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How "strong" is the intelligibility ... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| laban Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 5822 days ago 87 posts - 96 votes  Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, English, Italian Studies: Norwegian, German | Message 1 of 6 26 March 2009 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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between German and the scandinavian languages? and who(speaker) would find it easier to learn the others language? (in that same comparison, with reference to each of the scandinavian languages - if it matters).
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| eoinda Tetraglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5948 days ago 101 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Spanish, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 6 26 March 2009 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a speaker of Swedish I understand some written German without ever studying it but spoken German is
impossible. German and Swedish (as well as the other Scandinavian languages) are quite closely related so you will probably have a bit of a discount but you will obviously have to work hard as with any language. Edit:typo Edited by eoinda on 26 March 2009 at 6:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 6 26 March 2009 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a German speaker, I can read Swedish and Norwegian for the gist but it's a pain but not Danish. Spoken language is mostly unintelligible for me: I understand the odd word here and there in Swedish and Norwegian - more in Norwegian but that might be due to the fact that I've been obsessed enough with a Norwegian band to learn the lyrics for two of their albums by heart, but it's not even enough to know the main topic of a conversation. I don't know about Norwegians and Swedes, but I think Danish speakers are likely to understand more German than the other way around thanks to television.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 4 of 6 26 March 2009 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am not a native speaker of German, but I have recognised words in written Danish, Swedish and Norwegian from German. I would say there is limited intelligibility in the written forms, probably very little in the spoken.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 6 26 March 2009 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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The initial intelligibility is somewhat low, but it's extremely easy to pick up 'moderate' intelligibility very quickly.
With extremely poor German, I found a few hours was enough to start reading Swedish wikipedia, and after a few hours of that, written Swedish was...... not entirely transparent, but often/usually readable for the gist. I don't think I could properly read a serious novel in Swedish, but the only time I've had access to physical Swedish novels (very light romance novels, while I was on vacation, browsing through a bookstore in a touristy place in Italy), I could read and follow them pretty easily. The spoken language is harder, but I found that with repeated listening, early Swedish Assimil lessons very quickly became clear, even without looking at the book. Written Norwegian/Danish don't seem much harder, but I've spent very close to no time with them; I doubt I'd understand them orally. I don't know if I would after a few hours of listening. Edit: I've also been in chatrooms where other people use various Scandinavian languages; sometimes I understand them, and sometimes I get it disastrously wrong. It's a matter of register/vocabulary/etc - technical articles are much easier than everyday colloquial language (even the absolute basics), for me. Edited by Volte on 26 March 2009 at 11:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 6 27 March 2009 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
Seconded. And it's exactly the same thing the other way around. Knowing Swedish your comprehension of German is limited to some random items here and there, but if you study some of the basics your comprehension improves very quickly. It's a matter of familiarising yourself with a number of typical patterns. After that you can recognise a lot of vocabulary that you haven't even seen before. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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