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Danish is the hardest Germanic language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 9 of 40 22 July 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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nuriayasmin,
Norwegian and Swedish have a different word and sentence melody than German or English. It seems like the brain doesn't recognize it as language but rather as "music" (or noise), so it is processed differently (this is some wild speculation here...). Only exposure to the spoken language can change that, preferably using only vocabulary you already understand in the written language. For an easy start, I recommend audio books by Erlend Loe, the book "Naiv.Super" for example is used by a lot of Norwegian learners as their first book in that language. It's really really easy. When I was in Sweden, I found that I could actually understand the words that were being said because of my knowledge of Norwegian if I could keep up my concentration. But the difference in sentence melody made it really hard to concentrate. I was just not used to it. On a side note, a lot of Germans have problems understanding British English (especially non-RP) and more so Scottish English, because they are only used to American English through Hollywood productions. It's the same problem as yours with the Scandinavian languages: not enough exposure. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 10 of 40 22 July 2012 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||
I second that part on Icelandic. It's nearly impossible to understand people at normal speed! The same could be said about Faroese, I think. I don't have enough experience with Faroese to really judge it though. Swedish is a quite well understandable language. I have never studied any Danish, but I have heard the rumours about the terrible phonology of the language. If you don't already know it, you might enjoy this little sketch, which was aired on Norwegian TV: Danish Language Edited by Josquin on 22 July 2012 at 1:29am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Corinwright1994 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4610 days ago 27 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 11 of 40 22 July 2012 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
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@Serpent put it this way, I've listened to more Danish than Spanish, but probably
understand Spanish spoken at a faster pace than Danish. @Josquin yeah, i've seen that sketch , it's hilarious! :-D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 12 of 40 22 July 2012 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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This was at nuriyasmin:) As I said, I totally understand how tons of listening in Danish can bring very little improvement :S On the other hand, I don't believe there's anything inherently difficult about listening comprehension in general - those who say so just haven't done enough listening... unless they're learning Danish too :D
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| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6108 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 13 of 40 22 July 2012 at 4:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I've studied both German and Danish, and I must say I found Danish considerably easier (admittedly, knowing German first makes Danish easier in itself, but I can't imagine I would have gotten the same effect to the same degree if moving in the opposite direction). I'd say the actual individual sounds of Danish--even the more unique sounds like the soft D--seem much less "unusual" coming from an English/German perspective than those of Norwegian or especially Swedish, and even more so of Icelandic. The mumbling of native speakers can certainly be a problem (on my first trip to Denmark, I remember finding it quite remarkable that I could understand certain speakers without the slightest bit difficulty, yet others were barely intelligible at all), but this effect is probably exaggerated somewhat; I'm currently studying French, and I'd say the slur factor in this language is probably rather a bit more severe than in Danish.
The biggest problem, I'd say, is that there are considerably fewer high-quality, comprehensive learning resources than in the case of German or even Dutch, and that finding opportunities to practice the language in conversation outside of Scandinavia (or, say, northern Germany) is considerably more difficult than in the case of the more popular Germanic languages. But that's true for Norwegian and (perhaps to a sightly lesser degree) Swedish as well. On the whole, I'd say Danish probably isn't really considerably harder than the other continental Scandinavian languages (which have their own problems, such as high dialectical variation), it simply has a highly "Oh, lordy" factor for the beginning learner due to its peculiarities being more immediately obvious. But this can be overcome in time. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 14 of 40 22 July 2012 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Danish is almost like Norwegian, but with different pronunciation. So, I don't think it's the hardest Germanic language. The hardest is definitely Icelandic.
In modern Danish, the written word and the pronunciation don't correspond to each other, more often than not, but that is the case of English too. That's why most Danish dictionaries have pronunciation indicated, just like the English dictionaries for foreigners. Edited by Medulin on 22 July 2012 at 1:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 15 of 40 22 July 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
That can be said about any language if you do not know it well enough or do not have enough experience. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5419 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 16 of 40 22 July 2012 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say perhaps the hardest to pronounce and understand at first of the Germanic languages due to its idiosyncratic pronunciation, but is far easier than German grammatically. Spend some time reading novels along with an audiobook and your ability to make sense of speech will improve a lot.
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