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The Norwegian of Romance Languages? | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | Norwegian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| GRagazzo Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4951 days ago 115 posts - 168 votes  Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French | Message 1 of 41 04 January 2013 at 3:24am | IP Logged |
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I have read that among Scandinavian languages Norwegian is the most understood and those
that study Norwegian can better understand other Scandinavian languages than vice-versa. I was wondering if there existed such a language among romance languages. By the way this is not limited to national languages, perhaps a dialect or local language is the Norwegian of romance languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5120 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 41 04 January 2013 at 3:52am | IP Logged |
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The problem with trying to compare Scandinavian languages with romance languages is
that one is a subgroup of a larger group (Germanic), while romance is a large subgroup on its own. It's sort of like asking which Germanic language is the most understood among them all. There are just too many differences among Germanic languages for one language to be mutually intelligible. That said, within the romance group, you could probably find one language that incorporates some of the grammar (and vocabulary, of course) from both east and west italic language groups. I would say look at one of the languages closest to Occitan, such as Catalan, Aragonese, Asturian, Piedmontese or Lombard. But I'm going on personal exposure and/or experience with these languages, so... grain of salt. R. == 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5722 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 3 of 41 04 January 2013 at 4:39am | IP Logged |
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Seconding the above, I'd say Catalan is the MOST mutually intelligible with others, but not at the level
Norwegian is within Scandinavian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4705 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 4 of 41 04 January 2013 at 6:39am | IP Logged |
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It depends. For me, as a native Portuguese speaker, Spanish is VERY easy to read. Italian not so much, and French even less. I think the same goes for Spanish.
On the other hand, I think Italian and French are much closer to each other than to Spanish or Portuguese. I also know Romenians find Italian quite easy. You can't compare Romance languages to Scandinavians, but if I had to pick one, I'd pick Spanish, since it has several million speakers in all continents, it's very close to Catalan, close to Portuguese and close enough to Italian and French. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5120 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 41 04 January 2013 at 10:51am | IP Logged |
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fabriciocarraro kind of illustrates another aspect to consider in all this. Since his
native, and therefore strongest romance language is Portuguese, Spanish would probably seem like a good middle ground from which to jump to other romance languages. My strongest romance language by far is Spanish, then Italian, with Catalan coming in third. It's more natural for me to consider something in between Spanish and Italian as a good middle ground. Someone with Italian as their strongest romance language might very well consider something else as a good middle ground. French or Romanian as a point of reference would probably yield yet another language as a good middle ground. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6899 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 41 04 January 2013 at 12:09pm | IP Logged |
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Remember that those who find Norwegian helpful are the Norwegians themselves. They are the ones who have had access to television from the neighbouring countries, who benefit from passive exposure to Swedish and Danish, who find Swedish not that different in proncunciation, who can read Danish without any problems, and so on. I wonder how many learners of Norwegian who feel they get two other languages "for free".
This being said, I've been at a dinner table with a Spaniard and an Italian who communicated with each other using their native languages, and I know one who got by in Romania by speaking Italian. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Quique Diglot Senior Member Spain cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4672 days ago 183 posts - 313 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, German | Message 7 of 41 04 January 2013 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
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I've been able to get by in Portugal and Italy with Spanish, and Romanian immigrants here pick Spanish extremely quickly. Does that mean Spanish is the middle ground? I don't know; probably it's just a huge language, so people in other countries can't avoid being exposed to it. I'd say French is quite different to the others, but it would be interesting to see what French and Italian speakers think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5197 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 41 04 January 2013 at 1:34pm | IP Logged |
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I find Italian to be a sort of middle ground between French and Spanish, at least from my limited experience: I've never really studied Spanish, but I get a reasonable amount of exposure to it and can understand some of it. Italian seems to have much more in common with Spanish than French does, and then French seems to have much more in common with Italian than with Spanish. I've read a bit of Portuguese, and it seems to have a reasonable amount in common with both Italian and French, and I'd imagine even more with Spanish, so it might be a better candidate. Native Portuguese speakers also seem to be a lot better at picking up pronunciation and accents in foreign languages than French, Italian, or Spanish speakers, but I'm not sure why. I can't comment on any of the other Romance languages though - I'll wait to hear the input from the experts here! Edited by garyb on 04 January 2013 at 1:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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