Can Finnish and Estonian speakers understand each other?

Comments · 1.8K

• EC

  @Ecolinguist · 3 years ago · pinned

  The episode 2 is finally out → <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRFhO84DFsY">https://youtu.be/FRFhO84DFsY</a> 🤓

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• SH

  @shimokitazawa1217 · 3 years ago

  The cadence of Finnish is really something. Love the way it sounds. Their poetry must be on another level.

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• KR

  @kristofersokk1580 · 3 years ago

  I&apos;m the Estonian speaker in this video. I really liked participating, it was fun.<br>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.<br>And äikesetorm is lightning storm not thunder storm, mürin is thunder, but because we never say thunder storm, I got them mixed up also. It seems trivial now later that äikene, another form of äike, and ukkonen are cognates.

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• BO

  @bobbytables464 · 3 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).

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• RE

  @realmahadeo · 3 years ago

  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

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• MO

  @mortenoconnell7977 · 3 years ago

  Finnish and Estonian: Visible understanding<br>Hungarian: I think I might sit this one out 😅

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• ID

  @Iddhi5 · 3 years ago

  I&apos;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.

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• DM

  @dmitriystoyanov933 · 3 years ago (edited)

  I&apos;m from Ukraine and i don&apos;t understand what guys said, but i want to say to estonian and finnish people - thank u for support!

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• J.

  @j.l.5867 · 3 years ago

  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&apos;s a guessing game that relies on hearing some keywords that the languages share.

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• PU

  @punkodie · 3 years ago (edited)

  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.<br>It is nice to see that Finns and Estonians still share mutual intelligibility to some extent :)

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• TH

  @thegnwigeberht1066 · 3 years ago

  It&apos;s great to see Finnish and Estonian being so close as to <i>almost</i> mean the same exact things, but being <i>just</i> 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&apos;s talking about. They&apos;re clearly communicating on a level of basic understanding, but the finer details get lost and cause some pretty funny misunderstandings.

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• BO

  @bobbytables464 · 3 years ago

  Äike and ukkonen are almost cognate. The root words are &quot;äi&quot; and &quot;ukko&quot;, both meaning &quot;old man&quot; (Finnish still has the word &quot;äijä&quot; that also means &quot;old man&quot;). The old Finnic god of thunder was shared by Finns and Estonians and his name was various forms of &quot;old man&quot;. Ukko, Äijä or Äijö in Finnish and Uku in Estonian (and clearly he was also called some form of &quot;äi&quot;).<br><br>So in both languages, the word for thunder is the name of the thunder god (meaning old man) plus a diminutive suffix (äi-ke, ukko-nen).

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