sherbert wrote:Also striking about Finnish is how many words in Finnish and Russian are essentially the same, like OKHO, TAPAKAH, etc. I would never have known that. Even so, to my ears, very little of Swedish or Russian has rubbed off on the Finnish language, but when I listen to Magyar it often sounds like part of a broader continuum of its neighboring languages.
I would say Swedish influence in Finnish is very strong; as a Finnish speaker trying to brush up my Swedish I'm constantly amazed how there's not only a ton of borrowed vocabulary but even idioms and fixed expressions that have seeminly been calqued word-to-word. However most of the Swedish material in Finnish is rather old so it has been throughoutly assimilated and might not be obvious on the first glance.
On the contrary, when I study Russian it is a rare treat to encounter a word that I can recognize from Finnish unless it's international vocabulary.