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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7318 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes  6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 10 19 March 2005 at 11:55am | IP Logged |
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What would be the advantages and disadvantages to learning one of either Norwegian, Swedish or Danish? Can any one give insight as to how close these languages actually and how long it would take to learn all three languages?
As discussed before, many languages share similarities in the same family, and some, such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish are even mutually intelligible. However there are some differences between them. They are so similar that learning one and the differences will equal to learning 3 languages! (Entirely edited, hopefully doing this would help) Edited by administrator on 21 March 2005 at 5:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| souley Senior Member Joined 7241 days ago 178 posts - 177 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 2 of 10 20 March 2005 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
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I'm a native Swedish speaker, so I can only speak from a native point of view.
However, I believe it's quite easy to learn Norweigan and Danish after you've learnt Swedish. A good friend of mine is now studying in Denmark, and it took him 2,3 weeks to grasp the language and understand what's being said. So it's just about being intuitive and a good listener. I don't understand everything when a Danish or Norwegian person is speaking, but that just because Im not very used to it, if I would travel around the respective countries for a month or two, the language would be no more obstacle. Edited by administrator on 20 March 2005 at 1:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 10 20 March 2005 at 1:11pm | IP Logged |
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A Scandinavian client of mine told me that if you speak one, you can quite easily understand the others.
If you have to learn one from scratch and have no other reasons, Swedish is probably the way to go as this is the largest country of the three. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7256 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 4 of 10 21 March 2005 at 4:50am | IP Logged |
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Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are referred to as the "continental Scandinavian languages," in distinction to the insular Scandinavian languages (Icelandic and Faroese). Together, the five of these constitute the Northern branch of the Germanic family (English, German, and most everything else you could probably name being "Western"; Eastern languages such as Gothic having died out in the early Middle Ages, and there being no indication that a Southern branch ever existed).
In terms of their genetic relationship, Swedish and Danish are closer to each other than either is to Norwegian, but in terms of their historical relationship, Norwegian and Danish are closer to each other than either is to Swedish. This is because Swedish and Danish are Eastern-Northern languages, while Norwegian is Western-Northern. However, the situation gets complicated by the fact that there are two official variants of Norwegian: Bokmål ("book language") and Nynorsk ("new Norwegian"). You may still find them referred to by their earlier names, respectively Riksmål ("language of the kingdom") and Landsmål ("language of the land"). Norway and Denmark were a united kingdom until the dawn of the 20th century, and as the capital was in Copenhagen, Riksmål was identical to Danish in its written form, though pronounced differently. Since then, Bokmål and standard Danish have undergone different orthographic reforms, but they are still essentially the same. Nynorsk, on the other hand, is actually a compound of the Western dialects of Norway, standardized in the 19th century by a linguist named Ivar Aasen. Norwegian as Nynorsk is thus genuinely a Western-Northern language, while Norwegian as Bokmål is more of an Eastern one. More material is available for learning Bokmål than for learning Nynorsk, and most anything advertised as simply "Norwegian" is more likely to be the former than the latter. Lexically, thus, Norwegian and Danish are more similar to each other than either is to Swedish. However, phonetically, Swedish and Norwegian are more similar than either is to Danish. Swedish and Norwegian are both sing-song tonal languages, whereas Danish is distinctively atonal and spoken from the back of the throat with many of the muscles in the mouth continuously contracted. Swedish and Norwegian undoubtedly sound quite different from each other to native speakers, and after you have learned them you can also distinguish them upon overhearing a snippet of conversation, but I think that all those who are unfamiliar with these languages can be excused for thinking that they sound exactly the same. There is no doubt that these three languages are all remarkably similar to each other, on the relationship of Spanish to Portuguese or even closer. I have recounted elsewhere how I, while still a learner of Swedish, found that I could also understand Danish, and before I ever studied Norwegian, I periodically used my Swedish to speak with Norwegians, who would usually ask me where I had learned such good Norwegian. Anecdotes of this type abound, such as that a Swede, a Norwegian, and a Dane can stand around and converse with each other, each using his or her own tongue. I have no doubt that this is possible for some people, but it is clearly not possible for all. Geography, prior exposure, and will to communicate are clearly the key: southern Swedes can generally understand Danish, while northerners cannot. I do not believe that anyone who knows any one of these languages has to study either of the other two as new or different langauges, but there is obviously some adjustment that has to take place, and many people are not willing to do this. Economics does not lie: books are "translated" from these languages into each other for the general reading public, and look at any package or list of instructions for international use - information is provided in all three languages. I have heard that there is a "Nordic Conference" where members of all three governments meet to discuss common policies. For official purposes, they do employ interpreters, but supposedly when the conference is over and the members are talking informally they generally use (can you guess?)... English. Indeed, I fear that the future of all Scandinavian tongues is sealed. At this point in history, it is probably safe to say that all younger Scandinavians are truly bilingual in English. Click on Yahoo's international pages and try to go to the sites that are listed for these languages -- you will be told that they have been shut down because everybody uses the English ones. At any rate, yes, if you know one you also do know the others, though it may take a while to figure out that this is the case. So is there any advantage to choosing one to begin with? Probably not. If you learn in order to read, pick the one that whose authors you like best. Swedish is the largest in terms of native speakers (something like 8 million), whereas Norwegian and Danish have something more like 3 or 4 million each, so if you learn in order to speak to people and even after reading this post you fear that you might have trouble communicating with the others, Swedish would probably be wise, though if you have better opportunities to learn Norwegian or Danish, you should choose them. As long term forum members may know, I favor Assimil methods over others, and those for all three languages are good, but their Swedish is probably the best because it comes in two volumes, the 2nd being essentially the same as their advanced volumes for languages such as English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian, i.e., it is full of interesting cultural and literary material, not just conversational matter for the exercise of grammatical patterns. Edited by Ardaschir on 21 March 2005 at 4:58am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7318 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 21 March 2005 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
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Ardaschir: Thank you very much for answering the question in such detail. So Norwegians write in standard Danish, but with orthographic differences.
I did check out the Yahoo International and clicked for the sites for the 3 countries. This is simply disappointing to see languages go like that. I wonder why they still keep those page holders though. And the Swedes I have happened to meet across the Internet - all of them speak perfect English, it's hard to see mistakes at all. One of them told me that some of the "obscure" subjects (such as Chinese, as offered in his school) all have textbooks in English. They are forced to live with English right from primary school. However, I also started learning English alongside with my mother tongue starting from Kindergarten. But I could not possibly have learned to speak fluent English if I didn't move to a new country. I wonder how much English exposure the Scandinavians get every day. It would be great if we can get audio samples of these langauges to compare their differences too. FX: Should we move some of this information to the Collaborative Section of this forum? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7256 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 6 of 10 22 March 2005 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
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Victor, for Swedes (or Danes or Norwegians) learning English is inherently an easy linguistic task since all these languages are closely related to English, whereas you are coming from a Chinese background, are you not?
On top of this, I believe most Scandinavians get daily exposure to English through television. British and American shows dominate the airways, and they are not dubbed, but rather provided with subtitles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 10 22 March 2005 at 3:09am | IP Logged |
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Victor, if you would like to start a profile of the Swedish or other Scandinavian languages in the Collaborative section of the forum you are welcome to do so!
All you need is take an empty template and begin writing a paragraph or another, based for instance on our discussion here. The Collaborative writing section is not for discussing anything else but the texts to be written, so I think we should keep this fine thread in here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bulldog Newbie Joined 7180 days ago 21 posts - 18 votes | Message 8 of 10 31 March 2005 at 8:33pm | IP Logged |
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Are there any comprehensive programs for any of these languages?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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