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Parallel Scandinavian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| ka9wgn Newbie United States Joined 5836 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 6 10 December 2008 at 1:43pm | IP Logged |
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I am interested in learning Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish simultaneously (rather than one then another). My first focus would be on Norwegian (my ancestry is mixed Scottish and Norwegian), but with the similarities in Swedish and Danish, it seems it would be almost as easy to learn them at the same time, and possibly more confusing to learn them separately later.
I definitely want to learn both major written forms of Norwegian at the same time. My goal is visiting Norway within the next 2-3 years, with side trips to Sweden and Denmark. How well would parallel learning of similar languages work? Has anyone done that? Is there any material available to directly support the idea? Otherwise I am planning to get basic reference material and using the internet as a means to source various content in each of the languages. One example is Youtube videos (searching by language). I might also want to learn Icelandic and Faroese at a later date. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| .automne Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 5836 days ago 56 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: French | Message 2 of 6 10 December 2008 at 3:09pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I don't have any experience with parallel language learning in the way you describe, but here's my personal opinion, anyway:
From a common sense point of view, I think it sounds like a bad idea, or at least sub-optimal. Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are quite similar, true, but that might work against you. For example, some nouns are the same, but feminine in one language and masculine in the other. I imagine it would be very easy to get things like gender, etc mixed up, especially in the important starting phase. Same thing with pronounciation. I think you could very easily end up with an uneasy hybrid of three languages, rather than being able to speak three languages correctly! In other words, paradoxically perhaps, parallel language learning may work better the more different two languages are. I'm learning French right now, and have discarded the idea of also learning Spanish and Italian at the same time, as I'm pretty sure it would just cause confusion. Whatever you opt to do, good luck! PS: Seriously, there is no point in learning both written forms of Norwegian, unless you have way too much time on your hands. Heck, I don't! :-) Bokmål is predominant and will do nicely. Besides, both forms are easily intelligible if you know the other. Spoken dialects are what you need to worry about! Edited by .automne on 10 December 2008 at 3:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6686 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 3 of 6 10 December 2008 at 4:08pm | IP Logged |
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Sounds like a bad idea to me, from most perspectives. One at a time would be the way to go, and if it's Norwegian, then automne has a... well, huge point, when it comes to spoken dialects.
Norwegian + Icelandic would probably be just fine though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ChristianVlcek Bilingual Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5859 days ago 131 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Slovak*, Ukrainian, Irish, German, Russian | Message 4 of 6 10 December 2008 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
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From my experience it may be a little too confusing - mainly because they can sometimes be so similar. I'd learn Norwegian first - and I'd focus on bokmal and learning to understand variants of spoken Norwegian - and then I'd learn Danish or Swedish, but as separate languages.
i.e. once you know Norwegian, begin from the beginning with either Danish or Swedish or which ever other Germanic language you like. but like tricoteuse said, I think there's enough of a difference between Norwegian + Icelandic to not have to worry much about confusion of the languages if you were to learn them at the same time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ka9wgn Newbie United States Joined 5836 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 6 10 December 2008 at 9:37pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the answers. This brings in another question I had intended to ask separately, but it may apply here, now.
Given Norwegian is my target with a goal to visit Norway, I know well that I can get by easily as a visitor to most of Scandinavia (at least the major cities) with English alone. I'm not expecting to learn Norwegian as a means to communicate. Instead, I want to learn it for a combination of other reasons. One of them is more quickly being able to read signs that don't include English (but from pictures and videos I see, lots do) without having to keep consulting a dictionary. Another is cultural courtesy (e.g. Takk instead of Thank you) even if the exchange is otherwise done in English. But I also have an interest in learning about the languages and their systematic differences and similarities. Fluency is not a goal. OK, the question. How much learning should I do in one language before switching to another? This is not a question of how much to learn to meet any learning goals. Instead, it is a question of when it might be OK to switch learning to another language, assuming at least some goals are met. That interest in learning similarities and differences emerges from a course I took in linguistics, which covered language families. When I was younger (before, but also after, the linguistics course) I was interested in merely recognizing a wide variety of languages. I remember having had difficulty distinguishing Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6667 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 6 of 6 12 December 2008 at 8:46am | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure how I'd measure or quantify exactly how much Norweigan you should learn before going on to another Scandinavian language. You should feel reasonably comfortable in the language, able to understand much of what you read and hear and to express yourself. It's probably like falling in love; somehow you know.
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