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Swedish Norwegian Danish - intelligible | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6158 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 49 14 November 2008 at 12:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Are Swedish, Norwegian and Danish mutually intelligible?
If you speak swedish and norwegian will you understand Danish? If so would you consider them different languages? I hear that Norwegians understand Swedish to the level that you can speak them in swedish and they can speak to you back in norwegian. This is sort of the thing with portugeuse and Spanish. I have however heard that it's very awkward and sor tof like writing down something on paper for ur partner to read and then writing your answer back. In other words, its slow and cumbersome. Tackling Danish of Swedish and Norwegian would certainly be an extremely easy task, would it not? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6695 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 49 14 November 2008 at 11:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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The three languages are extremely close. The intelligibility mostly depends on the exposure. For instance, I think that more Norwegians and Danes have access to Swedish television than the other way around. Swedish and Norwegian sound more similar than either + Danish, while Danish and Norwegian is similar in writing (though not identical).
Professor Arguelles' video clips about the Scandinavian languages may be to some help. Swedish Danish Norwegian Bokmål Norwegian Nynorsk 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 49 14 November 2008 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
In my opinion yes, but many Scandinavians would disagree. I'm told that a lot of Swedes simply can't understand spoken Danish, and many Danes have also problems with Swedish, but normally less with Norwegian. On the other hand Norwegians and Swedes should normally be able to understand each other, but I have read somewhere that the true masters of understanding other Nordic languages are the Faroese! Their language is not too far from Icelandic, yet it is somewhat closer both to Norwegian (especially to the Western dialects) and to Danish. All Faroese learn Danish in school, and there are so few of them that they probably have to read stuff in other languages than their own quite often, which is a good preparation for dealing with those languages in their spoken form. Maybe we have a Faroese here who could comment? Edited by Iversen on 14 November 2008 at 1:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5928 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 4 of 49 16 November 2008 at 10:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have heard an expression that says, "Norwegian is Danish spoken in Swedish." This basically means that written Danish and written Norwegian are very similar and spoken Swedish and spoken Norwegian are very similar, with Norwegian being the most similar to both. I have also seen a diagram illustrating the relationship and similarity between the three. It is an isosceles triangle with each language on each point and the shortest distances between the languages being between Norwegian and Danish and Norwegian and Swedish and the farthest being between Danish and Swedish (I hope this makes sense). Edited by ellasevia on 16 November 2008 at 10:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jimbo baby! Senior Member United States Joined 5763 days ago 202 posts - 208 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 49 16 November 2008 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Would you say that Spanish and Portuguese are more divergent than the Scandinavian languages? Is there more intelligibility between Spanish and Portuguese than with Swedish, Danish and Norwegian? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 49 17 November 2008 at 3:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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I do see the parallel between the 'Continental' Nordic languages and the Iberoromance languages, and I think the level of inter-intelligibility is roughly the same. Italian also is sufficiently close to the Iberoromance languages to allow for the situation where people speak their own language to each other, -I saw an example of that in TVE as late as yesterday. But it is always difficult to know exactly how much an average speaker - whatever that is - of language X understands of language Y. Edited by Iversen on 17 November 2008 at 5:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5663 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 7 of 49 25 November 2008 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
Whilst that might be true in purely linguistic terms (and I am not convinced), I find that subjectively my Swedish gives me a much greater entree to the people of Denmark and Norway than my Spanish gives me to the people of Portugal, Brazil or Italy. In my subjective experience, being able to speak Swedish and understanding the Swedes means that I understand the humour, values, cuisine and world-view of Norwegians and Danes also that makes me seen as less-foreign. I can also read all the signs, etc in Norway and Denmark and it "feels like home". Whereas there is a much harder cultural border between Argentina and Brazil or Spain and Italy where Spanish will not get me nearly as far. Let me put it this way: if I am in a multi-ligual environment with people from all over the world such as a bar in Banglampu in Bangkok, my ability to speak Swedish and familiarity with Scandinavians will get me an invitation to sit at a table with Norwegians or Danes. I can understand enough that they can speak to each other in Norwegian even if they speak to me in English, and I can understand their jokes and input into the conversation (in English usually as opposed to Swedish). And the language bounces around. Other Australians who do not speak a Scandinavian language are less confortable and subtly less welcome. I find myself often hanging out with the Scandinavians. Whilest speaking Spanish in that same bar will allow me to sit at a table of Spaniards or Latin Americans, it will not get me an invitation in the same way for Brazilians or Italians. A couple of years ago I was working for a company in Montreal, Canada with a sister company in Oslo. I made extremely solid friendships and alignments with the Norwegians when we were travelling together on business travel. Drinking together, laughing together, talking about internal business politics together. Trust. Friendship. At conferences, I would literally sit and eat with the Norwegians where the Canadians and Norwegians would mostly form naturally into their own tables, and could fluidly move between the 2 groups. That is without being able to speak Norwegian, but with Swedish. Thus speaking one Scandinavian language gives you social entry into all of them in a way that speaking one Romance language does not. That is how I see it in my experience, anyway. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6695 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 49 26 November 2008 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I must agree. On vacations in Ireland I have sometimes met Scandinavians and it has always felt like I've met a relative, even though the language has been English (e.g. to include other people in the conversation).
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