Vocabulary

Video

Transcript

Betty: Hello my name is Betty and I’m living in Hungary in Mishkod which is close to the Slovakian border. And I’m a law student.
Marcus: Hi everyone my name is Marcus. I am a native Estonian speaker and a second language English speaker currently living in Tallinn, Estonia.

Host: Excellent. Thanks so much. So the words that I have picked for this video are all related; they all have the same origin and their cognates. So in some cases they might be very easy. But in other cases it’s a little bit challenging.

But there are very simple rules if if you if you pick up what the rules are and as you go along you’ll become more familiar with it — it becomes easier to pick those up because there are so many cognates between the two languages that are not obvious at first.

But once you understand how they’re related, then you can understand there a lot more than you think.

So we’re going to start with the first Hungarian word.

Betty: So my first word is kéz.
Marcus: Kes? Kes. All right, kes. So the immediate thing that pops into my mind is the word kes in Estonian which is “who”; it’s a question. Another one, another thing . . .

Host: One thing that might help one thing that might help is a lot of times an Estonian word has an extra vowel at the end, which doesn’t necessarily show up in Hungarian.
Marcus: So it’s the vowel sound that Hungarians dropped? Okay, so I reckon so i’ll just kiss kiss kiss or queso casey creepy. Could it be “arm” cassie?
Betty: Almost, yes it’s close; it’s not arm but yeah it’s related.
Marcus: Is it “hand”?
Betty: Yes, it’s “hand”.
Marcus: Funny. Yeah that’s interesting.

Marcus: So the word in Estonian is veri.
Betty: Very?
Marcus: v e r i, veri
Betty: “Very”? Well doesn’t sound familiar. How do you write it?
Marcus: So v-e-r-i.
Betty: Oh, “blood”?
Marcus: Yeah, you’re right; spot on.

Betty: So the next word is méz.
Marcus: “Mez”? All right so I think it’s m-e — with the little diacritic in the zed?
Betty: Yes.
Marcus: So if we go find the previous rule as Bahador (the host) so graciously mentioned to us uh kez was cassie then maybe messi, messi . . . is it honey?
Betty: Yes it’s honey; it’s easier than I thought.

Marcus: All right so the next Estonian word will be sarv. Yep s-a-r-v.
Betty: Is it “horn”?
Marcus: How do you pronounce it?
Betty: Szarv.
Marcus: That’s really cool.

Betty: Víz
Marcus: “Veez” or “Vez”?
Betty: EE; it’s long.
Marcus: Okay, “Veez”. “Vizi” I’ll just put an “i” at the end, as well like the previous word so vizi uh vezie . . . it could it be “water”?
Betty: Yeah, it’s water.
Marcus: Cool.

Marcus: Okay, it’s o I would say it’s more commonly said talv but tali could be used as well.
Betty: “Tali””
Marcus: Yeah, tali t-a-l-i or talv“t-a-l-v”.
Betty: So it’s “winter”?
Marcus: That’s right — on the nose.

Betty: Okay, so it’s “vaj”. I
Marcus: “Voy”? “Boy”? “Roy”? . . . So uh in Estonian there’s a word called which means “butter”.
Betty: Yes is it actually butter. Yeah it’s butter.
Marcus: Is it actually “butter”? Can you use it in a sentence for me like, “Pass me the butter,”?

Marcus: So the next Estonian word; it’s a very short word but it’s very commonly used. It is all. A double “L” all.
Betty: “All”? “To stand”?
Marcus: “Um not quite.
Betty: Um alá which means “under”.
Marcus: That’s correct.

Host: I want to mention for this next one, is a lot of times with Estonian and Hungarian, the h and the k sound you’ve got to switch them.

Betty: Okay so it’s hal.
Marcus: “Hall”. All right let’s keep the host’s tip in mind and turn the h into a k: so “hull, call, cal, coil”, which would mean a monster, a big beast? “Call” so “cola” which would mean like an animal which would be like a fish; is it a fish?
Betty: Yes it’s a fish.
Marcus: Well, well there you go awesome.

So the next Estonian word that I have is jää..
Betty: “Yeah?” “Yeah.” How do you write it?
Marcus: “J” and then “ah-ah,” which are “A’s” with dots above them.
Betty: Okay, if I change the letter which is “ice”.
Marcus: Wow! Yeah it’s “ice”. Yeah okay it was just deep; I wasn’t sure but that was the rule. How do you pronounce that word?
Betty: Jég.

Betty: Menni.
Marcus: “Meni”? Well the immediate word that comes into my mind is “magnifu” which is a type of tree. Is it a tree at all?
Betty: No.
Marcus: So the word, “mina” which would have been me is; is it me? There was another one . . . so mine which would be “go”. Is it actually all right?

Marcus: The word that I have here; it’s a four-letter word, it’s silm, s-i-l-m.
Betty: Is it “color”?
Marcus: Not quite.
Host: One hint could be part of the body part of the body.
Betty: Szem, which is the “eye”.
Marcus: How did you pronounce that?
Betty: Szem.
Marcus: Silm. Yep that’s “eye”.

Questions

Hungarian. This video was matchmaking and dating show. True or false?

Estonian, Finnish. Is Betty a linguistics professor?

Swedish, Danish, Norwegian. What is a major difference between Hungarian and Estonian?

German, Swiss German. The words involved were mostly scholarly and technical terms like parliament, senate, philosophy, psychology, telephone, microscope. Is this right or wrong.

French. Was it very easy and straightforward for both Betty and Marcus to recognize words in the other language?

Portuguese, Galician. What was the main tactic that they employed to find the unknown meaning of different words?

Gaelic, Scots, Welsh. Were they surprised by the similarities of different cognates?

Spanish. What were the words that they exchanged?
 
 
 
Italian, Sicilian, Sardinian. I often recognize meanings of words in other languages. Yes or no?

Polish. Which languages does your language share similarities with? Which languages are related to your language or belongs to your language family?

Russian, Ukrainian. What languages have your language been influenced by or borrowed words from?

Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, Croatian. What might happen in the future?

Bulgarian, Macedonian. Which languages are easy for you to learn? Which languages are the most difficult?