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Should I learn Danish or Norwegian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| heavydust Newbie Canada Joined 5872 days ago 18 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 41 of 49 26 July 2009 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
From my understanding sweden and norway use to be the same country and the essential speak the same language but when norway seperated they wanted to be different to assert their identity so they tried to make new words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6697 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 42 of 49 27 July 2009 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I doubt that Norway had to make up new words to be different from Swedish - all languages already have their own peculiarities, no matter how related. Moreover, the Scandinavian languages is a dialect continuum, so you can't really say that the Norwegians spoke Swedish.
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| hakabe Diglot Newbie Norway Joined 5948 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Korean | Message 43 of 49 10 August 2009 at 9:55am | IP Logged | |||||
yes I agree with this. Because people must understand that in "the old days" there were no Sweden and Norway as we know it today. People probably spoke as simular or as different as they do now. and Swedish and Norwegian could really be looked upon as dialects of the same language. But they have both been "locked" to being either norwegian or swedish. mainly because both languages have some words in it, that is special and "locked" to one language. But this has mainly happened in the newer times. After the TV, radio, newspapers and so on was more spread and wideknown. I don't know how it is in sweden, but in norway one could go as far as to say that the difference between one part of the country language wise compared to the other part of the country is just as different as some would say spoken swedish is from norwegian. because just imagine. in scandianvia language/dialects have been locked to the location. trapped between mountains and sea, valleys and rivers. one couldn't just take a train or plane, or a car for that matter to move from one place to another. hence all the different dialects. (in both countries) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6697 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 44 of 49 10 August 2009 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. I'm pretty sure that most "Swedes" would have less trouble understanding the Norwegian TV personalities such as Erik Diesen, Anne Grosvold or Fredrik Skavlan, than vernaculars from very distant and/or small areas in Sweden. Of course there are Norwegian actors and TV hosts who speak "differently" than the Swedish idea of how Norwegian sounds. (Linda Eide, Torfinn Nag, Pia Tjelta...) :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5373 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 45 of 49 10 August 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It depends on where you want to live and what you want to do with it.
Most of the literature you are gonna wanna read like Ibsen, Hamsun, HC Andersen etc will be in Danish no matter if the writer was Norwegian or Danish just because everyone were forced to write it back then. If you want to read more recent literature like maybe Erlend Loe, Jostein Gaarder or something they write in Norwegian. Some books are in Nynorsk like Tarjej Vesaas, a very popular writer. If you want to live in the north you will also encounter Kven, Saami, Finnish and some Russian. If you have only studied only Danish you will certainly have problems understanding the northern accent which has a lot of it´s own slang, words, accents, weird swearwords, skipping of Rs and even different grammar. Example; Southerner; Hva er klokken? Northerner; Du, ka klokka e? Southerner; Har du fått mange fisk? (or maybe Hvor mange fisk har du fått?) Northerner; Ka, har du fådd mangæ fesk? Can´t think of any more examples. When I go to the south people have trouble understanding me, specially immigrants and Swedes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 5867 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 49 10 August 2009 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know this is a month old post at least but I have to just disconfirm this. Norway was under occupation by Sweden yes, but not for very long and they didn't change the language much like the Danes did. The evolution of the Norwegian language to become like it is today mainly has roots from our liberation from our evil neighbours the Danes (just kidding, you know we love you :) ). After we became our own country again, the country was slightly linguistically confused. In the cities, the rich folks spoke Danish since the only university in the area was in Copenhagen, the government was Danish and all that jazz. They also wrote Danish. In the more rural areas and countryside of Norway, people spoke their own dialects - being quite isolated from Oslo - but the only official way of writing was Danish and that didn't resemble their spoken language much. After our little liberation, two written languages were constructed. One - nynorsk - was created by Ivar Aasen and was made up by the dialects of the districts of Norway with a little touch of Old Norse but with basically no loan words and no trace of the un-Norwegian Danish language. The other was bokmål and was created by Knud Knudsen who believed that we should instead Norwegianify the Danish language we had already. It's quite similar to written Danish, but with some differences such as g -> k and other consonants hardeninig up a bit. Of course vocabulary has changed also over time. Oh, this got quite long. I get carried away. Little to do at work. Sorry. ;p 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Miiyii Groupie Greenland Joined 5371 days ago 59 posts - 97 votes | Message 47 of 49 12 August 2009 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ehm.. Du er Dansk ikke? .. Nej, Grønland vil ikke være en del af Danmark,(og jo, de taler Dansk - Grønlandsk.. 3 slags dialekter ''Nord Øst og Vest.. Hver by har også sin egen dialekt.) men vi har da ikke sagt at vi ikke gider at lade dem gå? O: - Vi er jo faktisk ved at få ordnet det der ''Selvstændighed'' snart ikke? .. (Og her oppe snakker de heller ikke om andet end at Danmark er et l*rt* land.. Det er heller ikke værd at høre på.. D: (Taler Grønlandsk..) .. Og hvad så med Alaska og USA? Tror du ikke de vil være dem selv snart også? De har hele tiden været imellem Rusland og USA.. Frem og tilbage.. O: /Mii Edited by Miiyii on 12 August 2009 at 4:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| densou Senior Member Italy foto.webalice.it/denRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5920 days ago 120 posts - 121 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 48 of 49 12 August 2009 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
rofl, I don't know how it sounds but its written form is REALLY easier than the rest I've read :D (it resembles a bit of Italian and a bit of my local dialect). Well, I must also admit you're the first Troms native I met across Internet. [I cannot count random guys who live there, Norwegian or not ;) ] 1 person has voted this message useful |
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