Finnish and Estonian Language｜How similar and different? 

I see, that's nice to know! Thanks for the info :)

Interesting. Older Swedes in Scania told me a similar thing about why they understand Danish better than other Swedes- broadcast TV they could watch back in the day.

@burteriksson "Maamme" and "Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm" are both based on a Swedish language song. At one point in time (and at the same time), the Swedish song was equipped with both Estonian lyrics and Finnish lyrics. That happened when independence was still 50 years away. In both countries, the songs went on to become popular patriotic songs, of course in the respective languages. Both Finns or Estonian saw the song in their language as their own, which of course it was. Now, when both countries declared independence from Russia (which again happened at the same time), both countries decided to use the song in their language as the anthem for the newly independent state. Estonia even passed a law in 1920. However, Finland has never passed a law on the anthem to this day, and "Maamme" is still a sort of unofficial anthem, based solely on convention.

@burteriksson " Estonia took them same national anthem as Finland (1917) and they gained independece from USSR in 1991. " I see that you have created an alternative history for yourself where you completely ignore both Estonia's independence prior to the Soviet occupation, and also the real creation of the Estonian anthem "Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm", which by the way happened at the same time with the Finnish language anthem "Maamme" (that is, in the 19th century).

@burteriksson "We can still see that admiration in using the same national hymn as Finland" More glimpses of your alternative and distorted history (likely tied to your personal delusions of grandeur). The fact is that it's just a *coincidence* that Finland and Estonia are using the same melody for their anthem. The Finnish language anthem "Maamme" and Estonian "Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm" are both based on a Swedish language song that was written for a student fraternity. However, it turned out a nice song and so at one point in time (and simultaneously), the Swedish song was equipped with both Estonian lyrics and Finnish lyrics. That happened when independence was still 50 years away. In both countries, the songs went on to become popular patriotic songs, of course in the respective languages. Both Finns and Estonians saw the song in their language as their own, which of course it was. Now, when both countries declared independence from Russia (which again happened at the same time), both countries decided (independently of each other) to use the popular patriotic song in their language as the anthem for the newly independent state. Estonia even passed a law in 1920. However, Finland has never passed a law on the anthem to this day, and "Maamme" is still a sort of unofficial anthem, based solely on convention. The supposed sign of "admiration" that you argued is unfortunately just fiction, your fantasy.

Thank you for watching, and so nice to hear that! Your comment made my day!

Finnish people don't like to admit the connection and prefer to pretend Estonian is a Slavic dialect... Sadly as both are wonderful languages.

@@Jaiven What? I've never heard of anyone say anything like that.

@@Jaiven Hell no!!! that's lie simple as that!

@@Jaiven It is true that many Finns don't want to admit that the Finnic people came to Finland from Estonia bringing along the language. Also, they shy away from the fact that Old Estonian separated from Proto-Finnic before any of the Finnish dialects, that is when Finnics in Finland still spoke Proto-Finnic.

It depends, Meänkieli is considered as a language too, sometimes as a dialect though

@@leopartanen9431 yeah. As a Finn listened once Meänkieli speech. Could understand everything. Sounded Lappish dialect of Finnish. Offcourse it is officially own language because of Swedish politics..

​@@kallekonttinen1738 I'm from Ylitornio. Meänkieli is basically identical to Finnish Tornedalian dialects. The only difference is that Meänkieli/Swedish Tornedalian dialects have more Swedish loanwords and large numbers (over 1000) are said in Swedish

I',m quite sure they meant closest majority languages

Thanks! Happy to hear that!

I agree, much easier to read than hear Estonian :)

Maybe it's a bit like Swedish and Danish then.

Kiitti, hyvä tietää!:)

"we Finnic people should stick together" > That's very true 😀

@@DAIKIFinlandLife estonian sounds like drunk finnish, not the other way around

Thank you for watching!

A Bit

@burteriksson Yes! cognates are a tricky thing, lexicon is better it allows you wrapping the meaning within the context o a culture much better. I think in the case of hallitus the Romans handled both meanings vapor exhalation and the different environment were you could encounter vapor, as in humid closed bathhouses or a cavern: in both cases you can associate vapor with certain smell, hence halitosis meaning bad breath. In Spanish we use the word "aliento" which clearly comes from halitus in Latin, and means breath, hence halitosis means "the illness of the breath". Regarding halb and halpa they certainly are cognates and belong to the same lexicon with some common usage, like cheapness being considered bad or quite good.

@burteriksson Ontological dualism, of course, lexicon is just a code that wraps the semantics, the signaling of the "real" thing.

Well, actually, I checked the Estonian dictionary of etymology, and it seems to come from the word "hall", meaning the golor grey, which is either of Finno-Ugric origin or possibly a Baltic loanword. This makes a lot of sense, because the word "hallitus" would roughly mean a grey substance, signified by the "us"-ending, and this would be in line with other words in Estonian formed in a similar way, such as the word for dirt - "mustus" where "must" means black, so "must"+"us" - a black substance; or the word "rohelus" meaning greenery, where "roheline" + "us" means a green substance. Also, it seems pretty logical that people in the past would have seen a light grey coating on food and said that "oh, it's that *grey substance* again" :D . I as a native Estonian speaker also feel like this would be the most likely explanation.

Thank you for watching! That's actually a good point! I will keep it in mind next time.

FIN:"Lumisella maanpinnalla oli paljon verta" = EST: "Lumisel maapinnal oli palju verd." (ENG:"There was lots of blood on the snowy ground")

FIN:"Mies ja nainen uivat saarelle ja tekivät tulen kuivuakseen." EST: "Mees ja naine ujusid saarele ja tegid tule kuivatamiseks." (ENG: "The man and the woman swam to the island and made a fire to dry off"). BTW, "kuivattamiseksi" in Finnish actually does make sense, altho I'm not sure if anyone would say it that way.

Opps it's Aitäh! haha

@Uncle James Oletko varmaa? :)

In Estonia koi are that flying bug what ruin you shirt

@@matskustikee It's the same in Finnish, it's their caterpillars who eat the clothes. 😁 But "koi" also means "dawn" in Finnish ("koit" in Estonian). 🇪🇪 Apparently "koi" is also old word for "east", but the meaning is now obsolete. 🤷‍♀️

@leopartanen9431 "Koi" is in the modern Finnish word "koillinen", with the same meaning: the direction from where the sun rises.

haha yeah, there seems to be many similar cases like this :)

And "south" is "etelä" in Finnish whereas "southwest" is "edel" in Estonian.

Thank you for watching! Glad to know you like it :)

That's interesting to hear :)

@burteriksson Yeas, I think people that got to handle the other language for precarious reasons are much more able to catch meaning better than someone that just flip out at the very first interaction... that also happens between Spanish, Portuguese, Catalonian, Occitan and Italian speakers, given the time you catch on the language quite well without much understanding why. It also happens between Spanish speakers and French speakers but generally you can understand better written French than spoken as Spanish speaker given that spoken French has more of an stronger Gallic-Germanic prosody. Up to 100 to 200 years ago Spanish also had a more Gallic-Germanic prosody but after the Napoleonic wars Spanish went for an exaggeration of features more commonly described as exaggeration, specially in Spain more than in America.

Ruum actualy had many different meaning and alltogheter they are like space something

Thanks for watching and also your comment! :)

That's interesting...

Yes, piimä and piim are another interesting example :)

LOL

@burteriksson Then again, I always chuckle when I hear "vatsa" said in the "Syke" series, I imagine an obese old man patting proudly his stomach and saying "Katsu mu vatsa!" In Estonian you would normally use "kõht" to refer to one's belly (a word that is related to the Finnish word for uterus).

Sour milk in Estonian is 'hapupiim'. It would be so much easier to navigate between Finnish and Estonian if Finns used 'hapan piimä' instead of just 'piimä'!

@burteriksson 'Piim'/'piimä' is a Baltic loan. In the Baltic languages it indeed means milk (Latvian 'pienu', Lithuanian 'pieno'). So it is exactly the other way around, Estonian 'piim' is fresh and close to the source word, whereas Finnish 'piimä' has gone sour and the meaning has shifted.

hahaha kiitos!

Me being Finnish, Estonian feels like having a very different rhythm (no limit gemination which Finnish has) and different "color" too (no vowel harmony which Finnish has). The latter aspect probably makes Estonian pronunciation on average harder for a Finnish person to learn than the other way about.

@@kyyyni for me Finnish pronunciation seems easier, because you have the only accent on the 1st vowel, meanwhile Russian has dynamic accent and Estonian has double accent. Moreover, regarding grammar and vocabulary Estonian and Finnish seem more similar to each other than to Russian, Swedish etc.