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Which Scandinavian language to study? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4434 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin | Message 129 of 169 28 May 2013 at 12:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, that helps. I definitely want to learn finnish since my grandma is finnish and i would love to speak to her in
her native language (even though she has perfect English). then i'm leaning towards norwegian because as many of you have said it's the "middle man". or swedish because it is used so much in finland (so any trips there to visit family could be used to practice both). sorry danish! =P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4296 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 130 of 169 28 June 2013 at 10:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am not sure if this reason has been considered before, but in terms of usefulness,
Sweden offer dual citizenship and are part of the EU. Norway do not adhere to either of those, Denmark do not allow dual citizenship. However, Finland adhere to both, but Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are close to each other in the terms of language similarity. So I was tihnking if one wanted close understand between languages, EU and dual citizenship if they decide to immigrate there, Swedish seems to be the answer. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 131 of 169 09 August 2013 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This is a bit out of the blue for me but I'm curious if I should even bother with the following idea.
I have about a 50% chance of going to Denmark next month for a few days and am wondering if I should even bother getting a course such as TY Danish just to get survival-level understanding of the language after completing the first few units.I already have Beginner's Norwegian, and an English-Norwegian/Norwegian dictionary on my bookshelf to go with DLI Norwegian Headstart. Because I don't have a lot of time, I was thinking of trying to pick up some survival Norwegian so that I can at least read signs and understand basic instructions in Denmark. I am aware of Danish's phonological "strangeness" to other Scandinavians and am wondering as a foreigner with a potentially low ability in Norwegian, would spoken Danish be gobbledygook anyway since I'd lack the ability to fill in the blanks unlike those who are fluent in Norwegian and Swedish? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4834 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 132 of 169 09 August 2013 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Survival level Norwegian should enable you to read Danish signs, etc I think. For the goggledegook, I wonder if this might help: Copenhagencast Podcasts are free. Optional transcripts are chargeable. (And I've just noticed that Louise has put up some new podcasts. They seemed to have gone into abeyance the last time I looked, which is some time last year. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5340 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 133 of 169 09 August 2013 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Then please enlighten me when it comes to the differences. Which grammatical elements or vocabulary do you find in Bokmål that you do not find in Standard Eastern Norwegian and vice versa? I will not change my view simply because you say so. You will have to convince me by giving actual examples. When what I hear around me every day, and what I speak myself every day contradicts the official and politically correct view, then I would like to see actual arguments. I fail to understand why even some Norwegians seem to be on a mission to make Norwegian appear to be a complicated language to learn when it is not. Yes, we have two official languages, but you will rarely see Nynorsk used unless you are in Western Norway, and by the time your Norwegian is so good that you can even identify the differences, you will have no problems understanding it, particularly because it is getting closer and closer to the more commonly used Bokmål. I have stopped trying to help my daughters with their homework in Nynorsk, because a huge part of the variants I learned at school are now considered obsolete, and have been replaced with words that are used in Bokmål. And yes we have lots of dialects, but so do most other countries, Sweden and Denmark included. I have not figured out whether learners of Norwegian and a few Norwegians find it prestigious to speak a language which is considered complicated, but since most studies show that Norwegian is one of the easiest languages to learn for an English speaker, I wish they would stop. The only point I will concede, that actually may make it harder to practise your Norwegian, is that people tend to swich to English if they hear you struggle. I think that is common all over Scandinavia though, and if you explain that you would like to speak the local language, most people will be happy to do so. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5459 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 134 of 169 10 August 2013 at 10:01am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure where one draws the line between Standard Eastern Norwegian and local dialects, but forms like gutta (Bokmål: guttene), høl (BM: hull/hol), byne (BM: begynne), finni (BM: funnet) and skolen pronounced something like skoorn are common in the area where Standard Eastern Norwegian is spoken. Unlike Standard Eastern Norwegian, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Riksmål can be read or spoken with any regional Norwegian accent or intonation. Edited by tractor on 10 August 2013 at 10:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6915 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 135 of 169 10 August 2013 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hmm... I hear features like swallowed endings, vowel shifts, soft/slurred consonants, alternative verb endings, retroflexed sounds etc. everyday in Swedish too, but I'm not saying Swedish is superdifficult, that there is a diglossic situation and so on.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5459 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 136 of 169 11 August 2013 at 1:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think many people claim Norwegian is very difficult. Edited by tractor on 11 August 2013 at 1:39am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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