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As an Estonian speaker, I feel the exact same way about Finnish. I guess it's universal :)

exDM69 7y ago
No it isn't :) As a Finnish speaker with some exposure to Estonian language, I can understand written and spoken Estonian better than any other language I've had such little exposure to. I'm not very good in speaking Estonian and I can't write it at all.
- apecat 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, how did you go about picking up this fluency in Estonian? Are there any good sources of particularly easy Estonian to get started? I'm semi-interested. Granted, I'm also super lazy, but Finnish and Estonian should be close enough to just have some threshold to get over until it's pretty smooth, I guess? Fwiw, I'm native in Swedish, but I speak and write Finnish daily. To go on about my earlier comparison, I can really visit the site for a Danish or Norwegian Bokmål newspaper like Politiken ( https://politiken.dk https://politiken.dk ) or Verdens Gang ( https://www.vg.no/ https://www.vg.no/ ) and start reading with a feeling of just moderate confusion. Academic text would require some extra effort. The "voice in my head" or mode of reading doesn't really even change, because I've never attempted to communicate in either Danish or Norwegian per se. For Estonian Postimees (https://www.postimees.ee https://www.postimees.ee ) I'm stuck pretty much immediately. I can pick up words and some context, but that's it. At my first job, at an internal IT Service Desk for a certain Nordic energy company, I dealt with Norwegians and Danes. But it was a business context where everyone just seemed to agree to just make a polite effort at having a maybe slightly "clear in a Swedish way" common Scandinavians language, because switching to English would feel a little silly. I guess some of the older dudes working in the field somewhere in Norway might not have spoken English.
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    Even basic Estonian vocabulary is surprisingly different from Finnish. Educated guesses only help you so far due to a large number of false friends and false cognates (some of them rather amusing, eg. hallitus meaning "government" in Finnish and "mold" (as in fungus) in Estonian, or Estonian pulmad meaning "a wedding reception" but Finnish pulmat meaning "problems" or "troubles"!) Many words in standard Estonian do have true cognates in Finnish, but the Finnish counterparts have a slightly different or more specific meaning, or are nonstandard or colloquial. A typical example would be maja which in Estonian means "house" or "building" but in Finnish has the more specific meaning of "hut" or "cabin"—a dwelling more rudimentary and temporary in nature.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    I'm not sure about an answer to your question, but something to look out for are false friends. There are plenty of Finnish and Estonian words that sound the same or similar, but mean something different. Eg EE: ära surra (to die) - FI: surra (to mourn) EE: vaim (ghost) - FI: vaimo (wife) EE: kannatus (suffering) - FI: kannatus (support) EE: pulm (wedding) - FI: pulma (difficult problem?, puzzle)
  - exDM69 7y ago
    I'm not fluent at all. I had several long vacations there as a child, visit every now and then and have some exposure to news and culture. And I'm pretty good in getting a superficial understanding of a language, good enough to read or listen to news and understand the gist of it. I can handle several languages I have never formally studied.
    - apecat 7y ago
      Mm, I referred to 'fluency' as a sliding scale, which I think is a thing. But anyway, there we probably have it, your vacations as a child. No lifehacks can beat exposure to language at a young age, I guess. SAD. Waiting for the day when some drug can trick the brain into some semblance of a kid's language learning skills.

No it isn't :) As a Finnish speaker with some exposure to Estonian language, I can understand written and spoken Estonian better than any other language I've had such little exposure to. I'm not very good in speaking Estonian and I can't write it at all.

apecat 7y ago
Out of curiosity, how did you go about picking up this fluency in Estonian? Are there any good sources of particularly easy Estonian to get started? I'm semi-interested. Granted, I'm also super lazy, but Finnish and Estonian should be close enough to just have some threshold to get over until it's pretty smooth, I guess? Fwiw, I'm native in Swedish, but I speak and write Finnish daily. To go on about my earlier comparison, I can really visit the site for a Danish or Norwegian Bokmål newspaper like Politiken ( https://politiken.dk https://politiken.dk ) or Verdens Gang ( https://www.vg.no/ https://www.vg.no/ ) and start reading with a feeling of just moderate confusion. Academic text would require some extra effort. The "voice in my head" or mode of reading doesn't really even change, because I've never attempted to communicate in either Danish or Norwegian per se. For Estonian Postimees (https://www.postimees.ee https://www.postimees.ee ) I'm stuck pretty much immediately. I can pick up words and some context, but that's it. At my first job, at an internal IT Service Desk for a certain Nordic energy company, I dealt with Norwegians and Danes. But it was a business context where everyone just seemed to agree to just make a polite effort at having a maybe slightly "clear in a Swedish way" common Scandinavians language, because switching to English would feel a little silly. I guess some of the older dudes working in the field somewhere in Norway might not have spoken English.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  Even basic Estonian vocabulary is surprisingly different from Finnish. Educated guesses only help you so far due to a large number of false friends and false cognates (some of them rather amusing, eg. hallitus meaning "government" in Finnish and "mold" (as in fungus) in Estonian, or Estonian pulmad meaning "a wedding reception" but Finnish pulmat meaning "problems" or "troubles"!) Many words in standard Estonian do have true cognates in Finnish, but the Finnish counterparts have a slightly different or more specific meaning, or are nonstandard or colloquial. A typical example would be maja which in Estonian means "house" or "building" but in Finnish has the more specific meaning of "hut" or "cabin"—a dwelling more rudimentary and temporary in nature.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I'm not sure about an answer to your question, but something to look out for are false friends. There are plenty of Finnish and Estonian words that sound the same or similar, but mean something different. Eg EE: ära surra (to die) - FI: surra (to mourn) EE: vaim (ghost) - FI: vaimo (wife) EE: kannatus (suffering) - FI: kannatus (support) EE: pulm (wedding) - FI: pulma (difficult problem?, puzzle)
- exDM69 7y ago
  I'm not fluent at all. I had several long vacations there as a child, visit every now and then and have some exposure to news and culture. And I'm pretty good in getting a superficial understanding of a language, good enough to read or listen to news and understand the gist of it. I can handle several languages I have never formally studied.
  - apecat 7y ago
    Mm, I referred to 'fluency' as a sliding scale, which I think is a thing. But anyway, there we probably have it, your vacations as a child. No lifehacks can beat exposure to language at a young age, I guess. SAD. Waiting for the day when some drug can trick the brain into some semblance of a kid's language learning skills.