|
 |
How similar to GER and SWE is Icelandi? | ||
Tags: Icelandic | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4651 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes  | Message 1 of 14 02 September 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I've been wondering about it for a while but couldn't find anything that you tell me just how similar they are.
There are tables that show us that Spanish is +- 90% similar to Portuguese What about Swedish, German and Icelandic? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6507 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 2 of 14 02 September 2012 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The Icelandic vocabulary is quite different from both the Swedish and the German one, but insofar you can find cognates you will probably find them in Swedish. The morphology is however closer to German - with 4 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative) and a living subjunctive (Konjunktiv). For instance there are prepositions which govern at least the three last cases (right now I try to remember one that governs the nominative). However the word order rules have more in common with the other Nordic languages than with German. Edited by Iversen on 05 September 2012 at 12:27pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4325 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 3 of 14 02 September 2012 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | ||
There are in fact lots of cognates between Icelandic and German, but they might be hard to identify at first, especially if you are not a native speaker of German. There are also quite some false friends however, because the meaning of old words developed often differently. Still, I found it easier to remember Finnish words (a completely unrelated language to German) than Icelandic words, but that might be due to the fact that I tried to remember a lot more information for Icelandic words than for Finnish ones (declination/conjugation patterns mostly), but the accents are also irritating. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4651 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes | Message 4 of 14 02 September 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Would you guys be able to give a percentage of how similar they are?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6713 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 14 02 September 2012 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
|
They're all quite different from each other. Nothing like the 90% percentage similarity for Portuguese/Spanish. Maybe Icelanders can pick up a Swedish newspaper and get the gist from it, but I have yet to see a(n untrained) Swede or German doing the same for any of the other two languages.
This is not to discourage you from learning any of the three, but don't expect that any of them will give you superiour skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4469 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 14 03 September 2012 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
|
Interesting. So, would you say that learning German would give me no more advantage for learning Norwegian (or Swedish) than whatever I already get from knowing English? Edited by tastyonions on 03 September 2012 at 12:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6507 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 7 of 14 03 September 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||
|
English + German will obviously be better than English alone, but German is not closer to the Nordic languages than English - especially not when you take English loanwords into consideration. Danish and Norwegian received a number of Low German loanwords during the late Medieval period where the Hansa trade league was very active, and there were a lot of contacts with Germany in the 19. century so there will also be a fair number of later loanwords from High German, though not all are evident. And the spelling will mostly be different, not least in Norwegian. So if you want to learn a Nordic language go directly for it, but learning German will by any standard be an excellent idea in itself. And having any two languages in your luggage will make it easier to learn no. 3 because you then have a broader basis for the comprehension of grammar. Btw. there are even French loanwords in the Nordic languages. Edited by Iversen on 03 September 2012 at 1:07am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4651 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes | Message 8 of 14 05 September 2012 at 3:01am | IP Logged | ||
|
Iversen, you are awesome! hugs
1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
