61: The Veps language and a couple of Veps – Quechua similarities

 

Written by Linden Alexander Pentecost and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost on the 1^st of April 2025. Only published on this website (BookofDunBarra) In this article/on this page I discuss some of the basics of the Veps language and how certain things can differ from Finnish, with some examples including two whole sentences in Veps, which are as long examples as I could manage as I do not speak hardly any Veps; despite that one of the two sentences I give means "I speak (in) Veps". I then talk about two Veps words, numbered 1. and 2., that each has similarity to a Quechua word, with discussion on this and further comments on etymology and semantics. This article contains 1362 words. Note that I have discussed Veps a little in other publications and that this article is completely separate from them, the article in front of you is also completely separate from my print-only book that covers Quechua Finnish similarities, published recently, the name of which is mentioned further into this article (the aforementioned book is the latest in several that discuss different similarities between Finnish and Quechua). This article in front of you contains no sub-sections and does not require them I do not think as this description paragraph suffices I think.

 

Veps is a language that I have been interested in ever since I was 18. Whilst Veps and Finnish are very similar in some senses, and whilst a lot of Veps vocabulary and grammar is easily understandable through Finnish, Veps is also very distinct from Finnish, arguably I think more so than the Karelian languages, the Ludic and the Ingrian languages are from Finnish. Phonologically speaking, Veps shares much in common with some varieties of Karelian. In terms of vowel harmony, only certain varieties of Veps have well preserved vowel harmony, namely the Veps varieties. Historically speaking, the Veps language was spoken over a much wider area than it is today, and today it remains primarily spoken around parts of and south of Lake Onega in the Republic of Karelia. The Veps language also has several dialects within the larger Veps language.

The pronouns in Veps are relatively similar to their forms in kirjakieli Finnish. “I” is minä, thou is sinä, he or she is hän, we is mö, you plural is tö and they is hö. The Finnish pronouns which are etymological equivalents of these words are: minä, sinä, hän, me, te and he. The verb to be is olda, you may notice if reading about Veps that several words contain an extra d where there is no d in the Finnish equivalent, which in this case is olla – to be. In the present tense, Veps olda is conjugated as shown in the comparison below, which gives the Veps, Finnish and English present tense conjugations of the verbs "to be", with the Veps forms on the far left side of the page.

 

Veps – Finnish – English

minä olen – minä olen – I am
sinä oled – sinä olet – thou art
hän om – hän on – she or he is
mö olem – me olemme – we are
tö olet – te olette – you lot are
hö oma – he ovat – they are

For example, minä olem mez' – I am a man, and in Finnish: minä olen mies, or for example: hö oma Vepsläižed – they are Veps people, in Finnish: he ovat Vepsäläiset. Unlike Kirjakieli Finnish, but like Savonian Finnish, Veps contains palatal forms of consonants. Veps also possesses the affricatives [tʃ], [ʃ] and [ʒ], written in Veps as č, š and ž respectively. One can see in my examples how for example Veps ž is equivalent to Finnish s in the word Vepsläižed. Veps also contains many voiced consonants which are not found in Finnish, including [b], [d], [g], and [z]. This can be seen in the nominative plural being formed with a -d in Veps unlike the -t in Finnish, for example in the Veps word Vepsläižed. Compare also Finnish mansikka – “strawberry” to Veps manzikaine – “strawberry”, where here the Finnish s is equivalent to the z in the Veps word. In Veps and kirjakieli Finnish a [ts] sound often occurs in the same etymologically related words, although this is written as ts in Finnish and as c in Veps. For example kirjakieli Finnish metsä - forest, Veps mec - forest, kirjakieli Finnish katsoa – to look at or watch, Veps kacta – to look at or watch.

Veps also possesses consonant gradation, like Finnish, although naturally Veps possesses forms of consonant gradation not found in Finnish, due to the phonology of Veps. For example, the Veps verb "to speak" is pagišta. The š in this verb undergoes consonant gradation to ž when conjugated into the first person singular present tense form, pagižen, for example: Minä pagižen Vepsän keleks – "I speak” (in) Veps”, where the verb pagišta causes the following noun to be in the translative case, which is not the case following the Finnish verb to speak, puhua. The Veps word keleks is the translative form of kel' – “language”, equivalent to Finnish kieli – “language”.

 

Considering the large number of similarities I have noticed and published about elsewhere in Finnish and Quechua words (Quechua or Quechuan being a language family from the Andes in western South America), I did wonder whether or not Veps might contain a few words I did not recognise as having a Finnish etymological equivalent (at least, not to my knowledge), to which there is a similar word in the Quechuan languages. My work on Quechua and Finnish similarities has been published elsewhere, including in my recently published print-only book, titled: Similarities in Quechua and Finnish language words newly noticed in March 2025 and not previously published, and other connected topics not previously published; book published only in print format and not in other formats; book published in the UK.
The two specific root words I have found so far in Veps with a similarity to Quechua, of which there is not to my knowledge an etymological equivalent in Finnish, have not been published before until being so in this article (the article currently in front of you). These words are numbered as 1. and 2. below.

1. Veps voikta – to cry or weep, bares an obvious similarity to Quechua waqay – to cry (also to call in the sense of the calls made by birds). The basic root of the Veps verb is voik-, I presume that the Veps v, oi and k are equivalent to the w, a and q of Quechua waqay.

2. Veps pert' – ”house”, is a word thought to be of Slavic origin, but I think it equally likely that the word came into both Slavic and Uralic in ancient times. It is cognate to the Mari word пӧрт, pört, which also means “house”. Some similarity can be seen here with the Quechua word pirwa, the main differences being that the Quechua form has a w, and the Uralic forms have an extra -t. In Quechua pirwa means a barn, granary or stack, and the planet Jupiter. Whilst the semantics of the Quechua and Uralic words do not mean the exact same thing, I do think that there may be a possible relationship. The Uralic word may also be related to Yakut/Sakha бырт, bırt which means wellbeing or wealth (although I can find no original reference to this link to the Yakut/Sakha word). If this is so, one could see a possible semantic similarity between the Yakut meaning of “wealth and wellbeing” and that in Quechua pirwa, in reference to a granary or stack, in that a granary or stack could represent both well-being in health, and wealth. This is in addition to the semantic similarity between the Uralic meaning of “house” and the Quechua meaning of being a place to store grain, usually a building or barn of some kind, which can be seen as akin to a house semantically. I do believe strongly that the ideas of house and food and wealth are very connected.

 

I hope that this article was an interesting read. This article is dedicated to the Veps people and to friends and family.