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Easiest Scandinavian language?

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montmorency
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 Message 57 of 74
28 October 2013 at 8:35pm | IP Logged 
tractor wrote:

I doubt that most Norwegians actually read books in Swedish and Danish, especially
Swedish (due to differences in
orthography).



This surprised me a little at first, but then I remembered that when I was looking at
various online Scandinavian bookshops, at least the popular titles often
seemed to be available in all three languages, whereas you'd think if it was that easy,
people would simply read it in the original, and there would be no market for other
Scandinavian translations. But there clearly is a market, so it seems people don't in
general find it all that easy (or at least, not all that comfortable). I suppose I
would not choose to read a book written in heavy Scots dialect if there was a version
in standard English.



Edited by montmorency on 28 October 2013 at 8:41pm

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montmorency
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 Message 58 of 74
28 October 2013 at 8:39pm | IP Logged 
eyðimörk wrote:
Medulin wrote:
Do you think of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian is
easy?
• Danish youth: 43.3% (Swedish) and 53.9% (Norwegian)
• Swedish adolescents: 33.5% (Danish) and 58.4% (Norwegian)
• Norwegian adolescents: 35.5% (Danish) and 77.4% (Swedish)

Source: Aftenposten.no

That reminds me of an experiment I participated in a couple of years ago. As a native
Swedish speaker with no formal Danish training, I got to listen to Danish words and try
to write down a Swedish translation while the researchers measured the activity in the
different parts of my brain.

They had already done this with Danish people listening to Swedish, so while they
hadn't been able to study the data from the brain wave measurements they could say one
thing: Danes were a lot better at understanding Swedish than Swedes were at
understanding Danish. And the Swedes they were testing at this time all lived just
across the strait from Copenhagen!

They attributed this to how different Danish pronunciation, stress etc. Danes can
imagine what letters Swedes are saying, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Which
could explain why Swedes and Norwegians find each others' languages much easier than
Danish.



In one of the early scenes in the drama "The Bridge", the Danish detective makes a bit
of a joke of having to spell out his name for the puzzled looking Swedes! :-)


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tractor
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 Message 59 of 74
28 October 2013 at 9:58pm | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:
I'm curious about bookshops in Scandinavia: Do they only carry books in the national language
or are top 10 books in the other two languages readily available?

Larger bookshops carry literature in Swedish and Danish, but smaller ones usually don't.
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Medulin
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 Message 60 of 74
30 October 2013 at 7:39pm | IP Logged 
Which of these find learners of Norwegian/Swedish easier to understand?
Which one sounds more pleasant to you?

Southern Swedish (Malmö):
http://youtu.be/BsgIkyZh1-I


Western Norwegian (Bergen):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knJxK-uRTeY

Edited by Medulin on 30 October 2013 at 7:40pm

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montmorency
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 Message 61 of 74
30 October 2013 at 11:41pm | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
Which of these find learners of Norwegian/Swedish easier to
understand?
Which one sounds more pleasant to you?

Southern Swedish (Malmö):
http://youtu.be/BsgIkyZh1-I


Western Norwegian (Bergen):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knJxK-
uRTeY



I'm not currently a learner of either, so both were equally incomprehensible.


I found the Swedish sound superficially more attractive, with the more obvious "sing-
song" sound. I can never hear the "sing song" sound in Norwegian, although people here
have told me that it's there, so it's something I'm obviously missing.
You can blame my cr@p hearing if you like.


OTOH, the Swedish newscaster looked strange. Beautiful, but strange.

The Norwegians looked more human, although the man seemed to have been translated
directly from the 1950s/1960s beat era.






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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 62 of 74
30 October 2013 at 11:42pm | IP Logged 
I like skånska, but the Bergen accent is like music to my ears.
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tricoteuse
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 Message 63 of 74
31 October 2013 at 8:14am | IP Logged 
I'm quite glad things have to be translated, since I work as a translator ;)
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 64 of 74
31 October 2013 at 8:16am | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
I found the Swedish sound superficially more attractive, with the more obvious "sing-song" sound. I can never hear the "sing song" sound in Norwegian, although people here have told me that it's there, so it's something I'm obviously missing. You can blame my cr@p hearing if you like


The "sing song" often associated with Norwegian doesn't sound the same in for instance the Bergen accent (and not in my Gotlandic Swedish either). That is, someone who's only heard say, Fredrik Skavlan, might not even recognize Bergen as Norwegian. It doesn't sound the same. (I remember a youtube song posted by Medulin the other week, where Swedish viewers wondered "what kind of language it was". Oh the humanity.)

Of course the pitch accents are present in Bergen accent, but they simply sound different.

Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 31 October 2013 at 8:26am



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