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Which Scandinavian language do you learn?

 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk Post Reply
Poll Question: Which Nordic language are you learning?
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
42 [37.84%]
17 [15.32%]
40 [36.04%]
10 [9.01%]
2 [1.80%]
You can not vote in this poll

42 messages over 6 pages: 1 24 5 6  Next >>
Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 17 of 42
01 December 2012 at 11:39am | IP Logged 
oops I now voted for Norwegian too...
1 person has voted this message useful



languagenerd09
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
youtube.com/user/Lan
Joined 5099 days ago

174 posts - 267 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai

 
 Message 18 of 42
06 January 2013 at 7:46pm | IP Logged 
My main intentions for Scandinavian languages are for Norwegian Bokmål as I have close
friends who speak this language as their native tongue, but I do have resources for all
the others, Faroese included.
1 person has voted this message useful



Jenne:)
Tetraglot
Newbie
Netherlands
polyglotquest.wordpr
Joined 4466 days ago

38 posts - 56 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French
Studies: Norwegian

 
 Message 19 of 42
17 January 2013 at 9:37pm | IP Logged 
I am learning Norwegian (Bokmål). Icelandic is on my wish list. It sounds beautiful, so I would like to learn it. It should not be too hard after Norwegian, although the grammar is a bit daunting. Furthermore, I will most likely attempt to learn Old Norse in the future. I think it's a cool language and very useful, as I love Old English as well. Learning Old Norse would give me the opportunity to do some philological research :). Up until recently, I never considered other Scandinavian languages. But my university offers courses in Swedish, so who knows.
1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5333 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 20 of 42
18 January 2013 at 7:04am | IP Logged 
@Limey75: You need to change your title to Nordic languages or to remove Icelandic and Faroese from your
list. Only Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are Scandinavian languages. If you want to include the whole
family you must use the word Nordic which is a more comprehensive term :-)
1 person has voted this message useful



daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4520 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 21 of 42
18 January 2013 at 8:37pm | IP Logged 
These terms are actually used ambiguously and inconsistently. Scandinavian can be interpreted geographically, which would include Danish (actually not sure about this one), Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish. Or it can be interpreted as North-Germanic, which would include the languages limey listed, but not Finnish.
Nordic on the other hand could include the languages listed by limey plus Finnish, Saami and even "Greenlandish" (ie. Kalaallisut). Or, in a narrower sense, as you used it.
I think the only unambiguous term would be North-Germanic.

Edited by daegga on 18 January 2013 at 8:39pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4357 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 22 of 42
19 January 2013 at 9:29am | IP Logged 
I listened to the first couple of pimsleur assimil for danish, and then stopped because I already have too much in my hands. I have a danish friend that I meet every summer in greece, and I wanted to surprise her with my danish! It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I can actually pronounce it! Hopefully I'll spend some time with it before the summer. I was never attracted to learn a scandinavian language before, but friendship will do that to you. My danish friend speaks excellent English and German, by the way.
1 person has voted this message useful



NorwegianNYC
Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4338 days ago

10 posts - 21 votes
Speaks: English, Norwegian*, German

 
 Message 23 of 42
27 January 2013 at 9:41pm | IP Logged 
Scandinavia is made up of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Scandinavian languages, however, is
the same as North Germanic languages, and consists of Danish, Faroese, Icelandic,
Nowegian, Swedish - and the rare Elfdalin and Gutnish.
2 persons have voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6702 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 24 of 42
28 January 2013 at 1:50am | IP Logged 
The 'Nordic' languages include Icelandic and Faroese, so the logical thing would be to reserve the word 'Scandinavian' for Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and a few others like those mentioned by NorwegianNYC: Elfdalin and Gutnish. But in practice you can't trust that everyone will stick to that distinction.

Finnish, the Sami languages and Greenlandic are obviously not Nordic or Scandinavian languages, even though Greenland (so far) is part of Denmark and Finland is regarded as one of five Nordic countries.

But does it really matter here? The important thing is that the survey mentions 3 'continental' Nordic languages and two 'insular' languages. And the votes clearly go to Swedish and Norwegian. Danish lags far behind, probably because of the rumours about a difficult pronunciation, whereas Icelandic has more votes than you would expect alone from its current number of speakers, probably because of the Sagas (which effectively means that the Icelandic votes also cover those who might be interested in Old Norse). Faroese gets one vote, and I doubt that any other dialects or vanishing minority languages within the group would get any votes even if they were on the list. I have once written something about an Old Gutnish saga, and I have written some tentative messages in Southern Jutish, but that's marginal compared to the interest there is for the languages on the list, and I don't even remember whether anybody else has commented on and quoted or wiritten new stuff in the 'small' languages or in dialects.

Norway is a special case because of its two official standard. I have chosen to try to emulate New Norwegian, even though I can't be totally consistent because I haven't got a dictionary from something (eg. Bokmål) into New Norwegian, nor a grammar (although I have read that there is one available now). As stated elsewhere the reason is that I find Bokmål boring because it is too close to Danish. Actually hardcore Danish dialects look more exotic on paper than most of the New Norwegian I have seen on the internet. But the Norwegians themselves predominantly use Bokmål - even if they are far more diverse in their dialects than the written sources suggest. I don't remember whether any other 'outsider' has made the same choice. It would also be interesting to know whether whose who study spoken Norwegian try to adhere to one group of dialects or just let the things they hear decide where they end up (as I do).


Edited by Iversen on 29 January 2013 at 6:39am



3 persons have voted this message useful



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