Scandinavian Language

[smalls]

im norwegian and heres the deal
danish, swedish and norwegian people all understand eachother
BUT norwegians usually understand the two other languages better because norway has alot of dialects, some which resemble swedish\danish
we dont understand finnish, nobody does, its an annoying language

 

[FRUGiHOYi]

Norwegian and Swedish are in fact pitch-accent languages, which use tone to differentiate between meanings of certain words (rare among Indo-European languages), while Danish is distinctly atonal in that regard.

I think I know what you mean. I'm not sure about Norwegian, but when I hear Swedish, it sounds sort of like they are singing the words, like Italian. I think Norwegian and Swedish sound better than Danish, and also easier.

 

[Jackehh]

I'd really like an Opeth song in Swedish. That would be awesome.

Listen to Mordet i Grotten by Sörskogen, its not opeth but it's Mikael at least. A great song btw that could easily fit into the damnation album atmosphere

Anyway if I'll gladly help out, being a swede and also studying languages at school I have quite some knowledge

First of all, Swedish might be seen as the "fundamental language" in scandinavia, Geograpically at least

Norwieghans understand swedes better than swedes understand them, known fact. Reading norwieghan could any swede do though, but it's harder to have oral conversations with them (but its still easy if they'd both talk at a slower pace).

The relation between the swedish and the danish language is pretty much the same as swedish and norwieghan except that its even harder for the swedish person both in terms of reading and orally.

Finnish language is nowhere close swedish, danish or norwieghan at all but like some people previously mentioned in finland (especially near the border to sweden) the schools there have swedish on their schedules just like the sweden schools close to the finnish border have finnish on theirs'.

Swedish is probably the most "clear" language of all those mentioned above. We swedes dont talk very fast either and we have a structured way of speaking. I'd say this is a connection between germany's language since they originates from the same germanic language.

However if you want to communicate with scandinavians, english is still the best way to go. English is the second language in all the countries here and we also have very good english education (at least in sweden )

Might be worth mentioning though that a swedish school class could learn around 150-200 german words in a matter of 2 weeks, studying at a normal rate. It is VERY easy to learn deutsch if you can speak swedish already.

 

[Jackehh]

As for Danish, I am told that Southern Swedes and Norwegians generally don't have too much trouble (again, this is not always the case) in understanding Standard Danish, but the use of slurred speech and Danish-specific pecularities such as the 'soft d' - which sounds like something between the 'th' in 'the' and an 'l' - make Danish the least understood of the three, at least insofar as a comparison of the standard varieties of the three languages is concerned.

Im sorry for the spamm but this really cought my eye.

Very intresting post btw, even I learned some here, (im from sweden!)

Anyway I'll just confirm what you said here. Southern swedes(cant answer for norwieghans, I doubt this as well since they have no relation geographically with each other) really do have it easier to talk to danish people, this is very true. Fact is that many swedish people joke with the southern swedes (they are called Skåningar btw, the province is called Skåne) that they should belong to denmark (they did this for a time before Gustav Vasa). And also another funny fact is that some "Skåningar" that live in rural places can have such a pure "skåne-dialect" that its even hard for a swedish to understand them on some occacions, this is very uncommon though.

 

[abyssofdreams]

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia

Scandinavia (Danish and Swedish: Skandinavien, Norwegian, Faroese and Finnish: Skandinavia, Icelandic: Skandinavía, Sami: Skadesi-suolu / Skađsuâl) is a historical and geographical region centred on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe which includes the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.[1][2] The other Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, are sometimes included because of their close historic and cultural relations to Denmark, Norway and Sweden.[3][4][5][6]

In linguistics and cultural studies, the definition of Scandinavia is expanded to include the areas where Old Norse was spoken and where the North Germanic languages are now dominant. As a linguistic and cultural concept, Scandinavia thus also includes Iceland and the Faroe Islands.[7]

As a cultural and historical concept, Scandinavia can include Finland as well (of the larger region Fenno-Scandinavia), often with reference to the nation's long history as a part of Sweden. Although Finland is culturally closely related to the other Scandinavian countries, Finns form a distinct linguistic and ethnic group, which speaks a Finno-Ugric language of different origin from Scandinavian languages.[8]

Since the Fennoman movement of the 1830s and political Scandinavism of the 1830s-1850s,[9] the inclusion of Finland and Iceland has divided opinions in the respective states.[10] Although which countries are considered Scandinavian depends on the context, the term the Nordic countries is used unambiguously for Norway, Sweden, Denmark (including the Faroe Islands and Greenland), Finland (including Åland) and Iceland.[11][12][13]

 

[opethpainter]

is finland part of scandinavia?
yes and no:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia

 

[Black Session]

oldest monarchy in the world still standing that is...

ok then ... although the monarchs of persia still claim that they are the righteous rulers and are in exile ...

but on topic: don't know about other countries in europe, but here in belgium and the netherlands we consider Scandinavia as: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland ... more geographical and culturally speaking thus (because language is not the only thing defining that term). so i guess what you guys are calling Nordic countries, although i never heard anyone using that term.

 

[tgrude]

I am from Norway. I understand the Swedish speech much better than the Danish speech. But if I'm reading a note of something it would be the complete opposite, as the Danish and the Norwegian writings are very similar. Strange?
With that mentioned, I can't understand a word of finnish, both of writings or speech.

 

[Kirkfjell]

Another interesting thing when it comes to the Scandinavian languages is that Icelandic is still today more or less the exact same language that was spoken in Denmark, Sweden and Norway one thousand years ago, at the time of the vikings. In other words, if you're curious about the old norse language that was spoken in Scandinavia during the Viking age, visit Iceland.

And can we Swedes, Danes and Norwegians still understand Icelandic? No, not really. Sure you can pick out a few words here and there, but that goes for most of the germanic languages. I am Swedish and if I read Icelandic, I can understand some of it, but its very hard when spoken.

 

[Blind Guardian]

I know a Norwegian dialect that´s quite similar to skåne-dialect,i think it´s spoken in southern Norway = The closer to Denmark you are,the more Danish you´ll sound it seems.

 

[Blind Guardian]

Btw listen to Mordet I Grottan again and listen to Mike how he´s pronouncing "R". He´s not rolling the r´s but pronouncing them like an English speaking person would do. That´s how they speak in Stockholm,also probably a reason why he doesn´t have much accent when singing in English.

 

[Saihtam]

In Norway we learn Old Norse in high school, together with a chosen language, English and Nynorsk (Norway's second language, appositional with Bokmål). I think this, together with the great variety of dialects makes the Norwegian people able to understand both Swedish, Danish and Icelandic pretty well. There has been some survies on this topic which proves that Norwegians, generally speaking, understand the other countries best among the Nordic countries. As mentioned earlier, Skånsk is very hard to understand, but I personally think it is a beautiful dialect. Same goes for Soknamaol, the dialect of Windir and Vreid.

 

[Djöfull]

I´m from Iceland, I can read almost 1000 year old text from the Sagas and understand most of it. We learn danish here for some reason( colonial past) but the pronunciation is a bit hard for us. I think swedish is clearer and I understand more of it, although I haven't learned it in school ( I have relatives there and took a small course once). The official norwegian is difficult to understand if spoken but the dialects are easier. Norwegian written language is pretty easy to understand for me. Faroese is like retarded icelandic( they probably think the same about our language) easy to understand when written, but the pronunciation is strange( full of exotic shhh... tchh.. ouuujj sounds)

 

[fränzi]

With regards to Finnish, it is (as has been mentioned I think) completely unrelated to Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. In fact, it is unrelated to Indo-European languages in general. Linguists have in the past drawn connections to Finnish and Japanese, but this isn't taken seriously as far as I know. I mean, I've heard mention of similarities between Swedish and New Zealand's indigenous language Maori. Pure coincidence.

I did find this on Wikipedia:
"There have been attempts to relate the Finno-Ugric languages to the Indo-European languages, in the so called Indo-Uralic theories, but there are not enough similarities to link them with any certainty."

Might be worth mentioning though that a swedish school class could learn around 150-200 german words in a matter of 2 weeks, studying at a normal rate. It is VERY easy to learn deutsch if you can speak swedish already.

Even more so the other way around; with German I find that Swedish just hops on board, not only because of the far simpler grammar, but also because of the cognates as you mention. "Low-hanging fruit" as they say. I imagine the same is truer still of Dutch or Frisian.

Anyway I'll just confirm what you said here. Southern swedes(cant answer for norwieghans, I doubt this as well since they have no relation geographically with each other) really do have it easier to talk to danish people, this is very true. Fact is that many swedish people joke with the southern swedes (they are called Skåningar btw, the province is called Skåne) that they should belong to denmark (they did this for a time before Gustav Vasa). And also another funny fact is that some "Skåningar" that live in rural places can have such a pure "skåne-dialect" that its even hard for a swedish to understand them on some occacions, this is very uncommon though.

Interesting. Thanks for the info!

 

[smalls]

heres a video i found about danish being incomprehensible for just about everyone

[ame="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk"]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk[/ame]

 

[el_serpiente]

That was hilarious, I'm not sure if non Scandinavians understand it.

 

[Violens]

I think it is pretty clear that it is an hilarious thing. What the fuck of stupid situation would it be in the "true" life?

Ah btw: what's a kamelasa (sorry I've got no northern symbols on my keyboard)?

 

[Violens]

In Norway we learn Old Norse in high school, together with a chosen language, English and Nynorsk (Norway's second language, appositional with Bokmål). I think this, together with the great variety of dialects makes the Norwegian people able to understand both Swedish, Danish and Icelandic pretty well. There has been some survies on this topic which proves that Norwegians, generally speaking, understand the other countries best among the Nordic countries. As mentioned earlier, Skånsk is very hard to understand, but I personally think it is a beautiful dialect. Same goes for Soknamaol, the dialect of Windir and Vreid.

That's kind of pretty cool situation. So when you finish high school you're supposed to know 4 languages of which 3 used nowadays plus norwegian, is that right?

Anyways I have to say that scandinavian people do know English far better than what the rest of Europe does..

 

[FRUGiHOYi]

That's kind of pretty cool situation. So when you finish high school you're supposed to know 4 languages of which 3 used nowadays plus norwegian, is that right?

Anyways I have to say that scandinavian people do know English far better than what the rest of Europe does..

Except the countries that speak English as their first language.

 

[Saihtam]

That's kind of pretty cool situation. So when you finish high school you're supposed to know 4 languages of which 3 used nowadays plus norwegian, is that right?

Anyways I have to say that scandinavian people do know English far better than what the rest of Europe does..

Yeah, in spring 2010 I should know Norwegian, Nynorsk, Old Norse, English and Spanish. Nynorsk I've been learning for three and a half year, and it's pretty close to Norwegian, so that's no problem. English I've been learning for almost eight years, so I know English pretty good too. Spanish is a bit worse, as I've justed started learning it, but it's not even near being as difficult as Old Norse. I've been listening a lot to Sigur Rós (Icelandic band) and reading translations of their songs, so I though I would understand Old Norse quite easy, but the grammar is the most awkward thing I've seen.