# Finnish vs Saami: mutual comprehension



## Setwale_Charm

Hei!!
To what extent would speakers Finnish normally understand spoken Saami and vice-versa? Anybody with an experience here?


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## sarastus

Not a chance. Finnish speakers do not undestand Saami, maybe a word here and there, if it's a version of a word that's originally finnish. But usually no, the languages are so different.


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## Setwale_Charm

Now, that is interesting, because to my unaccustomed ear, these languages sound so similar on the radio)) 
Which group does Saami belong to?


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## sarastus

Saami is a finno-ugric language, one branch of all of them, so basically Finnish and Saami are related, but... And you know, there are actually several saami languages (each spoken mainly in a particular area covering also the north of Sweden and Norway), and even those variations can be so different that they can't understand each other. A finn would, in my opinion, understand more Estonian than Saami (but even then it's a word here and a word there).


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## jonquiliser

To my ears, there's a slight resemblance between Saami and Finnish (some varieties of either), though it doesn't sound the "same". Saami, for a starter, sounds extremely soft (at least compared to southern Finnish accents) and has "strange" consonant combinations, diphtongs that Finnish doesn't etc. 

When I hear Saami, I have a strange feeling that it sounds familiar, and every here and there I may believe to understand a word (though they may be false friends) but I don't really understand the meaning of phrases. Even written Saami is an enigma. 

Estonian is very much more similar, though there are sufficient differences to make it tricky to decipher; at least to me.


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