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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Silvance5 Groupie United States Joined 5282 days ago 86 posts - 118 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 23 11 November 2009 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just how similar are all of the northeast European languages? Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, German etc. I know Dutch and German are very much alike, but how about the other ones? Once I reached a fluency in German, how hard would the others be?
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| mike92s8 Newbie United States Joined 5280 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 23 11 November 2009 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I'll tell you this, Finnish isn't related to any of those other languages. That one is kin to Hungarian.
As for the others, they all have similarities to German just in different aspects. All have cognates, all have some similar grammar rules. The grammar in Dutch and German, I've read, is very similar. While the grammar rules from German to the Scandinavian languages is slightly divergent in as much that if you were to directly translate a sentence from German to, say, Swedish the Swede will understand but it would still be wrong. Hope that helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elwing Tetraglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5296 days ago 43 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Swedish, Finnish*, English, French Studies: Norwegian | Message 3 of 23 11 November 2009 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Swedish and Norwegian languages are so close that the speakers can understand each other without any problems.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 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 4 of 23 11 November 2009 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you become reasonably good at German then the combined vocabulary from that language plus English will probably be be enough to make it possible for you to get the gist of texts in Dutch, and with a slightly larger distance also in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
However the morphology of German is quite different from that of those languages. I normally say that German is a surviving medieval language: in the main it has kept those cases and verbal forms that you would find in Anglosaxon or Old Norse. Only Icelandic and Faroese are more conservative in this respect. And the rules for word order in German are somewhat different from those of other Germanic languages. English also has its quirks, such as the use of 'do'. But again: knowing both German and English will be useful in the sense that thing you find in the Nordic languages often will be known from either English or German. The main thing that will be new to you will be the postfixed definite article in the Nordic languages. But just think of it as articleThe and you will be fine. And Finnish is of course the odd man out. Edited by Iversen on 11 November 2009 at 11:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5626 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 5 of 23 12 November 2009 at 11:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, as the Queen of Sweden could attest to (native German speaker) you can't automatically learn a Scandinavian language just because you speak German. Of course, it's a bit easier for a German speaker to learn it than for an English speaker or certainly somebody who only speaks Latin languages. But for our queen, even with top class instructors it took a very long time. Fasulye on this forum is a native German speaker who has learnt fluent Dutch and is now taking on Danish. But she is quite a committed language student and that's why she's been successfull - not because it's super easy. 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 6 of 23 12 November 2009 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
...and she's regarded as being good at languages (having worked as an interpreter). I don't know. I haven't heard her Portuguese, French, Spanish, or English. Not her German either for that matter. But back to the topic. To get an idea of how similar two or more languages are, one could always compare texts, such as Our father. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5309 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 7 of 23 12 November 2009 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
She may be good at languages, but she is no star at pronounciation. After more than 30 years in Sweden, she still sounds very foreign. Well, at least she's better than Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, who became Charles XIV John. Apparently he never learnt any Swedish at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vinbelgium Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie Belgium Joined 5612 days ago 61 posts - 73 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, English, French Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 8 of 23 12 November 2009 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You could see Dutch as a mixture of English and German.
Scandinavian lanuages are more distant. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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