Are Finnish and Saami intelligible to any extent?

Question

i saw a movie in which a Finnish guy seemed to be able to talk to a Saami woman and they seemed to understand each other most of the time. problem is i'm not sure whether its because the woman was speaking Finnish or her own language coz the story took place in Finland.

by the way, are the Finnish (Suomi) people ethnically related to the Saami by any chance? it seems to me the words 'Suomi' and 'Saami' may have the same prononciation

Answer 1

both languages arent important unless u plan to live there

Answer 2

They are both Finnic languages, part of the greater Finno-Ugric (Uralic) lnaguage family, including Hungarian and Estonian. These people originate from the northern Urals of Central Asia and their languages are completely unrelated to indo-european ones like German, Englsih, Russian, Urdu, Pashto, Spanish etc. Saami(lapp) and Suomi (Finnish) and Esti (Estonian) are all Finnic languages so I guess they are slightly intelligble. But then again English, German, Dutch, Flemish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Danish are all part of the Germanic branch of Indo-European languages and they aren't reall y that intelligbler. Then again, they are Geographically far apart so they have come to sound different over huindreds of years so seeing as the Saami are very close to Finland I guess they might be. It would certainly easier for a Saami to learn Finnish than for a indo-european speaker.

Answer 3

The Sámi languages are not widely spoken outside those who have them as native languages, so although some words can be similar to Finnish language both in terms of meaning and in terms of pronunciation, it is not very easy for a mainstream Finn to understand those languages fully. Mainstream Finns do NOT have to study any of the Sámi languages at school, but a deep relationship/friendship can be a motivation to learn the languages. And yes, all the variants of the Sámi languages are related to Finnish language at least to some extent.