JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES

January-March 2011 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume III., Issue 1.
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Estonian has no sex and no future
In 2006, I returned to Estonia by plane. I sat next to a fat, friendly Finnish lawyer and asked, “What do
you think of the Estonians?”
“They’re nice. We get along with them,” she replied.
“I suppose it helps that their language is so similar to yours,” I suggested.
“But it’s not. Finnish is a completely separate and unique language. Supposedly it has some similarities
to Hungarian, but I’ve never heard it.”
“Wait, I know Finnish is unlike Swedish and Russian. However, I’m pretty sure that it is quite similar
to Estonian. Why else would so many Estonians understand Finnish?”
“You’re right, they do understand and speak Finnish, but that’s mainly because the northern parts of
Estonia get Finnish TV. So when you hear this language all the time, you come to learn it.”
She’s right about Estonians having access to Finnish TV. During the Soviet time, Estonians secretly
picked up stray Finnish TV signals. It was their conduit to the free world—it was the only way to hear
something other than Soviet propaganda. It was as if one rivet had popped out of the Iron Curtain,
allowing the Estonians to peek through.
However, the main reason Estonians understand Finnish is that it’s a similar language. As you can see
from the table below, Estonian and Finnish are similar, while Hungarian sounds like a distant bastard
cousin. They all use the Latin alphabet, not Cyrillic (like Russian does). Judging by the numbers, Latvian
seems related to Russian. However, Latvians shudder when you say that and will quickly observe that
Latvian (and Lithuanian) is a Baltic tongue, not a Slavic one. Here’s how you count to ten in the following
languages:
English Hungarian Finnish Estonian Latvian Russian
One Egy Yksi Üks Viens Ahdin
Two Kettő Kaksi Kaks Divi Dvah
Three Három Kolme Kolm Trīs Tree
Four Négy Neljä Neli Četri Chyeetiryeh
Five Öt Viisi Viis Pieci Pyaht
Six Hat Kuusi Kuus Seši Shehst
Seven Hét Seitsemän Seitse Septini Syehm
Eight Nyolc Kahdeksan Kaheksa Astoni Vossyeem
Nine Kilenc Yhdeksän Üheksa Devini Dyehvyaht
Ten Tíz Kymmenen Kümme Desmit Dhehssyaht
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