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To what extent are Hungarian and Estonian (both members of the Finno-Ugric language family) mutually intelligible?

2007-11-25 12:05:28 · 3 answers · asked by Stephen B 2 in Travel Europe (Continental) Other - Europe

3 answers

Hungarian and Estonian are not very closely related at all. They are not mutually intelligible. Hungarian and Estonian are on opposite ends of the Finno-Ugric language tree, so they separated about 5000 years ago or so. That makes them about as closely related as English and Greek. Finnish and the other Baltic Finnic languages (Karelian, Votic, Livonian, etc.) are the most closely related languages to Estonian. The most closely related languages to Hungarian are the Siberian languages (yes, THAT Siberia) Mansi and Khanty. Hungarian separated from them about 2500 years ago and moved west to Europe (arriving in 896), so they are about as closely related and English and Swedish.

2007-11-25 20:58:14 · answer #1 · answered by Taivo 7 · 7 0

I can't find a source to back this up, but I have a vague recollection of once reading that Finnish and Estonian are very similar, yet Hungarian and Finnish are only distantly related and not mutually intelligible. You could then infer that Hungarian and Estonian are also mutually unintelligible.

2007-11-25 20:12:55 · answer #2 · answered by Striker 2 · 4 0

The structure of the languages is similar but the vocabulary is different. I speak Hungarian but I cannot understand Estonian.
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2007-11-25 23:34:20 · answer #3 · answered by oregfiu 7 · 3 0

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