|
 |
Tackling Scandinavian languages | ||
Tags: Scandinavian Languages | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4010 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 1 of 39 29 September 2014 at 1:01am | IP Logged | ||
|
I have three Scandinavian languages on my hit list: Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. When I get to an estimated A2 level in Maltese and finish my main German vocab list on Memrise, I want to start having a serious go at Danish and either Swedish or Norwegian. I've been dabbling in Danish already with Duolingo (Jeg er en kvinde og jeg spiser sandwichene!) and I've started with a new app called Fabulo. These three are at the top (not literally but in my head) of my list so I'd really like to do them. But since they're so similar how can I minimize the inevitable confusion?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4050 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 2 of 39 29 September 2014 at 9:56am | IP Logged | ||
|
Hi!
Norwegian and Danish are very similar when written but different when spoken. The usual path is Norwegian - Swedish - Danish for whom wants to take all three. If you want to do Danish first, probably the best thing to do is not to start Norwegian until you have a very good level, and put Swedish in the middle. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 39 29 September 2014 at 11:02am | IP Logged | ||
|
Once you know one very well, the other two come almost directly anyways. I have studied
neither Norwegian nor Danish in depth, but I understand a fair amount of Norwegian and even a bit of Danish. If you can read one, you can read the others mostly. The real problem is translating it into active skills and pronunciation. In that aspect Norwegian and Swedish are close together but Danish isn't - however Swedish orthography differs markedly from the other two. I would say, simply pick one, in this case Danish, and then learn how to pronounce the other ones and learn which words are not the same in either language (and also learn how the words that are the same, of which there are many, are spelled). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 39 29 September 2014 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
|
I think Tristano's advice is very wise. If you do choose to start out with Danish then you should try to get some very clearly spoken sources to listen to - and in practice that excludes recent films as material for intensive study. You can watch them (with subtitles), but it will be very hard to see the connection between the sounds of ordinary spoken Danish and the spelling. Once you know what people here are supposed to be saying you can better relate that to the sounds they actually emit.
If you start out with Norwegian then the problem isn't as much clarity as dialectal differences - but that is mostly a problem when you listen. Most written sources are based on Bokmål, but on TV Nynorsk (or at least Nynorsk-like elements) are more common. I don't think it will be a big problem to read materials in two or three languages extensively at the same time (if you can) - the problem is to choose what you will study intensively. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 5 of 39 29 September 2014 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Yeah, I'm generally all for simultaneous learning, but for now it's better to focus on one, at least with Duolingo and other production-oriented resources. Also, how did you pick Danish and what do you want to get out of these three langs?
I also tend to think that goals like "finish a Memrise list" are better for focusing on your progress in German than for deciding when to add another language. And you'd definitely benefit from reaching a higher level in German first. Do you have an interest in linguistics/learning more about the connections between English, German and the Scandinavian languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4524 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 6 of 39 29 September 2014 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
|
If you just want to learn 2 of them, go for Danish and Swedish. Norwegians won't find it
so hard to understand you when you speak to them in Danish with Swedish pronunciation. And you will be able to understand a great deal of Norwegian with those 2 languages, it's just another variation of the theme. If you ultimately want to learn all three of them, pick one and learn that language very well. You seem to have chosen Danish, which has a lot of great resources to pick from once you are more advanced. After that you can add the other 2 languages passively without much strain (the order doesn't really matter). Then you can still decide if it is worth activating all 3 of them. On the matter of confusion: for your passive skills it helps that they are so similar. There are a bunch of false friends between the languages, but you'll figure those out pretty quickly. For your active skills it is more of a problem. One way to tackle this is to have one primary language and establish some strategies how you can be understood in the other two countries (change pronunciation, use different synonyms, etc). Or you could learn Danish and Swedish actively (they are different enough) and speak Swedish or Danish with "hard" pronunciation to Norwegians. Edited by daegga on 29 September 2014 at 5:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4010 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 7 of 39 29 September 2014 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
After learning German for a while, I decided that I wanted to learn other Germanic languages. I guess it may be a linguistic interest, I've never really thought about it before. They just started appealing to me :/ And you asked a good question: What do I want to get out of them? Truth be told, I just learn languages for fun. I'm just a line cook, nothing special and I don't really have any driving professional need to learn ANY language. I do plan on watching shows and reading in the languages I learn. But that's about it. Edited by Tollpatchig on 29 September 2014 at 5:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4752 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 8 of 39 30 September 2014 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Swedish would be the most practical option,
and Norwegian Nynorsk the more interesting one (linguistic-, history- and dialect-wise). 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
