vicizmax Newbie Denmark Joined 5659 days ago 17 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English
| Message 57 of 169 26 May 2010 at 8:36pm | IP Logged |
Many words in the English language today originated from the Danish language :) That's why you will find some words to be the same, or very similar in Danish. Besides, Danish grammar is extremely easy to learn. It's a very easy language! The only problem could be the pronounciation, but after practise, you should be able to master it eventually. I would love to help any people learning Danish! ;)
I know that's not alot of info, and this might have been mentioned before in this thread (I'm sorry, I couldn't be bothered reading 7 pages), but that's just a small insight to the Danish language.
Besides, all Danes speak English. I live in Denmark (and have done so all my life) and have not yet met a SINGLE DANE who couldn't speak English! Even the "homeless" people speak almost perfect English. So finding courses or people who speak both good English and Danish will be very easy (like me!)
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ewomahony Diglot Groupie England Joined 5541 days ago 91 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French, Afrikaans
| Message 58 of 169 10 June 2010 at 10:14pm | IP Logged |
In terms of word order, how do Danish/Icelandic/Norwegian/Swedish compare to Dutch/English/German?
Could anyone give an example for each language?
Thanks,
Ed
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cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5797 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 59 of 169 18 June 2010 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
hus - hus - hus - house - haus - huis
don't know how to say house in Icelandic but it's probably something similar.
For the exercise you want, just look at texts in the different languages and draw your own conclusions.
You could for example look at the same Wikipedia article in several languages.
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josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6405 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch
| Message 60 of 169 18 June 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
cordelia0507 wrote:
hus - hus - hus - house - haus - huis
don't know how to say house in Icelandic but it's probably something similar.
For the exercise you want, just look at texts in the different languages and draw your own conclusions.
You could for example look at the same Wikipedia article in several languages.
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Icelandic: hús
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ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6275 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French
| Message 61 of 169 19 June 2010 at 2:20pm | IP Logged |
Man the awesomeness of Scandanavians' English makes me really worry that English will eventually dominate, reducing Danish, Swedisn and Norwegian (and Icelandic and possibly Faroese) to the status of minority languages, like the Celtic languages.
Someone tell me I'm completely wrong and that such a thing will never happen :(
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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5293 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 62 of 169 19 June 2010 at 2:44pm | IP Logged |
ChristopherB wrote:
Man the awesomeness of Scandanavians' English makes me really worry that English will eventually dominate, reducing Danish, Swedisn and Norwegian (and Icelandic and possibly Faroese) to the status of minority languages, like the Celtic languages.
Someone tell me I'm completely wrong and that such a thing will never happen :( |
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You are completely wrong, and such a thing will never happen, unless we are invaded by the UK or the US, and forced to use English only.
Man, if we can have three languages that are going strong in just little Norway, anything is possible. Even the Saami language, which to my great shame, was supressed by the authorities for so long, is alive and kicking. In the 60ies, children were forbidden to use that language at school, and it still survived.
They tried to shove a mixed variant of the two official Norwegian languages called "samnorsk" down our throats in the 70ies - utterly rejected. I spoke a variant of bokmål (Standard Norwegian) when I was a kid which is called "riksmål". I was in my 40ies before I even discovered that some of the things I use from that dialect, like the way I count, was actually not permissable in Norwegian. (Not that that makes me change my language, of course). We may be good at English, but we are also the most stubborn people on the planet when it comes to our mother tongue. So don't you worry. :-)
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Soirdefete Pentaglot Newbie ItalyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5229 days ago 4 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, French, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Swedish
| Message 63 of 169 21 June 2010 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
ChristopherB wrote:
Man the awesomeness of Scandanavians' English makes me really worry that English will eventually dominate, reducing Danish, Swedisn and Norwegian (and Icelandic and possibly Faroese) to the status of minority languages, like the Celtic languages.
Someone tell me I'm completely wrong and that such a thing will never happen :( |
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Can I tell you something?
I love Scandinavian languages more than neo-latin languages such as my mothertongue or French! So I'm telling you you're completely wrong because I (and like me lots of people) will learn at least two of Scandinavian languages!
Until there'll be people who are interested in them and want to learn them, they won't die!
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ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6275 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French
| Message 64 of 169 21 June 2010 at 6:26am | IP Logged |
I hope you're right! Solfrid Cristin's post gives me hope though; I would never want to see those languages go.
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