Choosing a Scandinavian Language

Skippy, the following survey is admittedly oversimplified, but it will tell you some of the grammatical and orthographical trademarks amongst the trio:

Swedish CAKEWALK: most easily written alphabet of the three
(between the first two German umlauts and the Dano-Norwegian æ/ø characters [å is common to all Scandinavian languages], it's clear which is less of a calligraphic task)

Swedish CHALLENGE: distinction between past participle and supine
(whereas English, German, Norwegian, and Danish have only one form of "written"/"geschrieben"/"skrevet"/"skrevet", Swedish has both "skrivit" and "skriven", respectively)

Norwegian CAKEWALK: simplified spellings in general
(English "to read" = Swedish "att läsa" = Danish "at læse" = Norwegian "å lese" and English "they ran out of the forest" = Swedish "de löpte ut av skogen" = Danish "de løb ud af skoven" = Norwegian "de løp ut av skogen"; 'nuf said)

Norwegian CHALLENGE: three genders
(male, female, and neuter, unlike Danish and Swedish, which have only two, common and neuter)

Danish CAKEWALK: nonexistent double definite article construction
(English "the big book" = Swedish "den stora boken" [literally "the big the book"] = Norwegian "den store boken" [literally "the big the book"] = Danish "den store bog" [literally "the big book"]; too bad Antimoon doesn't use HTML...)

Danish CHALLENGE: double consonant prohibited at the end of a word
(English "a blue house" = Swedish "ett blått hus" = Norwegian "et blått hus" = Danish "et blåt hus")

As for pronunciation, you can choose between rhythmic melodic (Norwegian and Swedish) and monotone harmonic (Danish).

Tell me if you'd like to know more.

The Swede wrote:
<<Yes the old Norwegian is called "bokmål" and is most similar to Danish, specially in writing.>>
Actually, it only exists in written form. But the Oslo and Bergen dialects are very close to Bokmål. But still, there are no official rules about how to pronounce either Bokmål nor Nynorsk.

Skippy:
Because of all these dialects and different literary forms, I would warn you against learning Norwegian, unless you are an avid linguist who loves to compare different varities. Danish pronounciation is notoriously hard. So Swedish, which has a more complicated grammar than both Danish and Norwegian Bokmål, is probably the wisest choice, also because Sweden is the most populous country. Though you will probably not manage to learn the two tones of Swedish (and Norwegian) intonation, so you will probably sound like a Finland-Swede, something which is highly agreeable anyway!
Another tip is to search for "Scandinavian" here in the Antimoon archives, as this topic has been discussed several times before.

superdavid

<BTW, do you speak Korean or did you just get machine-translated that Korean text? I'm impressed anyway.>


No, I've never got Korean text translated by machine, and I can only speak and write some general Korean, becasue I ever learned Korean for about 2 years, 10 years ago. And I just feel that It would be better for Korean text to renew using Chinese Hanja（漢字）. Finally I like Korean too.

"Because of all these dialects and different literary forms, I would warn you against learning Norwegian"

I've never had difficulty with reading Nynorsk and only once or twice encountered a dialect I couldn't understand (mostly from smaller towns in Western Norway).

I would recommend Norwegian, partly because of it's slightly simpler grammar (and, to me, more sensible orthography) and partly because of the ease with which you can understand spoken and written Swedish and written Danish. Spoken Danish, of course, is difficult for everybody, hehe. However, some Danish dialects are much easier to understand than others, in my experience.

The Swede:
<Yes the old Norwegian is called "bokmål" and is most similar to Danish, specially in writing. The New Norwegian is called ny norsk and means New Norwegian if you translate it.>


One more question Please! OK?
If someone would like to study Norwegian,
which one should he/she choose to learn?
"Bokmål" or "Ny Norsk"? Thanks!

Well, a boring answer, it depence. If the purpose is to flirt with the Norwegian people, I think "nynorsk" is the answer even if a majority of the Norwegian population speaks Bokmål. I think that the Norwegian will apprehend you as a person who is very interested of the Norwegian culture and their kind of living etc if you study nynorsk.
Bokmål is much larger when it´s about native speakers and more similar to specially Danish so if the purpose is to express your self and understand as many Scandinavian as possible then choose bokmål.

The Swede is right, except that hardly anybody speaks Bokmål and certainly nobody speaks Nynorsk. They are literary standards!

I've noticed that Norway's dialects swing between bokmäl and nynorsk, those in the east are closer to bokmäl, but the rest of the coutnry uses more nynorsk dialects, especially the bergen region and the north

So, I think, learning Norwegean is like learning two dialects.
But then again, the same thing is true of Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, Swiss German and to some extent, Finish.

Maybe inventing your own personal dialect would be best, that includes forms that are easiest for you, so they'll think you're a native speaker, but just of a different dialect. That's done wonders for me with German and Italian--even though I speak very little of both, I'm almost always assumed to be German or Italian. That also eliminates the possibility of them resorting to English on me--I just pretend I don't speak any English.

How well does this work with the Scandinavian languages, and which features would be the best to use?

zzz:
Sounds like a smart approach. Most books teaching you Norwegian are based on Eastern Norwegian, which has a rolled r. But there is nothing wrong with using a uvular r, if you are more familar with that, as uvular r is found in a large area in southwestern Norwegian.

Giovanni:
In addition to the east/west divide between Bokmål and Nynorsk you also have an urban/rural divide. The more western and rural, the more Nynorsk features in the dialects.