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Swedish after German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| t.chippendale Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 18 28 July 2010 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I am studying German and have reached an intermediate level. In the future I hope to branch off this German base and perhaps tackle some other Germanic languages: particularly the Scandinavian languages.
To what extent would a proficiency in German (and English*) help in the learning of a Scandinavian language like Swedish. I have heard that Swedish has a similar grammar to English, and shares much of its vocabulary with German. To what extent is this true? Also what should a prospective student know about the Swedish Language before attempting it? ...pronunciation? tonal? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6080 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 18 28 July 2010 at 2:31am | IP Logged | ||
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As you might know, the Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible and fairly
similar. I always considered German to be Norwegian + English + the ch-sound in "ich". I expect German to be a fairly easy language for me to learn, and so I would assume it would work the same the other way around as well. It would indeed seem to share a lot of grammar and word order with English (although not exactly the same), and a lot of the vocabulary is similar to both English and German. Overall I would believe the Scandinavian language family to be the easiest of the "bigger" languages to learn for you after German, save Dutch of course. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5353 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 18 28 July 2010 at 4:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with mrhenrik's thoughts. I am also at an intermediate level of German, and am working through Dutch at the moment. When I get to a decent level of Dutch, I plan on working through one of the Scandinavian tongues (either Norwegian or Swedish, as Danish's pronunciation is terrible, from what I have seen). I think these tongues are some of the easier ones to learn for someone who speaks English and German, though finding someone with whom to practice might be a bit harder ;)
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 4 of 18 28 July 2010 at 5:21am | IP Logged | ||
I can only imagine! All the Scandinavians I've ever met have had excellent English, which would make it that much harder to convince them to speak to you in Danish/Norwegian/Swedish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| t.chippendale Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 5 of 18 28 July 2010 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your thoughts. I am fairly certain after I learn and retain my German I will tackle a Scandinavian language. Having to choose one to start with, Swedish jumps to mind as the best choice. It is the largest and most important Scandinavian country, and I think the language sounds better than Danish.
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| nuriayasmin Senior Member Germany Joined 5244 days ago 155 posts - 210 votes | Message 6 of 18 28 July 2010 at 8:20am | IP Logged | ||
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My mother tongue is German and I've recently started to learn Norwegian. Somehow it's funny that mrhenrik finds German to be a mixture between English and Norwegian because for me Norwegian is a mixture between English and German :-). However, Norwegian has some unique grammatical structures which one has got to get used to but compared to German the Norwegian grammar is much easier to learn. I guess it's more or less the same with Swedish. I like Norwegian a lot but I also love the country so that's not very surprising.
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 7 of 18 28 July 2010 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Swedish also has the advantage of being an official language of two countries – Sweden and Finland – including the Åland Islands where Finnish is not official. And unlike Norwegian, there's only one standard variety of Swedish. Edited by Levi on 28 July 2010 at 8:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| RVFA Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5183 days ago 13 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian | Message 8 of 18 27 November 2010 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, like most Europeans, swedes will not speak Swedish to you unless you can speak it quite well (= intermediate level at least). I don't know about other Europeans but swedes do not do this in order to be rude but to make the communication effective - if you ask me something in Swedish I want to answer you in the best way possible, and if hear that you really struggle in Swedish it does not give me confidence that you will understand me well. If however,you speak Swedish acceptably well, it gives me confidence that you will understand my explanation in Swedish and so I will use Swedish. In response to the first question. I definetely think that knowing German will make learning Swedish easier. For one thing you find the same vowel-sounds in Swedish, and the consonant-sounds are similar too but are not as strong as in German. As a swede I also recognize 30-40% of German words, so I assume it works the same the other way around. As far as tones go, I don't think it differs much from German, they are both even-tempered cultures after all. So we only use tones to emphasize words. Choosing between Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian is a more difficult task I think. Although there seems to be more language material available for Swedish. Culturally and politically, Sweden probably has a stronger international influence (apart from oil-matters). Norway is not an EU member so that could be a problem if you decide to work there one day. Economically the Danish economy is slightly better than the Swedish. Danish is only spoken by 6 million or so people, Swedish by 10 million plus its the 2nd official language of Finland (home of Nokia). Do some investigation about the countries and their cultures and see which appeals to you the most. Edited by RVFA on 27 November 2010 at 3:21pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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