a little vadja keel (2)
In the last Votic post I ended with a sentence in the language. Did you manage to crack it? The example is taken from Vadja keele grammatika (VKG), pp. 107.Â
Mees meeb metsÀ kautt.
In Estonian this would written as:
Mees lĂ€heb metsa kaudu. âThe man goes through the forest.â
You can see that the Estonian and Votic words for 'manâ are the same: mees. You might recognise meeb as being related to the Estonian verb minema/minna 'goâ. You of course know that the non-past indicative form of minema in Estonian for the 3rd person is lĂ€heb. Students of Finnish will know that unlike Estonian, this form of mennÀ (cognate with Estonian minna and Hungarian menni ; from Proto-Finnic *mendĂ€k and Proto-Uralic (*men- )) in Finnish is menee. The Estonian verb from lĂ€heb is related to the Finnish verb lĂ€hteÀ 'leave, start, sail, go awayâ, 3rd. lĂ€htee.
Conjugation* of menemĂ€ 'goâ(including pronouns): 1sg. miĂ€ meenâ, 2sg. siĂ€ meed, 3sg. tĂ€mĂ€ meeb, 1pl. mĂŒĂŒ meemmĂ€, 2pl. tĂŒĂŒ meettĂ€, 3pl. nĂ€mĂ€d meeĂ€
metsÀ - gen. of metts 'forestâ (cf. Estonian metsa < mets; Finnish metsĂ€n < metsĂ€).
kautt - 'through' (cf. Estonian kaudu; Finnish kautta). As in Estonian Ta sÔitis Lettu LÀti kaudu - He travelled to Lithuania through/via Latvia ; posti kaudu - by mail.
Our next sentence, to be discussed the next time:
isa tahob, jot miĂ€ ĂŒvĂ€ssĂŹ Ă”ppĂ”izin
* to the best of my knowledge from what I have read. Forms meenâ and meeb are attested in VKG.














