DANISH,NORWEGIAN AND SWEDISH

Sander   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 13:05 GMT
Ever since I got in to a discussion with Frederic from Norway this question has been haunting in my mind.

Fredric said; If you can speak Norwegian you can also speak Danish an Swedish...

Now my question is: "Are the differences the same as between American English and English? Can you compare it with those ?

Or is it slightly more complicated?
Kazoo   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 13:24 GMT
From my understanding of it, the difference is a little more complicated than with American and British English. I think pronunciations are a bit different for some words and the same for others, just like in different dialects of English, but, and this is just my impression, different meanings for the same words is much more widespread in the Scandinavian languages than it is in English.

Maybe I'm wrong and there really isn't that much difference, maybe if the different dialects of English used different spelling systems more suited to dialectal pronunciation we would think that English is much more varied than it actually is.
Shatin   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 14:32 GMT
Seems that things are slightly more complicated:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/nordic/scn/Northgermanic.html
Sander   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 14:53 GMT
But is it only the accent that isnt the same,or is their a bigger linguestic "problem"?
Fredrik from N9poqrw   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 15:14 GMT
The differences
Sander   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 18:30 GMT
But are those differences so big that you cant understand them?
Ved   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 21:44 GMT
As far as I know, Scandinavians don't resort to English when they need to communicate among each other. Instead, they use their first languages.

A similar situation exists in the Southern Slavic linguistic area, where people don't need a third language to communicate with somebody from a neighbouring country.

The difference among standard Swedish, Danish and the two Norwegian languages is greater than between the standard English of America and, say, Australia, but considerably smaller than the difference between High German and Dutch.
Jordi   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 22:18 GMT
The differences between Scandinavian languages is very much the same that there is between Standard Catalan and Standard Occitan.

Unfortunately, Occitan is not widely spoken in Southern France whilst Catalan is co-official and widely spoken along a great part of the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

I have spoken with educated Occitan speakers and we understand, let's say, over 80% of what is told without any study. There are also some differences in morphology and syntax and quite a bit more in vocabulary.

It takes only a few months of study to learn both Standards. These languages were much closer in the 12th century and have evolved. I believe that is very much what happened with Old Scandinavian.
Brennus   Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 22:55 GMT
There is a web site called Travlang Word of the Day where you can listen to how numerous words sound in all four *Scandinavian languages: Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.

(*This is a term used primarily in North America. I have found that most people who come from Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden don't really like it.)
Kazoo   Wednesday, February 23, 2005, 00:20 GMT
You could call them members of the Nordic countries, although that also includes Finland and doesn't include Iceland.
stian   Wednesday, February 23, 2005, 12:23 GMT
swap a few 'd's for 't's and 'g's for 'k's and written danish and norwegian are pretty similar
Sander   Wednesday, February 23, 2005, 13:28 GMT
Ved,

=>The difference among standard Swedish, Danish and the two Norwegian languages is greater than between the standard English of America and, say, Australia, but considerably smaller than the difference between High German and Dutch.<=

If Im reading this message correctly,you are saying that the difference between American English and Australian English is BIGGER that the differences between High German and Dutch ???

Dutch and High German are 2 different languages,If I would talk Dutch to a German I would bet my life that he wouldent understand me!Its the same the other way around.

I hope this was a mistake?!
Sander   Wednesday, February 23, 2005, 13:37 GMT
Ved,

Im afraid Ive jumped to fast to conclusions....
Your where right to compare it with English and Australian.
Still In this subject you can't compare Dutch and High German....
Fredrik from Norway   Wednesday, February 23, 2005, 17:17 GMT
I haven´t answered `yet, because I spilled drinking yoghurt in my keyboard! After that my computer has not been itself!

Here is something I wrote on this forum a while ago:

Swedes and Norwegians have no problems understanding each other. With a little extra attention and effort Norwegians and Danes can also easily talk. Swedes and Danes have to try a bit harder, but actually ALL languages in Scandinavian (excluding Finnish and Icelandic) are totally interintelligable.
Because of historical development (closest linguistical links with Swedish + long union with Denmark + lots of different dialects in Norway)) Norwegian is the language "in the middle", so we are the Scandinavian champions in understanding our neighbours.

Finnish and Sami is from a totally other language family (Finno-Ugric) so it is only natural that we Scandinavians cannot understand them
But Icelandic is practically the same as old Norse, the language of the Vikings, which was spoken in all of Scandinavia in the early mediaeval age. But then Norwegian, Danish and Swedish developed so much (with a lot of loan-words from Low German) that we cannot talk to an Icelander, although we can understand some words and easy sentences.
Faroese is also close to old Norse, though has developed a bit more than Icelandic, more in tune with Western Norwegian.

I suppose a person from Western Norway could make some easy small-talk with a Faroese.
I also think Faroese people and Icelanders can understand each other to some degree.

Some Finnish people speak Swedish as their first language and many of them some Swedish as a second language (because of union with Sweden until 1809).
Most Faroese speak Danish too, as a second language (the Faroese islands were a part of Norway until 1814, from then on, and still, a part of Denmark).
Some Icelanders speak Danish as a second language (union until 1944) but they mostly speak excellent English).

Example (Faroese proverb):
English: Time runs like the stream in river
Faroese (and circa Icelandic): Tidinn rennur sem streymur i á.
New Norwegian: Tida renn som strøymen i åa.
Book Norwegian: Tiden renner som strømmen i åa.
Danish: Tiden render som strømmen i åen.
Swedish: Tiden rinner som strömmen i ån.
Finnish (maybe something like): Kihaita pohrtine kus aasmykko naaminen.
Sami (maybe something like): Cinievra guiodna cos doitnuivreirra.

The Finnish and Sami examples I just totally made up. The Faroese one I would not have known if I did not know the proverb. Bit the Danish and Swedish ones I had no problem translating
Fredrik from Norway   Wednesday, February 23, 2005, 17:27 GMT
I have no problem with the term Scandinavia, but Norden (the North) / the Nordic countries sound more poetical. The Nordic countries have a Nordic Council, a sort of mini-EU with a very respected and strict environmentally-friendly label, the so called Swan label. That plays on a poem about "The five white swans from the North". The five swans are of course the five nordic states.

Scandinavia = Norway, Sweden, Denmark

Norden / the Nordic countries = Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

The East-Nordic languages: Swedish and Danish

The West-Nordic languages: Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic.

But these two last termes have little practical value, because Norwegian today is closer to Swedish and Danish. It has more to do with the fact that both Faroese and icelandic developed from western Norwegian.