/a hook)
@@mikrokupu Kaido ? ( a name for Guy in eesti/car tuning stile in japanese slang )
@@mikrokupu koe means "voice", not "sound" in Japanese
@@mikrokupu Also Estonian and Japanese similar! :D One of the funniest thing I have found is that "no/ei/iie" and "yes/jah/haj". Opposite :D
@@thefakedanex Thanks for the correction!
I do not understand either Estonian or Finnish. Before this video, I thought that they were much closer to each other,, somewhat like two strong dialects. After this video, I now realise that they are probably as different as Portuguese and Spanish or Italian and Spanish.
Thanks for this interesting video.
Theyâre much more apart than Portuguese and Spanish,which in written are almost identical. I speak fluent Portuguese, thus I understand written Spanish perfectly and almost everything in written Italian too. But, as a Finnish, from Estonian written I can only understand a word or two.
Finnish and Estonian language splited up more than 2000 years ago, but 300 years ago it was still more intelligeble, after Language reformation it all changed. Southern Estonian language VÔro language is more similar to Finnish, but real close relative to VÔro is Livonian.
I'm finnish and my experience with hearing estonian is that it kinda depends on luck (if by accident the estonian uses words that are similar to the finnish equivalents) and the length of an explanation just how much I understand. Obviously, estonians can often switch to english and that's definitely way easier than trying to climb the language barrier - but once or twice I've spoken with an older estonian who does not understand english and since I do not speak estonian we've had to try communicating with just our respective the native languages.
This video demonstrated the language barrier pretty well. The estonian speaker had to speak for a pretty long while before the finnish listener had gathered enough clues that it was possible to make a good guess. I also got the idea of a room, and cooking, and I would have guessed the room is cellar. The words for dark and cool were very similar to finnish equivalents, and the word for cellar was close enough to be a hint.
I think most finns watching likely guessed cellar as well - and actually I think the finn in the video might have deduced that the room was cellar as well if he'd been an observer instead of an active participant and kinda 'under a spotlight'. I imagine it can be kinda stressful to be the guesser here. Language barriers tend to make social interactions quite awkward, being filmed can make one feel stressed, and the whole thing is basically a public test - so it's not really an ideal setting for great brainwork.
I must add - it's kinda difficult to separate how much I understood, or the finn in the video understood due to our FINNISH. We also learn swedish, english, insert other random languages... So knowledge of another language could easily be what helps solve a riddle. And naturally, finns aren't the only people who learn several languages at school or at home.
FINALLY! I was wanting you to do this one. I don't know if you saw my suggestion about it.
This was one of the most interesting videos actually. Well, in conclusion the languages are not as similar as the Scandinavian languages are to each other. However, Finnish and Estonian are more or less like Swedish and German or something. đ Which is kind of similar and English is also in some way similar to English, but not as close as Dutch and German is to Swedish.
Sami and Finnish would be quite interesting.
This was very interesting to watch. Iâm bilingual Swedish-Finnish, and I understood what words Kristofer was describing almost immediately. Estonian has quite a bit more influence from Germanic languages in terms of vocabulary than Finnish does, so some words are closer to Swedish than Finnish. I also find that Finnish dialects/slang are often closer to Estonian than the more formal/standard Finnish Antti is speaking.
This was very interesting to see! I`m Finnish and I have a very dear friend who`s from Estonia but living in Finland, BUT we live four hours apart so we`re in different dialect regions so there`s one more curveball to take into consideration there. Whatsapp messages are usually sent in English though when we get to see each other sth like once or twice a year we usually speak Finnish (when we`re not speaking English LOL) I have tried to learn Estonian but I got so much going on that has been set to the back burner for now...
Please make more of these
Yes! Yes! Yes! I've been waiting for this video for years! DziÄkujÄ, Norbert
Finnish and Estoninan so similar but yet so different đ hard to compare but it seem like it is Dutch and English or Dutch and German.
Yeah comparing to Dutch/German sounds right
Being from Turku Finland I understood the 3rd word right away, like for me it just sounded 'tehty kankaast, mahtuu perÀkonttiin, pistÀt pystyy, makaat siel yöt metÀs' and so on :)
I think one's native dialect has big effect how much you can understand.
I don't know if it was supposed but Antti here uses pretty much book-language imo.
i think i read somewhere that estonian is most similar to finnish southwestern dialects so that does make sense! as a citizen from turku myself as well I found estonian actually surprisingly easy to understand
This was amazing!
This was a fun watch! đ
As a basque speaker myself, and knowing that my language isn't related at all with these languages, it's kind of strange that the finnish sounds familiar to me
I once heard two men speaking a language I just couldnât recognise. It was weird as it somehow sounded so familiar but nothing like any other language. Since I didnât recognise the language, I was already guessing that this must be Basque! So I went up to these two men to ask about their language and sure enough, they were Basques. Hearing your language was somehow a surreal thing. There are some genetical studies proving that the Basques and the SĂĄmis are related. According to that study, both groups lived in the same refuge area during the last ice age. And as the ice started retreating, a group of people started to migrate to north and these were the people we nowadays know as the SĂĄmis. Iâm from the SĂĄmis from my motherâs side, đ
@@tuijasaari1463 What a nice story, my friend. I think that the simmilarity in the sound of both languages is due to their vocalic system, so similar. They are very vocalic languages and that makes them have a similar rythm when speaking. I've heard about the genetical researches that say samis and basques are somehow related, but I think it's just a theory. The most believed theory about us relates us to georgians/kartvelians in the Caucasus, but nothing has been proved. It seems that we've been in this corner of Europe for millennia. In fact, some tools like, axe, knife, arrow, hoe... are formed in basque language with the root "stone/rock", so some say those words go back to the stone age. Who knows! Thank you for sharing that nice story
@@asiersanz8941 so fascinating! â€ïž
More of these!! Finnish vs Estonian!! This is intriguing! (I am Finnish)
This was great to watch, thank you. It went really well and showed how two speakers can find the words they both know and build more common ground on that basis.
There are many false friends between Estonian and Finnish, but their falseness is rarely total, but more often relative. Most of the time these similar words with different meanings still belong to same semantic field, and once you learn them, they are very easy to remember. Words meaning houses of different size or parts of house are one example with examples like talu/talo, maja/maja and hoone/huone. Estonian word means bigger house than equivalent Finnish word (and huone means room). As could be seen on this test, recognizing the word opens you a correct semantic field "something connected to houses" and thus helps you to understand the whole sentence and the subject, what is talked about. Same with word magama/maata: literally in Finnish it means to lie down, but association to sleeping as with Estonian word is always there, because we normally lie down when we sleep. So, most false friends are not on the realm of homonymy but polysemy, having series of interconnected meanings that have a common root and have developed during time through metaphor and other processes of semantic change.
i rarely find language type of videos super interesting but this was a great video since it allowed me as the viewer to follow the conversation without subtitles to try and see how much I could personally understand as well. I guessed Kellari as my first guess as well which was very fun!