A Scandinavian language | Antimoon Forum

À part le finnois principalement (mais pas seulement) parlé en Finlande, les langues scandinaves font partie du groupe germanique septentrional, par opposition au germanique occidental (allemand, anglais, néerlandais, frison etc).

I have no problem when it comes to speaking with danish or swedish , my cousin is Danish and i have no problem understanding him. When it comes to written Danish and Norvegian is almost the same i can read a book and dont understand it is written on danish i have no problem reading swedish either.

Then you can sum up it and say that you don´t have any problems with thoses languages at all. For me, it´s a littel bit harder to listen to Danish but it works if have enough with focus but I also think that it is a habit too. If you have Danish relatives or if you go to Denmark often I think it becomes more easier and easier during the time.

So, is the relationship between Icelandic+Faroese and Danish, Swedish+Norwegian a bit like the relationship between English and German+Dutch+Freisian+Afrikaans+Swiss German ?

In that Germans and Dutch can kind of understand each other, but a speaker of English hearing or reading German or Dutch can only find some similar words, (particualrly in writing.)

Also there are similarities in the histories of Icelandic and Faroese, being cut off quite definitely from the North German languages of mainland Scandinavia. Of course English had the big French vocabulay influx too. So maybe a closer parallel would be Dutch and Afrikaans.

=>So, is the relationship between Icelandic+Faroese and Danish, Swedish+Norwegian a bit like the relationship between English and German+Dutch+Frisian+Afrikaans+Swiss German ?<=

Yes and No :) , First of all Swiss is not a language, and the relation between the North Germanic languages are closer (when you leave out Icelandic and Faroese)

=>In that Germans and Dutch can kind of understand each other, but a speaker of English hearing or reading German or Dutch can only find some similar words, (particualrly in writing.) <=

I have to say that a German and a Dutchman can not understand eathother but the basic things,(mostly due to Dutch pronounciation,different story) in writing they can sort of understand eathother but still it's not optimal or comparable to say, Swedish and Danish or further away to Dutch and Afrikaans.

=>So maybe a closer parallel would be Dutch and Afrikaans. <=

Dutch and Afrikaans are actually more like English and the Latin languages,although Afrikaans has a very Dutch(based!) vocabulary it's grammer is almost alien to a Dutch speaker (and visa versa), therefore a Dutch speaker and an Afrikaanse speaker can understand eachother mainly thru the context of the words.But it's still closer than Dutch and German.

I have learnt Swedish from my parents and grandfather though my actual mother tongue is Finnish (as it is the mother tongue of my mother and both grandmothers). I have tried to learn to speak both Norwegian and Danish, but in fact I haven´t had to learn foreign languages, it has almost been only like adjusting my Swedish. If you know Norwegian (bokmål), learning Danish is mainly learning pronunciation (to speak Norwegian with a hot potato in the mouth - or is it a little bit ugly to say so, Danes?). Danish is much easier when you see the person you are conversing with, but at least for me spoken Danish at radio is definitely more difficult.
As it has been mentioned here, continental Scandinavians don´t understand Icelandic or Faeroese without studies. But when Icelanders speak Scandinavian (they learn Danish at school), it sounds very similar to 'finlandssvensk', the accent is almost identical. Finlandssvensk - especially our archaic dialects - has also many common words with Norwegian, like rosk, ein, gang osv.

Scandinavians suck... almost no one knows where this region is! The "frozen countries" on the northern edge of the globe... lol! They have no future as a region.

Wasn't me, just a loner loser.

It´s tragic that persons use others names. That statement, wich was an amateur comment, shows only that our region has a future because otherwise should they criticize us more concrete. An other view of it can be that they want that persons from our region shall change our impressions when it´s about Sander and perhaps also The Netherlands as a country. But I haven´t changed my mind about that, I have rather got a more gloomy, dark picture of trollidiots who exists on the internet.

The usual advice given to Americans wanting to learn Scandinavian languages is to learn Norwegian first--a Norwegian speaker can communicate with a Swede or Dane easier than a Dane and Swede can communicate with each other. This seems to be supported by this thread--written Norwegian is almost like written Danish, spoken Norwegian is almost like spoken Swedish.

My question is: Is that really true about spoken Norwegian and Swedish? Swedish does sound a lot clearer (to these American ears) than Danish, but I have not heard enough Norwegian to judge. Is spoken Norwegian (bokmal) pronunciation (including intonation) that similar to Swedish--and as clear to understand?

You might want to alter your name mjf, the moderators name is mjd,and maybe he sees you as a troll.

mjf, First of all there are many dialects in both Swedish and Norwegian, but genraly you are correct. You can say that the Norwegians talk more according to how the words are spelling than the Danes and they also have a "sing song" ( I don´t know if we have it but many foreigners say that we have it) accent when they speake exactly as we Swedes have. The thing is that their words reminds more to Danish than Swedish and it makes that their language land somewhere between Swedish and Danish. I shall also add that a Swede can identify 90% of the Danish word so then everyone know how colse Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are to each other. So finally yes Norwegian is a clear language but some dialects are very hard to understand.

Just a belated reply to Sander:

=> Yes and No :) , First of all Swiss is not a language, and the relation between the North Germanic languages are closer (when you leave out Icelandic and Faroese)

Well, actually I didn't leave out Icelandic and Faroese - that was the point of my post!

Also from what I have heard the grammar and pronunciation of Swiss Deutsch is far enough removed from High German to be considered a separate language. Although Swiss Germans learn High German and think they can speak it. Anyone able to comment ?

Ooops, sent it once without a name, then sent it again with.
Not an intentional move.
Soz