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I've heard people joke that if a Finnish person just spends enough time in Estonia they start to understand it :)

euroderf 3y ago
Finns will say that Estonian sounds like some kind of really odd super-rural accent. Estonians will say they wonder why the heck it takes a Finn twice as long as an Estonian to say the same thing.
- anttiharju 3y ago
  Haha yeah definitely! I was watching the news where Estonian people were interviewed. While there were Finnish subtitles I could understand maybe half of the sentences without them, but the words would be "really odd super-rural", which I found funny. Also, I'm not sure if it's a thing in Estonian, but I've heard in Lithuania or Latvian there's no distinction between spoken and written language. Example from Finnish: * Minä means I/me in written Finnish * Mä/Mää/Mie/... is what people typically use in spoken language Which is what some of my international friends have been complaining about the Finnish courses at my university -- that they learn the written Finnish from their 101 books, but it's not so useful since in daily interactions people just use spoken Finnish. And well maybe the minä -> mä you can see the length difference. Maybe Estonian is just more advanced in the "spoken-ness", if you will, of the language. Here you can see the different "minä"s by region in Finland: https://yle.fi/a/74-20010020 https://yle.fi/a/74-20010020. The article's in Finnish, but just scroll down and you can still very much understand the map. Here's the article Google-translated to English, but I'm not sure if it would also translate the "minä"s: https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20010020?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20010020?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x...
  - askonomm 3y ago
    Same in Estonian. Minä -> mä is Mina -> Ma (meaning "me") Meie -> Me (meaning "us") Tema -> ta (meaning "him/her") I once did a duolingo course on Finnish and was surprised to find how much of it is almost literally the same, both in having almost the same amount of cases (we have 14, Finnish has 15), and that the overall structure is the same, meaning the biggest hurdle for me to learn Finnish is not so much the langauge, but the vocabulary. While a lot of Finnish words are almost identical in Estonian, there's also quite a few that actually mean things in Estonian, but totally different things than in Finnish. A funny (or not funny?) example is "Raiska pappi", which in Estonian means "Spend/waste money", but in Finnish means "raping priest" or something like that.
resolutebat 3y ago
Finna can kinda-sorta understand a lot of written Estonian with no training, because there's so much overlap in vocabulary. Spoken Estonian is basically incomprehensible though.
askonomm 3y ago
From my own experience as an Estonian, if we both get together in a pub and get drunk, even if neither of us speak each others languages, we'll have no problem communicating. Drunk spoken Estonian and Finnish sort of blend together and the use of vocabulary gets limited to the more common words.

Finns will say that Estonian sounds like some kind of really odd super-rural accent. Estonians will say they wonder why the heck it takes a Finn twice as long as an Estonian to say the same thing.

anttiharju 3y ago
Haha yeah definitely! I was watching the news where Estonian people were interviewed. While there were Finnish subtitles I could understand maybe half of the sentences without them, but the words would be "really odd super-rural", which I found funny. Also, I'm not sure if it's a thing in Estonian, but I've heard in Lithuania or Latvian there's no distinction between spoken and written language. Example from Finnish: * Minä means I/me in written Finnish * Mä/Mää/Mie/... is what people typically use in spoken language Which is what some of my international friends have been complaining about the Finnish courses at my university -- that they learn the written Finnish from their 101 books, but it's not so useful since in daily interactions people just use spoken Finnish. And well maybe the minä -> mä you can see the length difference. Maybe Estonian is just more advanced in the "spoken-ness", if you will, of the language. Here you can see the different "minä"s by region in Finland: https://yle.fi/a/74-20010020 https://yle.fi/a/74-20010020. The article's in Finnish, but just scroll down and you can still very much understand the map. Here's the article Google-translated to English, but I'm not sure if it would also translate the "minä"s: https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20010020?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20010020?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x...
- askonomm 3y ago
  Same in Estonian. Minä -> mä is Mina -> Ma (meaning "me") Meie -> Me (meaning "us") Tema -> ta (meaning "him/her") I once did a duolingo course on Finnish and was surprised to find how much of it is almost literally the same, both in having almost the same amount of cases (we have 14, Finnish has 15), and that the overall structure is the same, meaning the biggest hurdle for me to learn Finnish is not so much the langauge, but the vocabulary. While a lot of Finnish words are almost identical in Estonian, there's also quite a few that actually mean things in Estonian, but totally different things than in Finnish. A funny (or not funny?) example is "Raiska pappi", which in Estonian means "Spend/waste money", but in Finnish means "raping priest" or something like that.

resolutebat 3y ago

Finna can kinda-sorta understand a lot of written Estonian with no training, because there's so much overlap in vocabulary. Spoken Estonian is basically incomprehensible though.

askonomm 3y ago

From my own experience as an Estonian, if we both get together in a pub and get drunk, even if neither of us speak each others languages, we'll have no problem communicating. Drunk spoken Estonian and Finnish sort of blend together and the use of vocabulary gets limited to the more common words.