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Which Scandinavian language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| squelchy451 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5009 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English, Korean*, Spanish | Message 1 of 20 19 July 2011 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi. I'm learning German right now and I'm really interested in the Scandinavian
countries. Most of my furnitures are from Ikea, I use a Nokia phone, and used to drive a Saab. Which Scandinavian language should I learn first if I want to have an easier time learning the two that's left? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5051 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 2 of 20 19 July 2011 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Nokia is Finnish, which is not part of the North Germanic languages. ;)
From what I understand, Norwegian (Bokmål?) is closer to Danish in writing, and to Swedish in speaking. So then maybe Norwegian would make the most sense if your goal is to learn the other two as well. I'm not really qualified to answer this, but it just so happens that I read a bit on it this morning. I then listened to a sample of Norwegian tourist phrases, and promptly when back to my beloved phonetic Spanish. X_X 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 3 of 20 19 July 2011 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Definitely Norwegian. Norwegians have the easiest time understanding other Scandinavian languages and speakers of other Scandinavian languages have the easiest time understanding Norwegian.
Norwegians understand 88% of the spoken Swedish language and 73% of the spoken Danish language. Swedes understand 48% of the spoken Norwegian language and 23% of the spoken Danish language. Danes understand 69% of the spoken Norwegian language and 43% of the spoken Swedish language. Norwegians understand 89% of the written Swedish language and 93% of the written danish language. Swedes understand 86% of the written Norwegian language and 69% of the written Danish language. Danes understand 89% of the written Norwegian language and 69% of the written Swedish language. Here's an excellent article (from an excellent website) about the topic: Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn Edited by nway on 19 July 2011 at 4:56am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 20 19 July 2011 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
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This question again... My opinion (from other threads):
Which Nordic language?: "According to this page, Norwegian is the easiest Scandinavian language for a native speaker of English, but skimming through that text, I can say that all the "easy" parts are more or less valid for Swedish too (and most likely Danish)." "I'd take that "the language by which you can understand other Scandinavian languages the best" part with a grain of salt, since I believe that applies more to a native Norwegian than any learner of the language. Unless one learns Norwegian in Norway, one isn't very likely to get exposure to spoken Danish (or Swedish), which is what this passive understanding is about (in my opinion)." Switching from Norwegian to Swedish: "Whether a learner of Danish/Norwegian/Swedish happens to get decent passive skills in the other two languages depends on a lot of factors. I recently read a book about multi-lingual families, and one of the example cases was a family where a native English speaker who had learned Norwegian was simply NOT good enough to follow Swedish/Danish. I think the same can be (and has been) said about the Slavic languages, certain Romance languages (Portuguese/Galician/Spanish/Catalan). Learning one of them won't give you the others "for free"." "(...)I heavily doubt that a learner of any of the three languages somehow "automatically" will get the passive skills that native speakers achieve over a long time (through travelling, TV/radio, "language intuition" etc.), e.g. to know what to look/listen for, to be able to fill in the gaps, false friends and all that. This is not to discourage anyone from learning any of the three, but don't expect that (for instance) Norwegian itself/alone will give you superiour skills." Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 19 July 2011 at 10:11am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 5 of 20 19 July 2011 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder (and thus is blunt speculation) if the reason Norwegians excel at understanding the other Scandinavian languages is because more media is produced in the other countries, so Norwegians have higher exposure to them. This is the reason given for the asymmetry between Brazilian and Continental Portuguese--since so much media is Brazilian, the Continentals have an easier time understand Brazilian than vice versa, simply because they're more familiar with it. If this is the case, then I agree with Jeff that all the benefit of mutual intelligibility for the Norwegian speaker accrues to the native speaker--not an adult learner.
I realize this doesn't exactly answer the OP's question, but were it me, I'd learn Swedish (I don't, incidentally, consider the Scandinavian tongues to be separate languages), lacking any reason to choose the others. The Swedish population is the highest of the three Scandinavian countries, and its economy the highest. I imagine it likewise has the largest corpus of the three. Plus, Swedish chicks. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| akprocks Senior Member United States Joined 5286 days ago 178 posts - 258 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 20 19 July 2011 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to throw this out because Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are red herrings. Since your open for advice from anyone about your future learning plans I'm going to throw out Icelandic, I don't have any reasons but it just looks cool. It's also definitely the more challenging of the Germanic languages.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 20 19 July 2011 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
That would hardly explain why both Danes and Swedes also find it easier to understand Norwegian than Swedish and Danish respectively. Norwegian is the "middle language" which is perfect if you want to understand as much as possible of all three. We used to have a high exposure to Swedish, unfortunately that is fading with the present generation. That could explain why so far Norwegians understand the Swedes better thant they understand us. We have not had much exposure to Danish. Curious that people can go from saying that it is not even three different languages to saying that you do not understand all that much from the other two. I disagree with both views. It is definitely different languages, but knowing one of them (Norwegian in particular :-) will help you understand the others to a very high degree. If you want to learn it for job opportunities, Norwegian is also the best choice. Last week there were big headlines in one of our major newspapers listing how many foreign workers of all categories Norway needs to hire over the coming years. I belive the number was 50 000. Swedes are flooding the country, because of the better job opportunities and the higher wages in Norway. As for the girls, I am not in a position to evalutate that, but we had a miss Universe a few years ago and we have had a few top models, so I don't think we on average do worse that the Swedes in that department. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 20 July 2011 at 12:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 20 20 July 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
Hypothesis: Swedes understand Norwegian since it sounds somewhat "Swedish" (the two tones and all that), and Danes understand Norwegian because the vocabulary is "the same" (AND the fact that an "articulated" languages is generally easier to understand - Portuguese understand spoken Spanish better than the other way around). 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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