Can Finnish and Estonian speakers understand each other?

Imagine an Estonian and a Finn trapped in a sauna. Would they be able to communicate to find a way out? 🤭

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. 🤓

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.

🤗 Big thanks to 🇪🇪 Kristofer and 🇫🇮 Antti for participating in the video.

🏋️‍♀️ Support my Work:
My name is Norbert Wierzbicki and I am the creator of @Ecolinguist channel. You can support my work by volunteering to participate in the future videos or donating to the project.

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🤗 Big hug for everyone reading my video descriptions! You rock! 🤓💪🏻

#learnestonian #learnfinnish #languagechallenge #languages

[kristofersokk]

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 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.

[mortenoconnell]

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

[bobbytables]

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).

[shimokitazawa]

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

[j.l.]

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.

[realmahadeo]

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

[Iddhi]

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.

[punkodie]

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 :)

[kristofevarsson]

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.

[bobbytables]

Äike and ukkonen are almost cognate. The root words are "äi" and "ukko", both meaning "old man" (Finnish still has the word "äijä" 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, Äijä or Äijö in Finnish and Uku in Estonian (and clearly he was also called some form of "äi").

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).

[KristjanBeilmann]

Both languages are beautiful. In this video, the Finnish speaker put much more effort into clear articulation.

[Ounouh]

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.

[joeljezequel]

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).

[mousetung]

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.

[niemandkeiner]

Two of the most beautiful languages in the world.

[RobinPM]

that Estonian dude is mumbling, Finnish dude speaks clearly

[juuliawarrior]

I’m 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!

[dddenes]

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!

[krpp]

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.

[ronshlomi]

This is great! I love that you are starting to feature more non-Indo-European languages on the channel.