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Polyglot bashing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 25 of 32 11 February 2006 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's quite easy communicating with Norwegians. Danes are a bit harder to understand, plus the fact that they at times choose to begin the conversation in English.
It's a pity that Swedish television doesn't broadcast that much in Norwegian/Danish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Steve Diglot Groupie South Africa Joined 6897 days ago 56 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Norwegian | Message 26 of 32 11 February 2006 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Would you say that Norwegian is a separate language, linguistically? I know this is quite a hot issue, but i'm really quite interested..
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| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 27 of 32 11 February 2006 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes. And no. :) There are differences between "Norwegian" (two "languages"!) and "Swedish", regarding grammar, pronounciation, vocabulary and much more. But - even the dialects of Sweden has differences from Standard Swedish. And the two languages are just too similar. Not that Swedes can speak Norwegian, or vice versa, but anybody could read a newspaper article in either language without too much of a problem. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 12 February 2006 at 10:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Steve Diglot Groupie South Africa Joined 6897 days ago 56 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Norwegian | Message 28 of 32 11 February 2006 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I realise that there's more of a dialect continuum than a definite set of two languages and that Nynorsk complicates things somewhat. I'd really like to know, though, how similar Bokmål and Standard Swedish(is there a name for it?) are. Not in terms of writing, because obviously Bokmål is based heavily on Danish, but the spoken components of both.
It's a very odd linguistic situation, it fascinates me... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 32 11 February 2006 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spoken Bokmål, the Norwegian that I believe that most Swedes are familiar with, is just as melodic as Swedish with the pitch accents and all that. A few weeks ago I saw an interview with the Norwegian author Erlend Loe who has almost the same melody as the Swedish Värmland accent - the only difference was the vocabulary. Well, not really, but the similarity was striking. No Norwegian accent sounds exactly as Standard Swedish (or Rikssvenska), however.
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| Skandinav Hexaglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 6890 days ago 139 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 30 of 32 12 February 2006 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd have to agree with Jeff Linqvist on this one. It is really a shame that the cultural exchange between brother nations is so limited. Luckily we have state television (SVT, DR and NRK) that occassionally co-produce TV-shows or show each others TV-programs.
Danes who switch into English whenever they communicate with Swedes or Norwegians are definitely traitors big time. They should have their tongue cut off. I would say that all three are languages, but they are very close. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6870 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 31 of 32 04 June 2006 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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A nice proof of the common grund is that in at least some border areas between Norway and Sweden, banks don't charge a fee when exchanging Swedish kronor to Norwegian kroner or the other way round. They say basically that we're the same people living in the same area, speaking the same language and all.
I'm lucky, because I live within a few hours of either Norway or Denmark. Scandinavian is one language to me, but don't try selling that idea to a person from the far east or north of Sweden. My father, with his roots in the very south of Sweden, always told us kids that we were a mongrel breed, mother being born in the mid-east, having had her early years in the very north and finally maturing in the far east (again, of Sweden). So, father being a sea-captain and all, us kids developed early on an acceptance of and a curiosity before foreign languages, and also realized the practical use for more than our native Swedish. Father used English all over the world, knew some German and Spanish, and picked up assorted phrases from languages between the Persian Gulf and Japan. Mother had English, German and some French from her not too many years in school. I never noticed any "bashing" in Sweden. Most people are just awed when I matter-of-fact-ly tell them from which languages I translate, so I tell them that it's mainly just other Germanic languages, so it's not that difficult. (To be honest, the real difficulty is that I know my subject areas; the language transition often comes second.) And I don't tell them the number of other languages that I (with very varying degree of success) have studied at university level. If I ever buy a TV set, I would first make sure that there is a cable company that could provide programs in a dozen languages... Edited by Lugubert on 04 June 2006 at 1:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7018 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 32 04 June 2006 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry to go off-topic here, but I was momentarily stunned when I read this...
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