Suomenkielisten idiomien ymmärtäminen – virolaisten päättelystrategioista
Understanding Finnish idioms – Estonian speakers’ inference strategies

Summary/Abstract: This article describes the strategies used by Estonian speakers to interpret meanings of Finnish idioms. The data consist of responses to a survey, in which the respondents were asked to write down their understanding of the meaning of 20 figurative phrases in Finnish. The respondents were L2 speakers of Finnish, and they were divided into two groups: students and the respondents older than students. The purpose of the data analysis was to understand the reasoning processes that the respondents utilized while trying to arrive at the correct interpretation. The analysis focused on 1) how the meaning of different constituents guides the interpretation of idioms, 2) how encyclopedic knowledge is utilized in understanding the idioms and 3) how going beyond the concrete meaning of the constituents affects the reasoning. In addition, the study aimed at analyzing how the linguistic affinity of Finnish and Estonian contributes to the understanding the idioms in the cognate language. The analysis shows that Estonian L2 speakers of Finnish recognize Finnish idioms quite well. If the Estonian phrase has some resemblance with the Finnish one, the meaning is believed to be identical. However, the similarity can also be misleading: “false friends” are found not only at the level of words but also at the level of idioms.

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