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Scandinavian languages and their dialects | ||
Tags: Scandinavian Languages | Dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 17 of 39 03 May 2009 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
I've found that some of my Swedish friends really struggle even with standard Norwegian - and one of them who's about to visit one of the places in Norway with a seriously peculiar dialect is probably going to have to stick with English! I think some research was carried out a few years ago that showed that Norwegian speakers understand the other two languages better than the Danes or the Swedes do... Anyway, from experience, Norwegian isn't as clear-cut for our neighbours as it may seem, especially when you start to include all the dialects. Most Norwegians don't speak bokmål (the standard written language) and we don't revert to bokmål if we need to simplify either. I guess it depends on the listener though, and degree of exposure, but that can be said about all of us... Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6680 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 18 of 39 04 May 2009 at 7:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Lizzern. People practically always exaggerate how easy Norwegian is for Swedes. It is not. Perhaps for the people living in Karlstad or close to the border, but believe me, not all Swedes do.
The reason quite a lot of Swedes do understand Norwegian now is because like half of the country's young people go to Oslo to work and save up money. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 19 of 39 04 May 2009 at 10:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I think we should have a language reform in Scandinavia and standardise all the three languages into one. This could be done with a bit of good will. People wouldn't have to speak the new language in everyday life, but if they were taught it in school it could be used by people who travel between the three countries and by foreign learners. Gradually it would become more commonplace.
This would allow Scandinavian languages to survive the onslaught of English, which we have no choice but to learn and use, due to the insignificance of our languages anywhere else.. Swedish language right now is accumulating new English words and speech patterns at a mind-boggling pace. Kids start learning English at, what, seven now, right? If this continues, people won't see any reason to continue speaking Swedish in 50 years from now. The new pan-Scandinavian language would become a not-insignificant language in Europe (as opposed to the situation today..) and with a minimal effort we could erase language confusion between Scandinavians forever. Much more academic literature and fiction would become available in Scandinavian whereas now, people with specialised interests or a passion for certain authors have to read in English. There are no grammatical differences worth mentioning and most of us already know many of the vocabulary differences. Once created, the new language could be learnt with hardly any effort at all. Experiences from the USSR/Russia among other places show how quickly a language can be pushed into remote parts of the countryside while the urban population switches to the language that brings them more practical benefits. So far as I understand it, the USSR was not pushing Russian onto non-native speakers. Russian was simply taught to everyone from a young age in school. People were enabled to make a choice about what language they wanted to function in, and they choose Russian. (think about the parallel!) The switch happened in less than 2 generations! The same thing is about to happen in Scandinavia. I've read about Swedish mothers who choose to speak English with their infants, to give them an advantage.. In larger cities, children are enrolled in international schools to learn English by immersion. A pan-Scandinavian language would have over 20 million speakers and would be of great interest to people in Finland, Iceland and the Baltic states. It might even interest some Poles, Russians and Germans. Pride of the individual countries will no doubt prevent a pan-Scandinavian language, but I think it's a great idea for the reasons I've explained. Personally I'd have no problem using a bit of Danish spelling or Norwegian words for this worthwhile cause... If we don't take this step I fear many of our grandchildren will be native English speakers despite growing up in Scandinavia. Edited by cordelia0507 on 04 May 2009 at 6:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 20 of 39 04 May 2009 at 10:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I like the bilingualism that's developing in Scandinavia. I'm one of those who went to an international school for high school and it's been a huge advantage. If I ever have children, I will no doubt teach them both Norwegian and English from a very young age. Learning English well is just one of those things that's part of becoming more internationally oriented - globalisation and all that - and so far I don't think it's a big problem (Språkrådet/the Language Council may disagree with that, but they would do, wouldn't they). As for research etc being published in English - why wouldn't it be? See it from the researcher's perspective - you've done all this work and hopefully reached a result that could be valuable everywhere - would you want to limit publication to what a handful of your potential audience could read? It would vary by field obviously, but in the sciences for example, it only makes sense to publish to as many as you can reach.
There are plenty of languages that are near-insignificant outside of their native areas. Catalan comes to mind - does that mean it should be pushed off the edge of the world simply because it isn't a major language internationally? Of course not. I know that's not what you meant, but exaggerating to make a point... :-) Personally I like having different languages in Scandinavia, it makes things interesting and as with any other language you can learn a lot about how people think just by learning new things about the language and that is inherently interesting to me. If a pan-Scandinavian language was created, what would happen to all the dialects for example? No fun. Anyway, if you speak one language well and need to move to another Scandinavian country you can learn what you need to get by pretty well, and can get by more or less even for shorter trips. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 04 May 2009 at 11:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Calvino Diglot Groupie Sweden sammafllod.wordpress Joined 5968 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Spanish, German | Message 21 of 39 04 May 2009 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
If that is the case, I think you should choose either Swedish or Danish, because for almost 600 years (from late 13th to early 19th century), Norwegian had no ortography at all, since everybody who could read and write did so in Danish. Edited by Calvino on 04 May 2009 at 3:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Calvino Diglot Groupie Sweden sammafllod.wordpress Joined 5968 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Spanish, German | Message 22 of 39 04 May 2009 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
That's kind of a ridiculous assertion. In the late middle ages, in the heyday of the Hanseatic league, Swedish acquired so many loanwords from Low German that the king actually had to institute special policies to avoid Swedish being entirely swept away by German. Today, 30% of the common Swedish vocabulary consists in such medieval borrowings. And yet, we speak Swedish in Sweden and not German. In comparison, the amount of English loanwords in Swedish constitute less than 1% of the vocabulary. Edited by Calvino on 04 May 2009 at 3:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5748 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch | Message 23 of 39 05 May 2009 at 5:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I hope to be picking up Swedish in the near future as I already speak two Germanic languages, one native. I
disagree that the Scandinavian languages are near useless. I couldn't understand a word of English from this Dane I met about a year or two ago. I didn't think anything was wrong with me. I asked him if he spoke German and thank goodness he did or else I would have bored my brains out listening to him. This was one person so I can't really make judgements, but I hope that Scandinavian languages still strive in the future. It would be a shame to see them fall. Edited by sprachefin on 05 May 2009 at 5:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Calvino Diglot Groupie Sweden sammafllod.wordpress Joined 5968 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Spanish, German | Message 24 of 39 05 May 2009 at 7:42am | IP Logged | ||
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sprachefin:
Haha, that's right. Most Swedes suck at English too. They think they're so damn good, and yet they seem unable to grasp the idea that other languages are actually pronounced differently from Swedish. The result is the most grotesque noise imaginable. (Of course, this implies that I consider myself among those who "grasp the idea", but you need not take my word for it. My English accent can be heard among my sound files :) ) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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