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Tell me about Swedish vs. Norwegian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5444 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 17 of 21 30 May 2012 at 7:03am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, native speakers will, but what about foreigners? 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6900 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 21 30 May 2012 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I quote myself (Which Nordic language?):
I'd take that "the language by which you can understand other Scandinavian languages the best" part with a grain of salt, since I believe that applies more to a native Norwegian than any learner of the language. Unless one learns Norwegian in Norway, one isn't very likely to get exposure to spoken Danish (or Swedish), which is what this passive understanding is about (in my opinion). And from Switching from Norwegian to Swedish: Whether a learner of Danish/Norwegian/Swedish happens to get decent passive skills in the other two languages depends on a lot of factors. I recently read a book about multi-lingual families, and one of the example cases was a family where a native English speaker who had learned Norwegian was simply NOT good enough to follow Swedish/Danish. I think the same can be (and has been) said about the Slavic languages, certain Romance languages (Portuguese/Galician/Spanish/Catalan). Learning one of them won't give you the others "for free". 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4613 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 19 of 21 30 May 2012 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I can understand written Norwegian and Danish without too much trouble. I can understand spoken Norwegian better than Danish (how well exactly I'm not sure). If I went to either country I don't think it would take so long to learn to understand.
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| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4740 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 20 of 21 30 May 2012 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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1. No language comes for free
2. We can't compare native speakers with 20-30 of learning and exposure with foreign students: Slovenians understand Serbo-Croatian because of exposure, the same thing happens with Norwegians in respect to Swedish. (Whether a person learning Bokmaal can understand spoken Swedish, or a person learning Serbian can understand Slovenian is another thing). As for Norwegian, there are enough things within Norway to keep you (pre)occupied, Learn Bokmaal first and be familiar with the most common dialects (Oslo, Fredrikstad, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, Tromsø). We Brazilians can perfectly understand Spanish. This does not mean that a person learning Spanish will get two languages for free (Spanish+Portuguese). I wouldn't say Norwegian is easier than Danish or Swedish. Aside from numerous dialects and many forms of writing in the formal style, Norwegian pronunciation is difficult (the pitch accent, silent letters, long and short vowels, and many times you can't say a vowel is short or long by looking at the written form: STJERNA has normally a long stressed E, while BARNA has a short stressed A; SKAL and SKALL are pronounced the same, but their meaning is different). People don't normally learn Spanish because it's halfway between Portuguese and Italian. The same should be applied to Norwegian. Norwegian is difficult, and choosing it just ''to understand Swedish and Danish'' will eventually prove as poor motivation. Most learners of Norwegian switch to Swedish after 2 years of learning (because they say ''the linguistic situation in Norway is a mess'' or things like that). Define first what is the thing you want. Norwegians can understand Swedish, and to Danish, many Norwegian dialects are as difficult to understand as Swedish language is. Edited by Camundonguinho on 30 May 2012 at 6:36pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5121 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 21 of 21 30 May 2012 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||
That's an overstatement. You might be quite familiar with a particular form of Spanish, but you all don't understand it "perfectly". R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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