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 co

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.