#votian

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. 

Mees meeb metsä kautt.

In Estonian this would written as:

Mees läheb metsa kaudu. ‘The man goes through the forest.’

You can see that the Estonian and Votic words for 'man’ are the same: mees. You might recognise meeb as being related to the Estonian verb minema/minna 'go’. You of course know that the non-past indicative form of minema in Estonian for the 3rd person is läheb. Students of Finnish will know that unlike Estonian, this form of mennä (cognate with Estonian minna and Hungarian menni ; from Proto-Finnic *mendäk and Proto-Uralic (*men- )) in Finnish is menee. The Estonian verb from läheb is related to the Finnish verb lähteä 'leave, start, sail, go away’, 3rd. lähtee.

Conjugation* of menemä 'go’(including pronouns): 1sg. miä meen’, 2sg. siä meed, 3sg. tämä meeb, 1pl. müü meemmä, 2pl. tüü meettä, 3pl. nämäd meeä

metsä - gen. of metts 'forest’ (cf. Estonian metsa < mets; Finnish metsän < metsä).

kautt - 'through' (cf. Estonian kaudu; Finnish kautta). As in Estonian Ta sõitis Lettu Läti kaudu - He travelled to Lithuania through/via Latvia ; posti kaudu - by mail.

Our next sentence, to be discussed the next time:

isa tahob, jot miä üvässì õppõizin