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The Norwegian of Romance Languages? | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | Norwegian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| FELlX Diglot Groupie France Joined 4760 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes  Speaks: French*, English | Message 9 of 41 04 January 2013 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say Italian, because it's very similar to French in many aspects, except the pronunciation, which is somewhat close to Spanish, which itself is close to Portuguese.
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| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4629 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 10 of 41 04 January 2013 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
That is an interesting point Jeff. I guess we feel that Norwegian is sort of halfway between Swedish and Danish (as regards bokmål at least), although I am not sure how true that is from a purely linguistic point of view. It is also true that, when I was a kid, I watched more Swedish than Norwegian TV, so I got lot of passive input that way. I guess not that many Swedes bothered about Norwegian TV... I hardly see how the situation in Scandinavia is directly comparable to that of Romance languages, which in any case, is a much bigger and diverse language area. And although an Italian and a Spaniard may be able to communicate using their mother tongues, it is not like Spaniards have a lot of exposure to Italian. Films are always dubbed, and Italian artist like Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini even make parallel Spanish versions of their recordings in order to make it into the Spanish market. 4 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 11 of 41 04 January 2013 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course I didn't mean that all Norwegians have had equal exposure to Danish and Swedish, that you find them equally easy to understand and so on, but since there is this "Norwegian myth", I had to answer. :) I agree that the Scandinavian situation is a bit unique - at least not directly comparable to the Romance countries.
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| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4629 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 12 of 41 04 January 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, I did not think that you meant that all Norwegians find Danish and Swedish easy to understand. Personally I can read Danish without much problem, but it can be really difficult to understand spoken Danish. And I agree that it is a "myth" that if you learn Norwegian, you get Danish and Swedish almost "for free".
My point was rather that the Scandinavian languages are quite close after all, and that there has been and still is a lot of cultural and economic interchange between the three countries which is really not similar to any other group of countries in Europe. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5324 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 13 of 41 04 January 2013 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am not sure that I follow you here that this is a myth. I agree that the reason why Norwegians are a lot better
at understanding Swedish, than Swedes are at understanding Norwegian is that Norwegians traditionally have been far more exposed to Swedish through the media than the other way around. That is however no longer the case. Children and teenagers never watch Swedish, and they are more familiar with and more exposed to English. It will therefore be interesting to see how the development here goes. I do however not think you can explain away the fact that both Swedes and Danes, when asked which language they find easier among the other Scandinavian languages, will both answer Norwegian. The Danes will find Norwegian easier because both languages have their origin in Danish, and the Swedes find Norwegian easier because the phonology is similar. A lot of them struggle with the Danish pronunciation. When Richard Simcott was here this summer he asked me which Scandinavian language you should learn as a foreigner, and I answered that it didn't really matter. If you have a strong interest in one of the languages it is best to go for that, whether it is because of family, a girlfriend, the works of Ibsen, Strindberg or Kierkegaard or whichever other reason. However if you had no particular preference I would go for Norwegian which is " the middle ground" for the reasons I have explained above. The advantage of learning Norwegian over the other two if you want to learn all three is not huge, but there is an advantage. And that is not a myth. It is also not just the Scandinavians themselves who perceive the closeness of the languages. Both Fasulye, who studies Danish, and tarvos who studies Swedish understand what I write when I write in Norwegian. I would assume that they would also understand eachother, or someone writing in the other Scandinavian languages. In writing the differences are less clear, and the similarities are easier to see. For the spoken language the differences between Swedish and Danish becomes more marked, and do for some people become such an obstacle that they chose to speak English. Ari, for example has chosen that as his strategy. 4 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 14 of 41 04 January 2013 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course the similarities are there whether we're native speakers or not (just like I can "read" Portuguese and Dutch without knowing much of either language), and of course Fasulye and Tarvos should understand you. I'd be surprised if they didn't! But the idea that "you'll get two other languages for free if you learn Norwegian" should be taken with a grain of salt, for pronunciation issues if nothing else (no Danish sounds like Norwegian, no matter the amount of shared vocabulary, nor does it sound like Swedish).
At least we can agree on that there are both similarities and differences. :) But is there a Romance language that matches Norwegian in this respect? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5324 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 41 04 January 2013 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think I would say that you get two languages cheaply, if not for free if you chose either of the three
Scandinavian languages. And you get the very best bargain if you chose Norwegian :-) As for the Romance languages, I agree with those who say that the group has much larger internal differences, and are not as close. If I were to chose one language which would get me most in terms of understanding other languages in the group, I would go for Spanish, with Italian a close second. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4697 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 16 of 41 04 January 2013 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is my duty to point out that in writing it is much easier for me to understand
Norwegian than it is in speech (although, surprisingly, I understood most of the Ylvis clips in Norwegian about the talestyrte heisen). If you speak pure Norwegian, chances are that if I understand half of what you say, it's a lot. If you Swedify your Norwegian a bit, then I might deal with it somewhat better (and have; I once spoke to a Norwegian in Swedish after having studied it for a month and it went surprisingly well). Edited by tarvos on 04 January 2013 at 8:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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