Scandinavian Language

[Eoghan]

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

 

[Illnath]

Denmark is the greatest country in Scandinavia I am off course completely unbiased in my opinion

When Opeth came to Denmark in 2003 Mikael asked if he should talk in English or In Swedish. We all yelled Swedish.

We can pretty much understand each other. Sure there are some words that are different from each other, but if we talk slowly then there generally aren't any problems.


Denmark invented the flag design that is used today in the Scandinavian counties.


(Finnish on the other hand is completely different language though)

 

[Arnold Layne]

So scandanavia is more more than just a name for a bunch of places linked together geographically?

 

[Jahn]

Iam from Norway.Swedish and Norwegian is quit the same.In some cases Swedish people dont understand us.Thats because were talking very fast,like Swedish got dialects,but here in Norway we got serval dialects.Some of them is hard to understand.But Danish is somethimes hard for us to understand.So Swedish and Norwegian have more things in common than Danish and Finish.

 

[goashem]

Finnish is only (but very) similar to Estonian language. But Estonia is too little country to bother learning this language

Yep, Estonian and Finnish are the only big (well, relatively big) Finnic languages - Finnic languages are the Finno-Ugric languages spoken by the shores of the Baltic sea. The biggest Finno-Ugric language is Hungarian, however, but it's very distant from the Finnic languages, as far as Russian is from English. And of course, there are the Sami languages, spoken in the Finnish, Swedish, Russian and Norwegian Lapland.

As you can see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language#Borrowing, Finnish has an unique vocabulary compared to most of the languages in Europe. However, our language has borrowed a lot from many of our neighbours, but not enough for foreigners to understand any of our language .

However, we, the younger generation of Finns, do understand some Swedish (and therefore, some Norwegian and Danish, too) because we are taught Swedish at school for 3-6 years. I can't say it's the most popular subject in schools, as a matter a fact its one of the most hated ones because most pupils seldom get the opportunity to use it. If we meet Swedes, we automatically speak English because it's a neutral language for both of us. Well, in my opinion it's nice to know some Swedish because I'm able to read magazines and websites in other Nordic languages (excluding Icelandic that is completely different from Swedish, Norwegian and Danish).

But spoken Norwegian and Danish...? They are totally uncomprehensible to me. As a matter of fact, the same thing applies to spoken Swedish too, if it is not spoken slowly. From the Finnish point of view, Finland-Swedish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland-Swedish) is quite comprehensible to me, it's basically Swedish spoken with a Finnish accent.

 

[Eemu]

Actually obligatory swedish was a part of the finnish school until last year, now it's optional.

I'm finnish, but the last 5 years I've lived in Sweden. The two languages are completely different both gramatically and intonationally. Swedish is much easier to learn for a finn than the other way round, actually I remember reading that finnish is one of the most complex languages gramatically. I can quite easily understand norwegian and danish aswell as estonian. As goashem said, icelandic is quite different from swedish even if they have similiar construction.

 

[Luz]

You SIR stole my avatar!!!

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

 

[Illnath]

There is an Opeth song in Swedish...or rather Mikael Åkerfeldt made one. The band is called Sörskogen. The song is called Mordet i grottan. (The murder in the cave) Or In Danish mordet i grotten


And another thing. I personally think that Danish have more in common than Danish and Swedish. The Norwegian language is based on Danish or rather written Danish......




God damnit bring back the Kalmar union I say

 

[dorian gray]

You SIR stole my avatar!!!

i thought your avatar was a picture of dimebag?

 

[Luz]

Shut the fuck up, that eye is MINE too!

i thought your avatar was a picture of dimebag?

 

[Blind Guardian]

So scandanavia is more more than just a name for a bunch of places linked together geographically?

Sorry for the bump but i surfed through the opeth forum and thought i´d shed some light over this since most people dont seem to know and it might be interesting for those who give a shit. The name Scandinavia comes from the mountain chain that divides Sweden and Norway,"The scandic mountains",or "Skanderna" in Swedish

 

[FRUGiHOYi]

Scandinavia = Denmark, Sweden, Norway

These three countries are also considered Nordic countries, along with Finnland (because of their geographical location, I guess). Not sure if any other countries are considered Nordic.

Denmark - speaks Danish
Sweden - speaks Swedish
Norway - speaks Norwegian

The three languages are closely related and derived from German. However, German is pretty different from these languages. The three Scandinavian languages are sort of like Spanish and Portuguese -- Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians can all pretty much understand each other. I believe Danish is the hardest for Swedes and Norwegians to understand. In Finnland they speak Finnish, which is completely different from the Scandinavian languages. But a large part of the population speaks Swedish too (maybe some of them only speak Swedish, I'm not sure).

That's my summary. Correct me if I was wrong about anything; I've only been living in Scandinavia for one year.

Seems like a lot of people don't know that Denmark is a Scandinavian country too. Well, it happens to be the oldest monarchy in the world and as Illnath said, they came up with the flag design that is shared with Norway and Sweden (the Danish colors are the best too -- Swedish colors are quite ugly IMO).

 

[Black Session]

Seems like a lot of people don't know that Denmark is a Scandinavian country too. Well, it happens to be the oldest monarchy in the world and as Illnath said, they came up with the flag design that is shared with Norway and Sweden (the Danish colors are the best too -- Swedish colors are quite ugly IMO).

hmm, I think Iran deserves the credit of oldest monarchy ...

 

[Saihtam]

The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe called the Nordic region, consisting of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland. In common English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for the Nordic countries.

 

[Illnath]

hmm, I think Iran deserves the credit of oldest monarchy ...

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

 

[Porcupetheaterpplin]

My Danish uncle (and fellow Opeth fan) and my aunt who lived in Denmark and speaks Danish have both told me they can understand Swedish and Norwegian. I can hardly imagine understanding a foreign language without having to study it. I struggle enough to understand Scots who talk fast. What a cool phenomenon, though!

 

[neuroticandroid]

when i was in high school, there were two foreign exchange students from sweden and denmark. one day, they were in my french class talking to each other in swedish and danish. my teacher asked them how it was that they understood each other, the danish guy told her that the languages were very similar except for accents and such, but still intelligible with each other.

 

[Maggai]

yah norwegian, swedish and danish are pretty close. Written Danish is very close to Norwegian, but spoken it's alot harder to understand. Swedish has more different words, but is easy to understand imo. And we speak english of course. And maybe some french, german and/or spanish if you payed attention in school.

 

[fränzi]

Greenland though speaks a language, that i will descibe is mostly common to japanease or Korean (in grammer and the sounds used, though alphabet is like the English)

Greenlandic is quite different from Japanese or Korean. These are agglutinating languages, whereas Greenlandic is a step further and is polysynthetic (meaning is affix-dependant as opposed to Chinese which is word-order dependant; ie. analytic). Yes, Japanese and Korean are technically closer to Greenlandic than any of the Scandinavian languages are, but Greenlandic is still utterly different from any Asian language and is completely linguistically unrelated (Eskimo-Aleut).

The three languages are closely related and derived from German. However, German is pretty different from these languages.

Not German; Old Norse.

Denmark, Sweden and Norway comprise the Scandinavian countries. There are only these three. Including Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands you get the Nordic countries which are so-named because of their historical ties with one another.

On the subject of a common Scandinavian language, well, I only have some knowledge of Swedish (which I'm currently studying at the moment) but I know they share a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Orthographically, Norwegian and Danish are closer to one another; phonologically, Norwegian and Swedish are. 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. Of the Northern Germanic languages to which these three belong, Norwegian is North-western Germanic (along with Icelandic and Faroese); Swedish and Danish are North-eastern Germanic.

It is true that a Dane, a Swede and a Norwegian can converse with one another speaking only their native language and be understood. For Norwegian and Swedish, this is particularly true, though not always - Western Norwegian dialects are often utterly intelligible to Standard Bokmål speakers in Oslo and the like. As far as I know these dialects are actually the third closest speech variety to Icelandic in the Northern Germanic languages after Faroese.

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.

 

[Maggai]

good post.