Finnish Language l Can Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Speakers Understand it? (Nordic Language)

[@norbertlepsik]

I'd love to see one World Friends episode, where Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian are put together as part of the Uralic language group

[@Caldera01]

There are couple of videos on Finnish - Estonian interintelligibility on adifferent channel.

[@anttirytkonen11]

Sorry, I wouldn't. 🙃I'd rather see 🇫🇮 Finnish in videos with our fellow Nordics 🇸🇪🇳🇴🇩🇰🇮🇸🇪🇪 (see the article "Nordic identity in Estonia"). And Finnish and Estonian videos in the style of Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese ones as well. 🤔 🇭🇺 Orbán.👎🏻

[@AK--]

@@anttirytkonen11 What does orban have to do with anything you're saying lmao

[@rivality100]

A Finn and an Estonian can understand some words and sentences, but Hungarian is such a language that a Finn at least doesn't understand anything about it. It would be nicer to get someone from Karelia with Finnish and Estonian, or someone from Sweden who speaks the meän language

[@ctiradperunovic]

Although Finns and Estonians are related to Hungarians, the differences are already so big that they basically aren't able to understand each other, barely a few roots of some words.

[@SzedresEperke]

It would be so cool to do the same with Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian - the Finno-Ugric languages.

[@cocobunitacobuni8738]

it would make more sense anyway

[@EpicHashTime]

Finns and Estonians can understand each other quite well but Hungarian is completely different,

[@camfg8908]

Finnish and Estonian people can sometimes understand each other, but not always. Hungarian is definitely a no no, can't understand anything

[@jarskil8862]

Hungarian barely has anything to do with its linguistic roots Hungary was in active language and culture exhange for millenia while other Finno-Ugrics were chilling together in forest. Invidual words are still same. If not mistaken Veri/ver for example means blood in all Finno-ugrics. But Estonians and Finns can understand each other very clearly in many cases. For Finns understanding Estonian is easier than vise versa.

[@railasvuo]

​@@EpicHashTimeI'm Finnish and I really don't know or understand any Estonian

[@thecat5819]

Danish Swedish and Norwegian are all within the Germanic language family, specifically Northern Germanic and Scandinavian subcategories, so they are closely related, while Finnish is within the Uralic language family, which is why it is so different, though there are loan words and overlappings.

[@mykhailouvarov4405]

Germanic is not a family itself but a group inside the Indo-European family. While Finnish is of Balto-Finnic group inside the Finno-Ugric branch inside the Uralic family. It's like comparing Germanic and Korean for example. Finnish grammar paradigm is closer to Korean, Japanese or the turkic languages rather than to IE. However it got a lot of influence like tending to synthetic constructions and of course thousands years of contacts with shares and loans.

[@andreitopala8502]

Yes, it’s like putting a Spanish, Portuguese and French speaker to understand Basque

[@ripulitykki]

mitä sä tuut tänne pätee vittu

[@butterflies655]

​@@mykhailouvarov4405Do you know that Finnish grammar is completely different from japanese. Also Korean. Finnish language and Turkish languages are not related either. That theory has been debunked for a long time ago.

[@awellculturedmanofanime1246]

​@@mykhailouvarov4405 yea germanic is a branch of indo european and finno ugric is a branch of Uralic

[@TissueCat]

Ironically, the vast majority of European languages, and even a number of Asian ones such as Farsi, Hindi, and Bengali, are technically more closely related to the Scandinavian languages than Finnish is.

[@SebHaarfagre]

I wonder what Iranian is most closely related to of Ugric or Scandinavian; they've had sparse encounters and influence of/to both. Or Tatar and either, or Bulgarian and either, or Romanian and either. I suppose Bulgarian would be closer to Scandinavian since they and the Norse had similar influences in the East (Mostly Pechenegs, Sarmatians etc.). But then again, Uralic peoples did live "next door" to Volga Bulgarians and Magyars too.

[@tersbersirs]

because they all belong to Indo-European family, the rest are not. It is simple

[@limonadiautomaattimekaanikko]

@@SebHaarfagre What are you saying? Magyars are Uralic and Tatars and Turkics are not. Iranians, except maybe Scythians and Burtases have had like no contact historically with Uralics.

[@Killerdp234]

@lanne9938pronunciation is different

[@Killerdp234]

@@SebHaarfagreScandinavian languages definitely. Iranian is indo-european and so are the scandinavian languages but finnish/ugric languages are Uralic which is separate to indo-european

[@Lotta.s]

I wanna see Finnish and Estonian to have this type of conversation !

[@pogsauce9253]

and hungarian too would be intersting

[@froginthebag]

finnish + estonian is easy. hungarian? oh god. oh god no.

[@Oliverii]

Hungary looks like keyboard smash to estonians and finns. nowdays nothing in common expect the finnougric start@@pogsauce9253

[@JarppaGuru]

they are more close together than UK CAT and US CÄT lol or not Kas teil on homseks kaheinimese tuba? Päivää! - Onko teillä huomisesta huonetta kahdelle? On küll. Mitmeks ööks? - On. Moneksiko yöksi? i hope these worse case scenario. i would not actually understand but then when i know it is funny how similar homeseks could be homosexsual xD

[@ruojautuma1]

While Finns and Estonian can kinda understand a word here and there of each others languages, it's not enough to have fluent discussion. I'm native Finnish speaking and when I go to Estonia, I strictly stick to English.

[@dmytrodanilov9334]

Finnish is so beautiful language! I cannot understand almost anything but I love to hear it!

[@bakeraus]

It's beautiful spoken by Julia, it's soft and flowing but once you hear it through others it's sharp and blunt. They have some really nice words.

[@domdole]

Perkele

[@MrBanaanipommi]

suomi finland PERKELE"!!! :DSdDD

[@suomiprkl]

prkl!!

[@dmytrodanilov9334]

I hope, you, guys, use joyful "perkele" because I a little bit confused. If no tell me what does it mean ☺️

[@eggytoasty_]

As someone living in Finland (I'm Vietnamese) i can tell that Nordic languages like Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are more close to each other in the language group vs Finnish (language) belongs to Uralic alongside Estonian and Hungarian, etc. Thank you for making awesome video and make recognition for Finland in general

[@ame7165]

the more I hear Finnish, the more I love how it sounds. I love the intonation. it just sounds so cool

[@tonikaihola5408]

“Boxing” in Finnish is “nyrkkeily” coming from “nyrkki” (fist). Directly translated it would be “fisting” which does not go over very well 😅

[@lisaanimi]

But boxer can be translated to "boksari" Althought to be fair in the modern day the word is not used almost at all

[@nlitement]

@@lisaanimi The only example I can think of where it's used is "boksarikapina" in reference to the Boxer Rebellion in late Qing China.

[@Mursunpoimija]

In finnish fisting would be closer to nyrkkiä or nyrkyttää or something like that (there really isn't a word for that in finnish). Directly translated nyrkkeily would actually be something like fistibition (like exhibition with fists) and not fisting.

[@kaisaantila1923]

Leipoo turpaan so baking was kinda close.... xD

[@patrickuotinen]

@@lisaanimi boxer shorts are "bokserit" in Finnish, though.

[@rickliang2709]

This episode is interesting. Having seen how other Nordics have felt about the language, which is totally different from their native languages, I think the most difficult part for learning Finnish is the vocabulary, most of which cannot be associated with English, plus, some words look really similar but mean totally different things. Julia speaks at a really moderate speed. That's much more pleasant and easy to understand. Would love to see another episode with Finnish+Hungarian+Estonian native speakers.

[@Divig]

The grammar would be the hardest. Finnish grammar is so weird!

[@rickliang2709]

@@Divig It's quite frustrating in the very beginning to memorize words and ''ALL'' the grammatical rules. I mean there are not merely a few rules but ''a lot of'' rules to be followed. I'd say that the language is systematic, just like mathematics. But frankly, speaking a Finnish sentence without grammatical mistakes is a huge challenge!

[@justaname1837]

​@@Divig, yes, the grammar is different, but the lack of cognates/similar words is the hardest part in my opinion.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

@@justaname1837 As a Finn, I would argue that the hardest part will be the grammar. Learning the words shouldn't be a harder task than that it's for a Finn to learn English. However, the grammar of Finnish is insanely hard and especially the compound words are really really hard - even native speakers make a lot of mistakes with those. That said, some say that Finnish is actually pretty easy language because most 3-5 year old children in Finland can speak Finnish and they typically learn to write it around 7 years old.

[@justaname1837]

@@MikkoRantalainen , it probably depends on what your native language is. For an English speaker the different and more complex grammar is of course difficult to understand. But the written and spoken language are fortunately not the same.

[@julian.kollataj]

Interesting the NSD languages closeness for fox - “rev”/“räv”/“ræv” - while actually, the archaic/poetic Finnish word for fox is “repo”/“repolainen”. Also just found that “reynard” is an old English word for fox, but “(le) renard” is modern French for fox, of course. Nice to see how there is a closeness in the words despite the distance :)

[@smaulee]

Thats where our word for "northern lights (aurora borealis)" comes from, which is "Revontulet" (fires of fox). Back in the day some folks used to believe northern lights are caused by a tail of a firefox.

[@Valo666]

Another interesting thing about word rev/räv is that it is loanword from finnish.

[@Seastar14TheWitch]

@@smaulee The Tulikettu :D

[@tobyforrester]

Also they were'nt far of guessing "kettu" means a cat, since the Finnish loan from cat is "katti", a common colloquial word for cat. Similar word to "kettu".

[@andrilillemets7305]

in estonian Rebane

[@-HRH]

Dammit this was SO interesting! I loved it. Nice to see neighbours getting along and learning from each other.

[@66hss]

We really love our nordic neighbors!

[@joan98610]

Finnish is not an Indo-European language (most languages in Europe and many in Asia belong to this family) so it’s pretty obvious that they wouldn’t understand much.

[@matteikamp7474]

That was exactly my thought as well. It's not even remotely related. Whoever came up with this video needs to study some linguistics.

[@PerfectBrEAThER]

@@matteikamp7474 Finnish terms borrowed from Swedish is +1000, more than, for example, the vocabulary returned to Proto-Sami, Proto-Finnish or Proto-Samoyed (each of them less than 1000).

[@Sc0pee]

@@matteikamp7474We do have a lot of words that are loaned from Swedish, though. Especially in "Stadin slangi" which means "Helsinki slang". Stadi = Stad in Swedish = City in English.

[@lisaanimi]

Finnish - Swedish is perhaps prime example of a "One-way telephone" When Finn hears swedish like "skola" It immedially reminds of koulu but other way perhaps not as much. Similiar words like källare and kellari Finn can spot immedially but swede perhaps not. The accent makes a difference Whenever a Finn hears words like Hamn (Hamina) Bulle (pulla) Treffa (Treffi) Stad (Stadi) Fundera (Funtsia) Läkare (Lääkäri) they immedially are on the same track but swedes are thinking wrong things

[@hattarapilvi]

​@@matteikamp7474whoever made the video already knows theyre different, thats the whole point of the video lmao

[@stephenrowell9373]

I really like the Finnish lady Julia , she has such a good fun attitude , and does not seem to get annoyed when people cannot understand her language .

[@mapppkyc6698]

In Finland we're all painfully aware that our language is alien to everyone else, even to our neighbors. A stereotypical German tourist would speak German to locals in Egypt or whatever country he's in and be surprised if they didn't understand German. I could never imagine a Finnish adult being like that. Like she says near the end of the video, she wasn't expecting the others to do better than they did.

[@stephenrowell9373]

Thank you for this reply.@@mapppkyc6698

[@corinna007]

I've been learning Finnish for eight years now and it has brought so much into my life. It's still tricky for me to understand the spoken language sometimes since I don't live in Finland, but I love the language and the people. Paljon rakkautta Kanadasta, Suomi! 🇫🇮💙🤍

[@InkyXO]

kiitoksia

[@hattarapilvi]

it always warms my heart to see people in other countries wanting to learn our little language 💙 kiitos!

[@anski00]

very sweet! my great-great uncle moved from Finland to Canada 100 years ago, we connected with the relatives there in the 80s and have been touch ever since. they don’t speak much finnish but we always felt a strong connection ❤🤍💙

[@ro356f]

noniin heippa pikku poika

[@Larainstraykidshotmegaverse]

Kiitos!

[@omi4470]

The reason why we as Scandinavians are unable to understand Finnish is because Finnish is a Uralic language, while the rest of us belong to the Germanic language group!! But as a Swede myself I really think Finnish is a beautiful language❤

[@anttisaarilampi]

Tack så mycket ❤

[@lisaanimi]

Treffataan pojat muurilla

[@Asa...S]

I'm Swedish and I could guess that she said "cat" when she said "kissa", because it sound like "kisse" with is like a pet name for cat in Swedish, like calling a cat "kitty cat". The word "kissa" though, means "to pee" in Swedish, and "kiss" is pee".

[@pippastin]

And in Finnish 'pee' is 'pissa'. Kind of similar 😂

[@Wanderer_in_the_Desert_Winds]

Julia is awesome. So fun and great energy and I just laugh at how much none of the others can understand much of any Finnish depsite both Norway and Sweden bordering Finland (though granted not a very populate area that far North where they border). And yes we know it's because Finnish is from a different family, but it's still very amusing and Julia just has so much fun with it...

[@hellmalm]

Really shows the difference between Scandinavian languages and the Nordic. Like to see one with Finland, Estonia and Hungry. Do they understand each other as well as we do with in Scandinavia? Great video really like this!

[@HertWasHere]

Finns and Estonians can understand each other but not Hungarians. That language is completely different. Idk how it is even in the same language group. Source: I’m Estonian living in Finland and been to Hungary and listened them speak.

[@GaborSzabo747]

@@HertWasHere Hungarian belongs to the Ugric languages within the Finno-Ugric branch. Our closest language "relatives" are the Mansi and Khanty people (minorities in Russia). Finnish and Estonian languages are more like "cousins". Some Hungarian linguists even say that Finno-Ugric branch should be separated into distinct Finnic and Ugric branches, because the similarities are not that considerable. Our grammar is very similar tho'. And there are a few similar words from ancient times: - hal (fish) - kéz (hand) - vér (blood) - víz (water). Hungarian is also affected by Slavic and German languages. So I can safely say, Hungarians would not understand anything from a Finnish and Estonian speaker.

[@jaakkomantyjarvi7515]

@@HertWasHere More accurately, to a Finnish or Estonian speaker the other language is not really intelligible without study. It is possible to make sentences in one that are perfectly understandable in the other, but also sentences that are completely alien in the other. It is a strange linguistic asymmetry that it is easier for Estonians to understand Finnish than vice versa. Hungarian, on the other hand, is about as distant from Finnish and Estonian as Russian is from English -- you can find about half a dozen words in common, and the grammar is very similar, but that's about it.

[@iliasrbn8930]

scandinavian languages are all nordic. you probably meant scandinavian languages and finno-ugric

[@hellmalm]

@@iliasrbn8930 I’m sorry? I meant exactly what I wrote, because the Finish language is a Nordic language just as Greenlandic. Or are you claiming they are not Nordic countries with Nordic languages?

[@Cronin_]

The Finnish word "koulu" is actually a loanword from Swedish. It comes from "skola"😁

[@GOAT-rl2uq]

Yeah it's funny how Finnish doesn't seem to like that "sk" combination so we just drop the S. Same with the proto-germanic Skauniz which turned into Kaunis (beautiful).

[@Antti-ox1ho]

And the Estonian word "kool" is surely a loan word from the Swedish language as well. It's also "school" in Estonian. Greetings from a Finn who has learned Estonian also!😊

[@pedroooo2284]

Português is Escola hehe Skola pronunci

[@Qvadratus.]

@@Antti-ox1ho in all European languages school sounds similar. probably comes from Latin or Greek.

[@Qvadratus.]

@@pedroooo2284 in Russian it is Shkola

[@lennartdahlback]

Finnish is such a beautiful language. Living in a swedish county bordering to Finland, I could understand some of what she said. If there had been Finnish subtitles it would be a little easier. Like in most languages it's sometimes hard to hear where one word ends and the next word begins.

[@Arcticstranger1971]

Yes!It is rather beautiful northern language!But ancient South Siberian last (when Turks and Finns were the same peoples) still seen in this language!For example Finland sounds as "Suomi" in finish and translated as "Swamp(moisture's) Land!And "Su" means Water(moisture) in modern Turkish!:))

[@mapppkyc6698]

4. Introduce yourself "Moi kaikki, mun nimi on Julia ja mä oon Suomesta. Mun lempieläin on kissa. Hauska tutustua!" 5. Hobby "Mun harrastuksiin kuuluu matkustaminen, nyrkkeily ja kuvien ottaminen." 6. Animal "Tää eläin on ihmisen paras ystävä. Tosi söpöjä. Niiden kanssa pitää viettää paljon aikaa. Mä luulen et suurin osa ihmisistä tykkää niistä. Ei oo kissa!"

[@markusmakela9380]

Word for Swamp was NEVA in ancient times. Zémé ( pronounce shome) could be related. Baltic influence. Suomenwesi old name, su not water in Uralic.

[@danielaherjanto7533]

Hello from Finland ! This is so funny . Thank You ! Hope you do more .

[@AnneliLMendozaArt]

Finnish is such an underrated language. 💙

[@chanchaniceman]

Can we have a video with Finnish and Hungarian or videos involving people from the Baltic region like Latvia,Lithuania and Estonia. Love seeing what similarities and differences are there

[@Asa...S]

If you know some people from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia or Hungary living in South Korea, where they make these videos, who would be interested to do such a video, you could ask them to contact the channel.

[@zami8827]

Well Finnish and Hungarian are maybe in same language tree but otherwise completely different, so no i dont think they can understand each other at all.

[@ralepej]

@@Asa...S putting Hungarian and Finnish to same video is about same as Latvian and English speakers. Latvian is also Indo-European language.

[@butterflies655]

Finland is a Nordic country and similar to them. Finland 🇫🇮 is a Nordic country with Sweden 🇸🇪 Norway 🇸🇯 Denmark 🇩🇰 and Iceland 🇮🇸 politically, economically culturally, religiously and geographically.

[@leontnf6144]

Finnish is a beautiful language no doubt, but it has zero connection with the scandinavian languages except for some loanwords from Swedish. Asking the scandinavians to understand or guess it is just like asking a random Englishman on the street to decipher Cantonese, Thai or Mongolian sentences. 😂

[@tanja3921]

A fun fact, car in Swedish is bil, car in Finnish is auto.. just as in the German language.

[@limonadiautomaattimekaanikko]

@@tanja3921 Both come from automobil, they just use different parts of that long word: (auto)mo(bil)

[@hrotha]

@@limonadiautomaattimekaanikko And then there's also biili

[@jokkehasa5298]

"Being social" would be considered an extreme sport in Finland 😂

[@ralepej]

For "kettu" we have also older word in use "repo". And yes "koulu" is loan word from Swedish word "skola". Also we have word "pappa" which means most often "grandfather" but I think someones use it also on meaning "dad" even outside of Swedish Finns. Names for week days are all from germanic words Maanantai = Mondag (Monday) Tiistai = Tisdag (Thuesday) Keskiviikko is translate from ancient Swedish word which is unknown, but is comparable for Old Norse "miðvikudagr" (mekedag ond nowadays Norwegian) (Wednesday) Torstai=Torsdag (Thursday) Perjantai is intersting, its variant from "freidag" (Friday) Lauantai= laugardagr (from Old Norse) (Saturday) Sunnuntai=Sondag *Also maanantai, tiistai,torstai and sunnuntai comes from Old Swedish or Old Norse, thought "sunnuntai" can come straight from the Low German "sunnundag".

[@MrGunnar69]

The Scandinavian word for fox is believed to come from the Sami languages.

[@eerohorila1109]

Juhuu! You have stated the obvious. We have words from other languages. Btw where do you think the words like porukka or sapuska come from? Look at your family and there is only two words that are similar to any anglo germanic language. Isä, äiti, veli, sisko(similar), tytär, poika(similar). Sisko=syster, sister. Poika=pojke, boy.

[@eerohorila1109]

Juhuu! You have stated the obvious. We have words from other languages. Btw where do you think the words like porukka or sapuska come from? Look at your family and there is only two words that are similar to any anglo germanic language. Isä, äiti, veli, sisko(similar), tytär, poika(similar). Sisko=syster, sister. Poika=pojke, boy.

[@ralepej]

@@eerohorila1109 wtf. Did I say that all the words are similar to germanics words or what is point of your mocking?

[@eerohorila1109]

@@ralepej Not mocking. Just stating we have loan words. We are in a different language group. The joke is why post these videos comparing anglo germanic with finno ugral? Oh, porukka and sapuska is from russia.

[@danbaltic9678]

Quite some words pretty similar to ours. This shows distant connection between Lithuanian and Finns. Balts and Finns used to be neighbours for thousands of years. Most likely before taking Indo-European language we spoke Uralic language more related to Finnish.

[@jaakkomantyjarvi7515]

There are very old loan words from the Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian) in Finnish, dating back to the earliest trade routes along the Baltic Sea. For instance, one of the most common swear words in Finnish was originally an ancient Lithuanian thunder god. :-)

[@danbaltic9678]

@@jaakkomantyjarvi7515 that swear word is Perkele or Perkūnas:) also, from this video, we also sometimes call cats with kisa/kica. I also like that both cultures call each other in their native names, Suomija for Finland in Lithuania and Liettua for Lietuva in Finnish.

[@VenusEvan_1885]

Understandably English, German and Dutch are similar all west Germanic, but in my opinion among the north Germanic languages , swedish is the closest to German, I often visit Sweden especially Skåne county and I can quite well understand written swedish on the Streets,walls, menu etc...

[@SadMatte]

Yeah probably true, but I'm of a bit of a spicy opinion that dutch can get really terrifyingly close to danish... and I also think english might need its own language category because the way the sentence structure is in english is a bit weird and auxilary do's are not present in any germanics

[@BoxforInters]

I'm a german and I'm learning norwegian right now. I think norwegian sounds more "german-ish" than swedish. But of course all of the north germanic languages are close related, like they were different dialects of the same language.

[@hattarapilvi]

i'm fluent in english, and speak quite a lot of swedish and norwegian, and idk how a language could get more similiar to english than swedish/norwegian without actually being english 😂

[@Kircaldy]

At the end she said, 'Not a cat', which immediately reminded be Baldrick's dictionary in Blackadder where he defined a dog exactly like 'not a cat'.

[@jarnom85]

If it were other way around, swedish/norwegian/danish asking these questions from Finnish person. Most of the time and most likely, finnish person would be able to understand because most of finnish people go trough mandatory swedish classes since 6th grade, its also mandatory in high schools, vocational schools, and vocational universities.

[@shmuelschwartzberg650]

"But the grammar is quite different in Finnish compared to the other Nordic languages." Understatement of the year.

[@davidkasquare]

The Norwegian guy was kind of a bit thrilled guessing the Finnish words, while Miss Sweden and Miss Denmark were keeping an eye on him … kind of are you with her or are you with us..? 😀😀

[@lamsake]

he’s a real one for that lol

[@66hss]

What makes it even more challenging for foreigners is that the spoken Finnish is often very different from the official written language. So, students need to learn two versions at the same time! (the same goes for czech language I think)

[@66hss]

Ooksää ihavvarma? @@JukkaRamo

[@Ghamul]

​@@JukkaRamoTässä puhutaan varmaankin murteista, jotka kyllä saattaa erota hyvinki paljon kirjakielestä.

[@66hss]

@@JukkaRamo Eioo kyse murteista vaan ihan kirjakielen ja puhekielen eroista. Sitä ei vaan natiivi suomalainen tajua puhuessaan.

[@mrroo9658]

@@JukkaRamo No. No one I know speaks Finnish the way it is formally written, that would make you sound like a robot.

[@stinkyboy]

@@JukkaRamo kirjakieli ja puhekieli Edit: Tohon sun viimesimpään kommenttiin liittyen, suomen kirja- ja puhekielen välillä olevat erot on kyl erittäin paljon huomattavammat ku esim englannissa tai ruotsissa. Joku joka on opiskellu vaan kirjakieltä ei välttii ymmärtäis paljoo mitää kasuaalista keskustelusta.

[@Damian.D]

Beautiful people, especially the Norwegian guy. ❤

[@patrickuotinen]

For help to Swedes to recognise Finnish words loaned from Swedish, I must hint, that in older times, Finns had difficulties to pronounce words, which started with multiple consonants, so the extra consonants were dropped from the beginning of the word. Also consonants that weren't used in Finnish (c, g, d, b,) were often replaced with others, that were used (s, k, t, p). Finnish has a vowel chord, so if there were vowels, that couldn't be in the same word, they were replaced with ones, that could. Then we added some vowels to make the word easier to pronounce to use, especially to the end of the word, since most words in Finnish end with a vowel. Therefore for instance skola -> koulu, prost -> rovasti, läkare -> lääkäri, general -> kenraali.

[@Charl_es19]

I like how right after lady from Finland says the actual meaning of the words , the other three say in their language and are really similar either sound or writing Norwegian , Swedish and Danish , Saba from Hungary should be with Julia

[@GOAT-rl2uq]

It's honestly likely that Hungarian would have fewer similar words. Finnish and Hungarian are related, but very distantly. Meanwhile, Finnish has about 3000~ years of loanwords from various North Germanic languages.

[@ralepej]

There is only around 200 similar words on Hungarian and Finnish, but 6000 similar words on Finnish and Swedish

[@lauras1553]

​@@GOAT-rl2uqMaybe Finnish and Estonian? Though Estonians have always told me they couldn't understand Finnish 🤔

[@MikkoRantalainen]

@@lauras1553 As a Finn, I can tell that Finnish and Estonian do sound similar but many of the same sounding words have different meaning. Estonian is still the closest language to Finnish so learning either language after knowing the another should be somewhat easy.

[@cassu6]

@@MikkoRantalainen Yep I saw this video where a Estonian and Finnish person tried to understand each other. You actually could understand the gist of what they were trying to say if they talked for long enough. Some of the words sounded like other old words your grandparents might use etc.

[@zNikqla]

Joo kulta, suomalainen! Suomalainen grammeri sopii minulle, joten kyllä.. mikrometri.. viileä video :D

[@Hosigie]

This was fun, Nordics always provide good content, hope to see more of them soon.

[@piotrjankowski6113]

Would be nice if you could compare Finnish to Estonian, Hungarian and Sámi. Also I'd love to see an episode, where norwegian, danish, swedish, icelandic and faroese are put together

[@arcticradio]

It’s been quite a few years of living in Finland but I can understand quite a lot now but it’s an ongoing learning process and especially hard for Germanic language speakers. Everyday life is no longer a problem but in-depth or technical conversations are hard. Slowly English words start to disappear and become replaced with Finnish ones.

[@americker]

Just here to comment on how insanely handsome Mr Norway is

[@MrHakis]

Finland is abbreviated FI. When I read FL I thought to myself: "Oh, she lives in Florida" 😂

[@FreddyWangNX]

I’m simply amazed how good their English is In America you don’t see a lot of people speaking a second language at all

[@ruohonleikkaaja]

We do actually have a word for ”fox” that sounds more like the other Nordic languages than ”kettu” does. It’s ”repo” as in the northern lights or ”revontulet”(fox’s fires).

[@katathoombs]

Suddenly I feel quite dumb. Yes, _kettu_ is the word for "fox" in Finnish, but we do also have the word _repo_ , the declension stem of which is _rev-._ The _Aurora Borealis_ or "the northern lights" are called in Finnish _revontulet_ , ie. "the fires of the fox". Whoops, I guess.

[@marek9081]

Haven't watched the video yet, but the first question after reading the title is WHY would they understand it? XD They are completely different.

[@BestOpinionHaver]

video probably aimed to an American audience.

[@jukkakopol7355]

One thing is that we finns we use our own names of countrys and citys of our neighbours so Stockholm=tukholma Sweden=Ruotsi. Köpenhavn=kööpenhamina Danmark= Tanska, ok Oslo=Oslo but Norway=Norja and Estonia=Viro Russia=Venäjä St Petersburg= Pietari and Germany=Saksa so on.... Even London=Lontoo and USA= Yhdysvallat or Austria=Itävalta But we have lived in this part of the world couple of thousend years so we have had time to name places. And there was a time when finnish is common language around Baltic sea and even Sweden have part wich name is Finnskogen=Suomalaismetsät=finnishwoods agaist Norwegian border and among first europeans in Delaware were fins mostly from Finnskogen.

[@EddieReischl]

It's nice that "My name is..." or "Mein name ist..." or whatever, kind of stays similar through all these languages, so at least you know their name. I think they were all on point about Julia, she does look like she could be hosting a show on the Create channel, "We're all Finnish Here" or something like that, where she shows us what goes on in a typical Finnish household. She's very pretty and friendly, and smiles a lot, she'd be a natural at it. At least, that's what the fox said.

[@jotainkiva]

What she said was "Mun nimi on Julia". Which is a more slang/relaxed way of speaking Finnish. If you want to say it in a proper/professional way, it would be "Minun nimeni on Julia"

[@EddieReischl]

@@jotainkiva Cool, thanks. It sounds similar to the ears, although it almost looks Latin written out like that.

[@herrbonk3635]

_"Mitt namn är"_ is pretty formal in Scandinavian though. It's more common to say _"jag heter."_

[@jonashansson2320]

I'm pretty sure the only reason they figured that out was because they heard "Julia".

[@ellav5387]

@@jotainkiva Could also just say "Nimeni on..." as it has the exact meaning. Many Finns also use more formal or less formal words depending on the sentence because of how it flows.

[@Heisenbergxxx]

as finnish person i see this as an absolute win

[@noralee8641]

I really like how Finnish sounds but its grammar is hard for sure. I hardly could understand anything for now, just guessed the first word and that the animal described is dog, but I could make nothing of hobbies. Julia comes off as very nice person, and I like the way Steinar tries to guess what is said, it's kind of rational

[@aitokoojii1462]

The grammar is mostly hard because of grammatical cases. 15 of them. For example, minä can become minun, ääni can become ääneni, tavara can become tavaroineen. And this person was speaking a southern dialect, I speak an eastern dialect which sounds very different.

[@CarelessBreadofMe]

As a immigrant who moved to finland a year and a half ago i was so surprised i could understand Julia's speaking! Im 12yrs and have a really hard time learning the language but i got through i guess. (Btw i literally had no idea what she said about the kettu 😂)

[@kpt002]

The Finnish girl said that the grammar or structure of Finnish is quite different of the other 3. As a Finnish person who also speaks Swedish and Danish I can tell you that it is totally different. Like Finnish and Danish are basicly quite opposite in everything - structure, pronuciation etc. But I like both, they are both fun to know!! 😊

[@carnifpsgod9383]

Its so weird that Finland even is "compared" with Norweigan, Danish and Swedish, those 3 are EXTREMELY similiar, well the "riksspråk" anyway. When Finland is in their own language tree(Uralic Finnic), with Estonia as the only country in the same tree. It means its impossible to understand finnish at any given point.

[@tonikaihola5408]

“Ei saa peittää” is the phrase most Swedish people quote to me because it’s on the heaters everywhere. “Do not cover” 😂

[@AleksiJoensuu]

And we all know "Får inte tilldeckas" :D

[@Seastar14TheWitch]

I instantly knew what kettu was, mainly because I'm very interested in Finnish folklore, which has stories about "Tulikettu" or the Fire Fox in english. The folklore says that the tulikettu makes northern lights by running across the sky.

[@lennartbjorksten707]

The Finnish word for the northern lights is "Revontuli". Which literally translates as "Foxfire".

[@henri191]

Finish is closer to Hungarian ( yeah , I had a "what" reaction ) than any of these three languages , even though Finland is near to Norway , Sweden and Denmark , bring Saba , the lady from Hungary , to talk with Julia

[@GOAT-rl2uq]

Finnish is indeed more closely related to Hungarian, but the vocabulary is extremely different due to the closest shared linguistic ancestor being such a long time ago. Finnish in turn has about 3000 years worth of loans from various Germanic languages, so the vocab might be more similar.

[@johnnorthtribe]

They are so far away from each other so they are non intelligible with each other. Even Finish and Estonian struggle to understand each other and they are only separated by an inland lake.

[@Onnarashi]

Bring an Estonian instead. They are closer.

[@juib1738]

Finnish and hungarian are nothing alike. Finnish and a hungarian person would understand each other as much as a English and a chinese speaking person would. The only language that finns can somewhat understand without studying is estonian.

[@RolandHUN]

I, as a Hungarian, had no clue what she was talking about.

[@sebastianm.welsch3853]

At 3:40 I got surprised that it wasn't mentioned the word "repo", an alternative Finnish word for kettu, which sounds a lot like the other Nordic words.

[@warriorbard]

Finnish is peculiar in that it's a Uralic language, not an Indo-European language. It has more similarities with Hungarian I hear. I'm curious if the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes can pick up Icelandic easier since it's also an Indo-European language.

[@kewa123]

Iceland being an old and isolated norwegian colony, they practically still speak the same language norwegians spoke 1000 years ago. So to answer your question, yes. Although still MUCH harder than understanding other mainland scandi languages

[@martenehn3701]

There is a Helsinki slang with a lot of words of Swedish origin. That slang is however not official and is undergoing changes.

[@sweeetcakexd]

Even there the finn have little more personal space😂

[@blomlaura]

Love this as I am having an easy time learning Finnish, since I am about 40% Finnish

[@Peratohtori]

Julia is so cute!

[@danielvanr.8681]

_"Koulu"_ is somewhat easier to guess if one remembers that Finnish and Estonian avoid word-initial consonant cluster _"sk"._ Hence Fin. _"koulu"_ and Est. _"kool"._

[@3kittenlover]

The Finnish girl is beautiful

[@lGalaxisl]

Koulu *is* a loanword from germanic, it just goes back a long time so it has morphed quite a bit.

[@anttirytkonen11]

Just like 🇳🇴 Steinar put it there at the end, I'd imagine that separate Finnish words would be easier for other Nordics to figure out than sentences. As a cat person, it would have been interesting to see if they guessed 😺 "kissa" (cat) correctly if it was asked as a stand alone word. Since it comes from Swedish "kissa" (female cat), but normally it means something totally different (💧🚽) in Swedish. Or "katti" (colloquial) that also found its way into Finnish from Swedish "katt" (formal). 😜 I would like to see videos where 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇩🇰 🇮🇸 🇪🇪 they'd take a punt at stand alone words of Finnish. 🤔

[@hakanstorsater5090]

@@safiyenurgulec6294 It's a wanderwort that might be Egyptian in origin, apparently...

[@smievil]

think "musta kissa" means black cat in Finnish but in swedish it sounds like "måste kissa" meaning have to pee.

[@hakanstorsater5090]

@@smievil Cognate to "must piss", basically. The "kissa" is probably an euphemistic/ childish form of "pissa". (I believe Danish and Norwegian have "tisse" instead, used similarly...)

[@johnchen3599]

I hope we can see a world friends video about the Finno-Ugrilic languages

[@Jumbo_storm]

In Swedish paper is how the Swedish person had written paper the first time before she did rub it out so it became the English word for paper. Anyway, paper in Swedish is not: "paperi" as in Finnish, it is: "papper", just adding an extra "p" if you compare it to the English word; "paper".

[@MikkoRantalainen]

There's a funny stand-up routine by Ismo Leikola about adding i at the end of English word supposedly creating a Finnish word. Unfortunately, it's only available in Finnish so most people in the world cannot understand it: "Lisää vain i" kzbin.info/www/bejne/q4XCiIKHdrGfe7c

[@thespankmyfrank]

That's exactly what she said though, she just wasn't super clear. She said the Finnish version is said the same as the Swedish word, just with an I at the end. Which is pretty true, papper vs paperi are very similarly pronounced.

[@jonashansson2320]

@@MikkoRantalainen About the same as with Icelandic, they put "ur" at the end of the words instead. Well, they start with swedish/"scandinavian" and not english, but the same principle apply. :)

[@smievil]

dads in swedish is "pappor" may also be pronounced papper, dad is "pappa" while paper is "papper" could be a bit tricky

[@YU-nr7eq]

I’m Brits who speaks Dutch and German, understand to some extent of Scandinavian languages. Especially Danish is in between English and Dutch, just like a Dutch dialect of Frisian

[@wzot]

Julia seems to have a korean-finnish accent for some reason.🙂 Most finnish people I have heard have more of a sharp pronounciation.

[@iwillcontactattorneygenera1078]

??? In what language

[@pupu416]

Coming from finnish person, she sounds normal😂 She has slight fault in r-pronounciation which is very common in Finnish folk

[@wzot]

@@pupu416 Ah. Yeah well to be honest I’ve not talked to that many Finnish people.😄 Might be her dialect or something.🙂

[@stinkyboy]

I'm Finnish too and I agree with the previous commenter, she sounds perfectly normal.

[@yullife]

Hi! You got that right, I have lived in Korea for the past 8 years so not really using my Finnish that much in normal life! :D

[@mitztli]

Finnish: minun.... (my) Everyone: you mean cooking, we know

[@Sir_AlexxTv]

I love northern European languages very much ... I don't know why but I'm fascinated by them. 😁

[@EllinorBohlin-ug3dd]

Swedish has many, many more French loanwords in it compared to other languages. Among the royal family, the church and the entire upper class, French was a must to learn for several hundred years. In some environments, French was more common than Swedish and some even learned French as their mother tongue. Since all the academic talents were French-speaking, the language grew into Swedish and then it has migrated down into the classes of society, while French is not as common today, many words are directly from French or have been modified throughout the centuries. Fönster is from Fenêtre

[@DillaryHuff]

We have quite a few french loanwords in Norwegian as well, but many of them aren't that commonly used anymore. Adjø is an example of such a word - from adieu. I think Swedish has it's own version of that word that may be used more commonly.

[@markerspace9852]

where is Iceland?...

[@mar754]

Not many Icelanders in South Korea

[@MikkoRantalainen]

Have you tried searching around Northern Atlantic?

[@Alejosales]

Does does Steinar have any social media we can follow? 😅❤

[@davidkasquare]

It’s impossible for other nordics to understand Finnish, most of the vocabulary is competently different. If she only uses loan words from Swedish and English, they will understand a few words, but you noticed even the word “koulu” was impossible to understand. I think the Norwegian guy was the best at guessing, and I think it’s because the Norwegian pronunciation has a little bit more old features like diphthongs etc. (Finnish usually kept them in old Germanic loan words)

[@Flamewolf333]

Me who is finnish with my whole spirit it was fun to heard what swedish norway and tanska said what they heard😂

[@Mediaflashmob]

As for me Russian native speaker, the Finnish language seems very different from all languages around despite the fact that Finland is our closest neighbor. I even understand better Swedish, Norwegian and Danish because they all have similarities with English. Here in Russia there's a Republic of Karelia, they speak kind of Finnish as I know, and logically Karelians would understand Finnish quite well.

[@junantuoma7869]

Karelian language is more of a dialect than different language for Finns, everyone understands it.

[@Georgin]

Логично, ведь шведский, норвежский и датский не только германские языки (то есть схожи с английским), но и в целом индоевропейские, поэтому может быть даже прямое сходство с русским языком. А вот финский финно-угорский. Уральская семья языков, которая включает финно-угорскую и самодийскую группы, нисколько не родственна индоевропейской, она либо не родственна никакой другой, либо, как предполагают некоторые, может быть родственна алтайской семье.

[@peterfireflylund]

Let’s hope Finland gets Karelia back soon!

[@Mediaflashmob]

@@peterfireflylund how? Karelia is protected by Russia.

[@Arcticstranger1971]

@@peterfireflylund Unfortunately There is only about 5% karelians in russian Karjala now!And on the most part Eastern (Belomor) Karjala on shore of the White sea , karelians never lived.Pomors used to lived there!:)

[@ai2ai426]

koulu has Greek & Latin origin similar to Romance languages, escuela, escola, and Germanic languages, e.g. Old English, scōl, scolu

[@LizzyTiger98]

Steinar is so hott! Glad I'm currently learning Norwegian on Duolingo if most Norwegian men are this hott lol

[@namelessghoul615]

Weird but ok

[@sashaihamaki5168]

The Finnish word for ”cola” is actually ”kola”. ”Cocis” (what the Finnish girl said) refers specificially to Coca-Cola, kind of like ”Coke” in English.

[@Zharf]

and yet if you ask for kokis in most places you get a pepsi, and it's disgusting -.-

[@Diidian]

The same happens when we here in Brazil try to talk to our neighbors in Suriname. Unlike 90% of our other neighbors, they speak Dutch, totally different from the Portuguese we it's our language. Communication is much more difficult and we don't understand anything they say and they don't understand anything we say

[@enyeleanlje6437]

It's fun to know that Brazil has a neighbouring country that speaks a total different language, not even within the same language family since Dutch comes from Germanic root and Portuguese and Spanish as well as French itself come from Roman side of the language family root. To think about it, the same situation occurs in South East Asia too, I live in Malaysia, speaking Malay as my daily basis, the neighbouring countries as Indonesia and Philippines sound so familiar in our ears and even we can understand each other in certain cases due to Austronesian root, but when it comes to Thailand, it's all downhill from here. All I can say, it sounds so foreign despite sharing the same border to each other.

[@Diidian]

@@enyeleanlje6437 What about Vietnamese, can you understand them easily or is it a very different language as well? Here in South America we also have an English-speaking neighbor, Guyana. In addition we have France, which is also our neighbor. The French are more understandable, but not as much as our Spanish-speaking neighbors.

[@JosephOccenoBFH]

​@@enyeleanlje6437As a Tagalog speaker I can pick up a few words in Malay or Bahasa Indonesian. The most common are lima, anak, dato, cermin, kerbau, laut, kota, etc. In Phillipino they would be limá, anák, datu, salamín, kalabáw, laot, kutà, etc. 😄 As far as mutual intelligibility, I'm totally lost.

[@JosephOccenoBFH]

​@@DiidianVietnamese belongs to the Mon-Khmer language family while Malay is Austronesian. Vietnamese is more similar to Cambodian.

[@Diidian]

@@JosephOccenoBFH Funny how Vietnamese and Cambodian have completely different alphabets.

[@anttirytkonen11]

Regarding 🇫🇮 Finnish, 🇪🇪 Estonian and 🇭🇺 Hungarian, let me quote an interview of the famous 🇫🇮 Finnish comedian and language enthusiast Ismo Leikola. The square brackets indicate the things he was referring to but didn't mention them out loud. The question was, are Finnish and Hungarian related. Ismo: "Just a few days ago, I was in Syracuse and there was a big group of Hungarians. And we talked about it, and we decided that it's bull****. Like, there's no same words. Even the order of words is different." Ismo: "So, I don't know how it's officially related according to linguistics, but there's nothing in common. Like, the word for water was a little bit common, but that's the only thing we found found." 🇩🇪🇺🇸 KZbinr interviewer: "What are they then?" Ismo: "In Finland, it's 'vesi' and in Hungarian it was like 'víz' or something. It was kind of close [his guess for that word]. I forgot it already. Ismo: "But it's not really [a similar language]. But Estonian is pretty close."

[@lars-akeeriksson2008]

You might as well take, Swedish, Danish, Norweigian and Japanese. How similar are they?

[@NightingalePenguin]

Well, "Ihmisen paras ystävä, ei oo kissa" - come on, it was easy 😂

[@JosephOccenoBFH]

This video is like asking different Arabic speakers if they understand Turkish where there would be a few similar words here and there but the grammar is entirely different.

[@VenusEvan_1885]

There are millions of Arabic words in Turkish, Turkish language is literally Arabic and Persian, mix Arabic and Persian you will get Turkish.

[@user-xv9rf2ll3m]

@@VenusEvan_1885 that's not true, 8% of Turkish language is loanwords from Arabic language. Almost every verb has Turkic origins... But when it comes to nouns and adjectives,you can find some arabic and persian words, obviously.

[@Anonymous-py1sf]

Turkish and arabic are VERY different.

[@VenusEvan_1885]

@@Anonymous-py1sf it's literally the same language, ottomans spoke old Turkish which %90 consisted of Arabic and Persian words.

[@Pyovali]

@@VenusEvan_1885 Vocabulary doesn't define language alone. Finnish too has a lot of Swedish and Russian loanwords, but it doesn't mean it has changed into them, it's just means it has borrowed from them

[@mitztli]

Finnish: kettu (fox) Everyone: cat Finnish: quite close Actually no, cat and fox is not the same at all Finnish: koulu (school) Everyone: Coca-Cola Finnish: quite close

[@Purtonen]

0:33 The country code for Finland is FI, not FL 🤦‍♂

[@AlexKall]

I heard the word for school when she talked about her hobbies but I'm guessing I just misheard.

[@CinCee-]

I would like to see Icelandic or Faroese mixed in

[@tili7618]

i was surprised that as a Finn and Finnish speaking person I had a very hard time understanding the Finnish lol

[@NjordrYT]

This is basically the same difficulity as when Americans try to understand Arabic or Korean.

[@Mnnvint]

The thing about "rev" is that all the Scandinavian languages have it from old Norse, but they think it's a borrowing from ur-uralic! So actually rev WAS a Finnish word once - sort of. Germans say fuchs and English say fox, that's a completely different root and the one we use, and it's the one we "should" have used as Germanic peoples. The modern Finnish word for fox apparently derives from "skin".

[@karpov7233]

Kissa/cat was easy to understand as it is a Swedish loanword, kisse or similar

[@smievil]

it's also easy to missunderstand

[@karhukivi]

Very entertaining as I'm learning Finnish, but the background music is very distracting, please leave it out in future videos!

[@inotoni6148]

There is one person from Estonia missing in this group. Estonian is more similar to Finnish than the Scandinavian languages.

[@applefish745]

that's not the point smartass

[@watashiyo8523]

Elsa looks nice on green ❄

[@alexfx83]

The next time try to check if Chinese, Japanese and Korean natives can understand Arabic language😂

[@ingvildoa4296]

Love you videos. Bot could you do it with danish next time?😅

[@redzaces]

Are you danish

[@ingvildoa4296]

@@redzaces yes🫣I just thought it could be fun 🤭