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Swedish Norwegian Danish - intelligible | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6574 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 41 of 49 06 November 2011 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have to make a real effort to understand what he's saying. It's pretty exhausting, really. I do understand most of it (I tried to not read the English translation, and some parts of what he said slipped by), but hardly in the laid-back way I can listen to Swedish or English. It's a far cry better than my understanding of Danish, though, which is pretty much nil. I really should work on my passive skills with Norwegian and Danish. I never have any contact with the languages, so they are pretty hard to penetrate for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4941 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 42 of 49 11 November 2011 at 12:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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So, make up your mind Scandinavians!!! hahaha.
The way Ari describes listening to a Norwegian, "It's exhausting", sounds exactly how a Spanish speaker would feel about listening to a Portuguese. Yet, I have been told that Swedish/Norwegian/Danish are somewhat closer than even Spanish/Portuguese are. With your mind fully into it, most Spanish speakers can understand the Portuguese without any prior training (though the first couple of times it may be incredibly difficult and the Portuguese speaker may make use of ''mommy'' talk to make himself clear), yet some Scandinavians also claim difficulty understanding the other languages in the continuum. Perhaps the different opinions I hear are because people are describing different things to me without being specific: some may refer to ORAL and others to WRITING, but assume that I know which one they mean. I picked up an Ikea instruction booklet a few weeks ago that was lying on the floor of the parking lot at the local branch. It's great because it has a dozen languages with the exact same instructions so it's nice to compare. Now, I know the translations in such booklets are sometimes not perfect, but at least in the versions I can judge with 100% confidence (English and Spanish), and about 50-75% confidence (German, French, and Portuguese), they seem pretty well translated. The Danish and Norwegian instructions do look very very similar. The Swedish almost but not as similar. Now of course to you guys nothing I just said is a surprise, I'm just giving the impressions by someone who rarely before had even glanced at reading these languages and has never even picked up a lesson on them. I could recognize several individual words; the interesting part is that a year ago I would have understood virtually nothing, because it was my German Wortschatz that helped my in 80% of the words I recognized. Because my German and French are coming along at a speed where I am noticing marked improvement and hopefully by middle to late next year I have achived my C1-C2 goal + Portuguese, I have started to look at Swedish and Italian, the two languages I want to tackle as my ''reward'' for learning the other three. Right now my whole day is taken by the languages I am studying, because of the high level I want to reach in them. With 5 languages behind me, and with the easier target level in Swedish and Italian, I hope it will be much easier (not that I want it to be necessarily, just expecting that to be the case). My main focus will be Mandarin, the other two will be my ''keep it fun'' languages, since I know I can get some basic fluency in them with minimal effort compared to Mandarin. Of course, I have the rest of my life to keep improving them, but I won't be in a "race" like I am now with German/French/Portuguese; it will more of a relaxing hobby. I love how Swedish (the Scandinavian languages), sound in general: so many vowels! I think that's what makes it sound nice and fluid (whereas Spanish sounds like a weapon because the vowels are so pure and basic). I've been practicing the Swedish vowels already, 15 minutes a day last couple of weeks. Most exist in the other languages I know how to pronounce so they were no problem, the ones that are new to me are /ʉː/ and /ɵ/. The first one I think I have down, the other one is the one that gives me more trouble though I am improving a bit. Looking forward to next summer when I get to learn a North Germanic language and the closest language to Latin (Italian)!! Edited by outcast on 11 November 2011 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6574 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 43 of 49 11 November 2011 at 7:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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It depends on exposure. I very, very rarely meet Norwegians or Danes, or watch/read media in those languages. A couple of years ago I went to Denmark and ended up pretending to be an American in order to stop them from speaking to me in a language I can't understand. This is the only encounter with Danes (and a Norwegian) I've had pretty much ever. Other people meet our Scandinavian brethren more often, and get used to it. To them it's quite intelligible. I suspect that if I spent a couple of months listening to Norwegian radio I'd have no problems.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 44 of 49 11 November 2011 at 8:45am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree, it is all about exposure, and I suspect you would be up to speed in a couple of days, or at the most a week, if you started to listen to Norwegian on a regular basis. I had massive exposure to Swedish from age 4 to age 17 (my television years). and there is no Swedish dialect I do not understand. I may have to focus to understand some of the less common ones, but I would struggle less with them than with some of the Norwegian dialects. The last 30 years I have been exposed to Swedish regularly, but not so frequently in a business setting,let's say 6 times a year, both with various Swedish accents and Finnish Swedish. I do not recall having had any problem understanding anything. With the Danes I have to focus a lot more, because I have not had that kind of exposure as a child. The only difficulty here is the pronunciation and the occasional unknown expressions. The vocabulary is very similar. I would guess that if I spent a week listening to it I would have no problems at all. I also meet Danes regularly in a business setting , and have no problems understanding them then. I do suspect that they slow down their speech a little though. If Norwegians understand 95% if they speak at regular speech, Swedes understand 85% and Finns might understand 75%. That makes it worth while to slow down a bit. I am surprised that people find that Spanish, Italian and Portuguese is as close. I have seen studies which claim that Slovak and Czech are just as close, but not that these three Romance languages are that close. The first time I went to Portugal, I was fluent in Spanish and I went there with a Spanish friend. We felt sure that we would understand most of what people said. Wrong. We couldn't even order a meal in a restaurant. We ended up having to go to the counter, look at what others were having, and point at it, to get any food at all. The next couple of times I have been there I have however been able to communicate, with me speaking Spanish and them speaking Portuguese, but I would not say that there is more than a 70% understanding. When my Portuguese colleague speaks with my Spanish colleagues, she will always go into Spanish, because she understands (and speaks) Spanish, but he does not understand Portuguese. When they speak with Italian colleagues they speak English. This is only anecdotal eveidence, of course, but until I see a serious study which says otherwise, I do not believe that they are anywhere near as close as the Scandinavian languages. In the 20 years I have been to international meetings I have not once observed Italians, Portuguese and Spaniards having a conversation with each other using their national languages. The Scandinavians do that every single time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6574 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 45 of 49 11 November 2011 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you can understand this, your Swedish is better than mine. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 46 of 49 11 November 2011 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Eh - no. I knew I should have qualified that. Something along the lines of "I have never heard a Swedish diealect I do not understand". Of course, now I cannot even say that :-) Where on earth was that dialect from? It sounded like Finnish or "Kvensk" with the occasional Swedish word thrown in. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4941 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 47 of 49 11 November 2011 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is good then, because it makes me learning a Scandinavian language even more compelling, I do get 20 million speakers and not just half or less than half of that. And I knew all along that if I learned how to read one of them, I could read material from the other two without major inconvenience (since reading Portuguese for a Spanish and viceversa is much easier and requires very little training). I do look at demographics as part of choosing a language. I love languages period. Thus I could learn Mirandese or Quechua and be content if I just based myself on "choose a language". But because I do also want to get bang for my time-bucks, I look into demographics (how many speakers are there and availability of content), geographic relevance (is this language important where I tend to dwell), and ease of learning (how close is the language to languages I command). Based on that I could choose Dutch over a Scandinavian language, specially since being in Argentina a lot we do get an unusual level of interaction with Dutch visitors, and I have interacted with them: either for tourism (including lots of gay tourists since Argentina is seen as a more tolerant or cosmopolitan nation in Latin America), and Dutch field hockey teams visit often, since Argentina and Netherlands have a legendary rivalry in the women's side of the sport. But I want to learn a language from the North Germanic branch, since I already knew two from the southern part. That tipped my decision finally. Which is why I am also tempted to learn Quechua, Mapuche or Guarani some day, given that Argentina has hundreds of thousands of South American immigrants from all our neighboring countries, and many speak those languages... even as their only language! (many come from very rural areas of Bolivia, Peru, Paraugay, Ecuador, even Brazil... they work in agriculture or clothing factories because they obviously take those jobs at a fraction of the salary an Argentine would demand). I just wish there was more content to read in them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6574 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 48 of 49 11 November 2011 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Överkalix. But there are few such dialects today, and they'll be gone pretty soon. Here is a younger woman from the same region. The website I got these samples from, Swedia 2000, is a pretty great place to listen to Swedish dialects, collected in 2000. Look around and you'll most likely find that apart from Överkalix, you can understand pretty much anything, especially the younger speakers. I find some of the Finnish dialects (of Swedish, that is) require some effort to get, but all in all, I can understand most people in Sweden. Pro tip: If one is studying Swedish, this is a great resource to get some varied speaker input. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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