similar languages

Guest   Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:29 am GMT
Curiously in the case of the Norweigan-Danish-Swedish group, the Norweigans understand the rest much better than the Danish and Swedish understand Norweigan. Can somebody explain why?. In the case of Portuguese-Spanish it think that the Portuguese speakers understand Spanish better than vice-versa because they have more complex phonology and some sounds are hard to decipher for a Spanish speaker.
PARISIEN   Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:16 am GMT
Norway has been for centuries a province of Denmark. As a consequence Norwegian (especially in the Bokmål variety) is nearly the same language as Danish, under its written form. On the other hand pronounciation and prosody lean clearly towards Swedish. That way the Norwegians are somewhat entitled to claim they natively speak Skandinavisk, they can easily adjust to both their neighbours' speech.

Mutual intelligibility is not always excellent between Danish and Swedish (phonetic differences are huge, possibly wider than between Portuguese and Spanish), and asymmetrical (Danes understand Swedes better that the other way round).

Except for Bergen and the West Country, most Norwegians live in a narrow stripe of land along the Swedish border, hence a somewhat constant exposure to Swedish. Sweden is Oslo's backyard. But for people in Stockholm, Norway is something pretty far away. A situation that compares to the Portuguese/Spanish relationship.
JGreco   Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:18 am GMT
Danish is similar in reason as the reason for European Portuguese unintelligibly with Spanish. European Portuguese's phonology varies greatly making it hard for a Spaniard (and a American) to understand them. Brazilian Portuguese is another story. Depending on education level. An American Spanish person can understand about 85-90% spoken and over 90% written. This is because Brazilian Portuguese speakers pronounce al vowels and consonants when speaking while European speakers greatly reduce vowels and consonants (especially in the Azores and Madeira). Intelligibility is reduced to as little as 25% of spoken form being understood with the same amount of written being understood. I can speak of this due to the fact that my mother is Brazilian (with relatives from the Azores and Portugal) and my fathers mother is Panamanian-Italian.
eccomi   Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:45 am GMT
I'm Italian and have learnt European POrtuguese. I can understand it perferctly and Spanish helped me a great deal especially in terms of grammar, syntax and vocabulary.
nyelv   Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:58 am GMT
"Instead of follar and scopare one could use "fornicar" and "fornicare" instead".

Fornicare is only used in the Bible and it sounds very very formal or literary. There are other synonyms for Scopare: chiavare, trombare, fottere, they sound quite coarse but they are also very popular...

"The biggest difference between Spanish and Portuguese is pronunciation but the rest is the same"

You probably don't know well neither languages. Portuguese does have verb tenses that don't even exist in Spanish! Plurals are much more complicated and irregular in Portuguese. Syntax is quite different sometimes and even sectorial vocabolary is not so similar..
Wong   Tue Sep 01, 2009 3:44 pm GMT
Malaysian and Indonesian.

The difference is comparable to Croatian and Serbian.
blanc   Tue Sep 01, 2009 4:05 pm GMT
The difference is comparable to Croatian and Serbian.


So, it's the same language :-)
Iulian   Tue Sep 01, 2009 8:26 pm GMT
"reality Thu Aug 20, 2009 9:35 pm GMT
Spanish=Italian (very similar languages

Are you sure

Italian = Gli uomini vogliono mangiare e scopare

Spanish = los hombres quieren comer y follar

English = Men want to eat and fuck

Are Italian and Spanish so similar?

NO! But see this

Italian = Gli uomini vogliono mangiare e scopare (fottere)
Romanian = Oamenii vor mancare si sa futa
larevedere   Tue Sep 01, 2009 8:43 pm GMT
Italian = Gli uomini vogliono mangiare e scopare (fottere)
Romanian = Oamenii vor mancare si sa futa

I know that Romanian and Italian are rather similar,for this reason some linguists include both Italian and Romanian in the Eastern Romance languages
me   Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:36 am GMT
The pairs Danish-Norwegian and Norwegian-Swedish are probably more similar to one another than Spanish-Portuguese, but whether Danish-Swedish are more similar than Spanish-Portuguese is debatable.
For my   Wed Sep 02, 2009 4:34 am GMT
I think the Italian and Spanish languages are more similar than Spanish and Portuguese languages.
kio   Wed Sep 02, 2009 6:28 am GMT
I think the Italian and Spanish languages are more similar than Spanish and Portuguese languages.

In your dreams. Italian is more similar to FRench or Romanian than Spanish. Learn them. Phonetically It and Sp may be more similar, that's all
sdrg   Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 am GMT
What about Dutch and Low German (Low Saxon) varieties? I think these languages (or dialects) are very similar.
MW   Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:28 am GMT
^I think Low German is more similar to English than to Dutch.
PARISIEN   Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:47 am GMT
<< I think Low German is more similar to English than to Dutch >>

-- Douteux. Il n'y a pratiquement aucune intercompréhension orale intuitive entre les deux.
La vérité est qu'aucune langue ne ressemble ni à l'anglais (sauf l'écossais) ni au français (sauf le franco-provençal)


<< Italian is more similar to FRench or Romanian than Spanish. Learn them. Phonetically It and Sp may be more similar, that's all >>

-- Comparaisons oiseuses.
Le problème est qu'entre les domaines originels toscan, français et castillan existe/existait un continuum couvrant dialectes catalans, occitans et gallo-italiques (piémontais, lombard, ligure), initialement très proches les uns des autres mais soumis depuis à des influences divergentes.