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Tackling Scandinavian languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3856 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 9 of 39 30 September 2014 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Camundonguinho, why do you think that Swedish is the most practical option?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4558 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 10 of 39 01 October 2014 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
1. almost 10 million speakers 2. official in two countries 3. largest amount of study material 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6391 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 39 01 October 2014 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||
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So I'm a Swede who moved to Norway a month and a half ago. Some thoughts:
* All Norwegians I've met can understand spoken Swedish perfectly. There are tons of Swedes in Norway and loads of Norwegians grew up watching Swedish children's TV shows. * After a month and a half here, I'm still having difficulty understanding spoken Norwegian. I get most, but I often miss entire sentences. I've been thinking about doing some actual study of Norwegian. It's not the case that just because you understand Swedish, you understand Norwegian. * Danish is completely unintelligible to me and might just as well be German or Greek, unless spoken slowly and enunciated very clearly, and even then it's hit-or-miss. This does not apply to written Danish, of course, which, like written Norwegian, just looks like badly spelled Swedish. It's easy. But Danish pronunciation is so different from Swedish that I fail to even pick up single words from a Dane speaking at conversational speed. All in all, the mutual intelligibility thing is very related to exposure. You have to get a lot of exposure to the other languages to learn them. That said, if you learn Swedish, you could probably just start listening to Norwegian and eventually you'll have no problems, and as I said, Norwegians have no problems understanding Swedish. Danish will probably take study, however. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3908 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 12 of 39 01 October 2014 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
Given Iversen's advice.... May I suggest audio books? I find, having no training in Danish at all, that following a Danish film without subtitles can be strenuous whereas after five or ten minutes with my first Danish audio book I could understand every single word. This might be ever so slightly affected by the fact that I tend to watch films late in the evening with a drink and some chocolate, struggling to stay awake for the end of it, whereas I listen to audio books while walking the dogs in the morning, but it doesn't account for all of it. Some thoughts inspired by Ari's post: As noted, there are Swedes who find Danish completely unintelligible (it's a bit of a trope, actually - you'll hear people say this although they've heard Danish maybe once in their lives on a recording in a classroom when they were 13), but it should be said that it's also very common to find Danes who find Swedish completely unintelligible. Even close to the border. Even people who must deal with foreigners, including Swedes, all the time. If you find someone for a longish chat you may have an easier time, but for business transactions... Danes looked shaken and started speaking English to me in response to my Swedish 20 years ago and they still speak English to me. Last time I bought food in Denmark, at a very popular stop for Europeans driving through Denmark on the E20, I had to repeat every aspect of my order 3 times and the server tried to switch to English several times. I spoke Swedish, but I used the Danish words for every single item on the menu and even "Nej" (No in Swedish and Danish) was construed as a yes in his stress over having to deal with an incomprehensible Swede. This is pretty on par with my experience. I'm sure, though, that Danes get the same kind of treatment in Sweden. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4516 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 13 of 39 01 October 2014 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oddly enough, when I was in Copenhagen I didn't get responses in English that often. But
maybe they are either more used to Swedish (which is what I was speaking) or maybe it's my damned accent that gives it away :p 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6391 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 14 of 39 01 October 2014 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had the problem of Danes switching to Danish when I tried to speak English with them
(when they found out I was from Sweden). I ended up telling people I was an American, since people refused to speak English with me and I couldn't for the life of me understand their Danish. Cue "kamelåså" joke about Danes not understanding their own language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3908 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 15 of 39 01 October 2014 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | ||
9/10, if not more, of my experiences are from Copenhagen/Dragør, having lived about 45 minutes from there for 25 years. If people in Copenhagen are better with Swedish than the rest of Denmark, the rest of Denmark must be absolutely horrible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3908 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 16 of 39 01 October 2014 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Maybe they were just being contrary. If you'd have spoken Swedish from the start they might have insisted on English. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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