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Difficulty of Swedish/Norwegian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6318 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 9 of 12 04 June 2010 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a bit of trouble picking up the tone words, since I never know which are which unless I'm explicitly told. Has any swedish linguist ever compiled a list of all the words in Swedish that are differentiated by tone?
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| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 10 of 12 04 June 2010 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
You are thinking about minimal pairs such as the Norwegian* words tanken = the thought and tanken = the tank? * I guess tanken and tanken are minimal pairs in Swedish as well. I don't think there are many such minimal pairs, so the answer to your question is probably "yes". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5308 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 11 of 12 04 June 2010 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Norwegian and Swedish, tune is a element in the flectional system.
NORWEGIAN NOUNS Listing the nouns in the forms indef.sing - def.sing - indef.plur. - def.plur tank(1) - tank-en(1) - tank-er(2) - tank-ene(2) = tank tank-e(2) - tank -en(2) - tank-er(2) - tank-ene(2) = thought strå(1) - strå-et(1) - strå(1) - strå-ene/a (1) - straw The numbers mark the tune pattern. As you can see the words collapse in the plural. NORWEGIAN VERBS Listing the words in the forms: Infinitie - present - preterite - past participle Weak verbs: kast-e (2) - kast-er (2) - kast-et/a (2) - kast-et/a(2) - throw spis-e (2) - spis-er(1) - spis-te(2) - spist-t(1) -eat svømm-e(2) - svømme-er(2) - svøm-te(2) - svøm-t(1) - swim Strong verbs: finn-e(2) - finn-er(1) - fant(1) - funn-et(2) - find There are hundreds of minimal pairs, at least in Norwegian, but if you know the declension/conjugation class, you will often also know the tune pattern. A good grammer will take acount of not only the endings, but also tune pattern when presenting inflextional classes. As you see above two of the classes of weak verbs only differ in tune pattern. Edited by Aquila123 on 05 June 2010 at 10:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| michi Nonaglot Newbie Austria Joined 5303 days ago 33 posts - 57 votes Speaks: Dutch*, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese Studies: Turkish, Arabic (Written), Serbo-Croatian, Indonesian, Japanese | Message 12 of 12 15 June 2010 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Comparing Norwegian and Swedish I would definitely say that Norwegian is easier. E.g. whereas Swedish has the plural endings -er, -ar and -or in Norwegina these are all -er. However I don't think that for an English speaker Swedish is that more difficult. The Swedish vocabulary is similar to English and the grammar is quite easy too.
A few years ago I was in the same position that I wanted to learn one Scandinavian language well. I had already learned some Norwegian and have some relatives in Norway, but in the end I choose Swedish. My main arguments were practical: more people speak Swedish than Norwegian, it is an official language in Finland too, Sweden has a rich literature - but so has Norway - and Stockholm is a much more interesting town than Oslo. Moreover Swedish and Norwegian are more or less mutually intelligible and when I was in Norway I spoke Swedish with the people and it worked out well. However the same would be the case if you speak Norwegian in Sweden. Edited by michi on 15 June 2010 at 6:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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