When you understand one of these dialects you essentially understand all the dialects just that they sound like they ate a bag of pennies whilst drunk!😂
My understanding is Norwegian and Danish are similar/related. However, Swedish is not. Please correct me if I am wrong. For example, "How are you?" in Norwegian and in Danish is the same, it is: "Hvordan har du det?"; However, "How are you?" is "Hur mår du?" in Swedish.
This is so interesting- why does it sound so similar to Newfoundland dialects I wonder? If I met someone in Newfoundland who spoke like this I would just assume they were from here
Are German and English the same language? Partly like the Scandinavian languages. And there are so many variations that people from the same country may have difficulty understanding each other.
Yeah, it will just sound funny when they try to speak eachother languages, but one can say a word here and there in the other language when in that country, to make oneself better understood
Norwegian here, Trying to merge these into one will probably result in a war. We have enough trouble trying to merge the 2 written standards thank you very much.
As a Dane from the northern part of the country, i have a way easier time understanding the half German that is the southern dialects of Danish, than i understanding Swedish or Norwegian. i just simply can't communicate with a Swede or Norwegian person, without switching to English.
You might be a young person. As years go by and one gets more used to hear the other languages, most understand it easier. Some people will always have a harder time than other to understand the other languages. But it's no big deal. English is fine, if only solution)
I am Swedish and I understod both Norwegian and Danish. I think it’s harder for younger to understand Danish since their lack of knowledge of old words and dialectical forms.
Yes, agree, younger person have harder time with the other languages. Usually most people gets better at it as time goes by and they get more used to hear to other languages in media and so on
As a norwegian, bokmål and nynorsk are only standard written forms. We officially don't have a standard spoken dialect. There are several dialects that are close to the two forms, but that's where it stops. We don't have "standard norwegian".
@@ivilivo Which isn't neither bokmål nor nynorsk. There is a group in Oslo that more resently has begun talking something resembling bokmål, but they are really a minority. That said, Oslo is closer than people further north.
@@TullaRask Yeah, but I was referring to Bokmål and the fact it's not really a spoken language or dialect, not even in Oslo. But as I said, Oslo is closer, as in they have more people talking in a way more resembling the written Bokmål, and even a smaller group that has begun talking bokmål...
Dane here. In my opinion understanding and communicating with Swedes and Norwegians really comes down to exposure and the will and persistence to understand the other part. That and slowing down and speaking clearly (yes, spit out the "potato" I know :P). This was also easier back when TV was limited to Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (and German) channels. It was easier back then, to build up a "passive vocabulary" of differences you needed to be aware of as well as "tune in" to dialects. We were kind of forced to it. Now it's all English. On a side note, I have a really easy time with Bokmål. I sometimes initially mistake written Bokmål for Danish with spelling errors, but then it's understandably as it stems from an old Danish dialect.
Swedes talk slower. They literally use more time to get the same message across on average. This is one of the reason why talking slower to them helps.
@@fastertove I think that depends on dialect too. Most of the people from my hometown (a small town in northern Västergötland) speak faster than most stockholmers and people from dalarna, for example.
I want to add that Swedish is not just one language. It's actually several languages. Hear me out before saying "nuh uuuh", as i most likely have a different qualifier for what makes a language different from the rest. First off, let's start with just how little Norwegian and Swedish actually differ from each other. Most of it is just how the word is spoken (and rarely a minute difference in how it's written) which might as well be deemed a different dialect. Yet, Swedish and Norwegian are still classified as different languages. Now, why is Sweden multi-lingual then? Each regional dialect has their own words for things. Scania has lots of mix words from both Danish and Swedish and a whole bunch of made up words of their own. So people from Scania speak a completely different language than the rest of Sweden, and while most Swedes joke that they speak Danish and should join Denmark, they really don't speak Danish at all. The Scania dialect also spans over a bit to the east, but over there it's somewhat different to regular Skåne (Scania) dialects. They don't employ the same words and they have more of a mix. Then we have the Götaland dialect (which itself is split into many subgroups) which also has their own words not used elsewhere. I classify this region as traditional Swedish, this is where the Swedes originally came from. (who were since long already distinct from the Danes) The different sub groups all have their own quirks and words and i could go and classify each of them as a new language if i wanted. But it's too subtle for me to venture that far. I will say though that Göteborska (Gothenburg) dialect is quite distinct and has a whole dictionary of their own with words ONLY used in and around Gothenburg. Then we have Svealand dialects, with their own distinct words. Their speech sounds much like the Götaland dialect except their have something up their nose, or at least that's what it sounds like when they speak. Pompous and posh too. This is generally called Rikssvenska (State-Swedish) but i disagree as the majority of Swedes still speak the Götaland dialect, despite the dense (pun intended) population living in Svealand. Then we have the Norrland dialect, again all with their distinct words and even quite unique way of forming sentences. And not to mention the mixing bowl all along the western border with Norway where there's several very local and each quite distinct dialects like Dalmål, Värmländska and Dalbo just to name a few. And finally, Gotländska is its own little inbred language spoken on Gotland. Inbred only because it's an island and so there's bound to be inbreeding. ;) Don't be upset, every island with a permanent population on it is inbred in my eyes. Do each of these dialects understand each other? Only if they adhere to strictly Swedish words and speak clearly. As soon as they start speaking their local dialect they could all be speaking a different language. And while not an official language/dialect in Sweden, we have been invaded by so many different nationalities that a whole new language has been developed called Förortssvenska (Suburb Swedish / Ghetto Swedish) and/or (not sure if they are the same or not, depends on region i suppose) Shobresvenska (Sho-Bre, Hi Bro) as spoken by most immigrants who simply haven't had enough exposure to the Swedish language to adopt it fully. Many native Swedes who have previously learned proper Swedish will regress into förortssvenska/shobresvenska because of a desire to look cool and/or to fit in where a majority of young people around them are immigrants. Ghetto culture is quite bad in most larger cities in Sweden as immigrants are shoveled into run down concrete jungles and left there to rot.
Don't forget the different varieties of Swedish spoken in Finland! Standard finlandssvenska has a quite different pronunciation and a lot of vocabulary that's borrowed from Finnish. Not to even mention österbotnisk dialect, they have archaic forms that are no longer used in other Swedish dialects. It's genuinely hard to understand even if your mother language is Swedish
@@Pseudonyymi568 True and i did consider it but opted against it as the post was already very long and i don't know enough about Finlandsvenska to say what i think of it.
First off, the three languages are more like Rock, Paper, Scissors. Norwegians and Danes understand Swedish perfectly without issue. Except for the very rare Swedish only word that they have never heard about. Swedes understand Norwegian (Nynorsk) pretty well, while having issues with Bokmål. Danes understand both Nynorsk and Bokmål with a few difficulties occasionally. Neither Norwegians or Swedes understand Danish much at all, unless they have had extensive experience with Danish in the past. I would dare to go as far as to say not even Danes understand Danish from time to time. That being said, if the three languages would meld together, they would more than likely tend towards the Swedish dialect as that's the one all parties understand the best. In fact, it would most likely sound like the Scania dialect (yes, the region of Scania exists, it's why Scandinavia is named such) and it would be horrible and pointless. Much better and progressive if all Scandinavian countries just switched to English as their primary language and learned their native languages as a hobby.
It is mostly Swedish that have picked up a lot and changed a lot of words. If you have a broad knowledge of old words Norwegian and Danish is easy to understand. (Except when danes skip all the consonants in a whole phrase) And the assumption that everyone spoke "old norse" back... in the day? is just absurd. There were even more dialects and even languages in the north of Europe 100 years ago.
I'm an American and when I visited Norway while growing up I thought my father's family in Oslo spoke a different language from my mother's family in Oppdal (south of Trondheim).
Not at all, all these languages derive from old Norse, a language brought to Iceland by Scandinavian conquest, these languages have all changed a bunch over their years and gotten different. Though iceland has lived more separately and their language is today more similar to the old Norse than what danish for example is to old norse.
One day, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish Elfdalic, Danish, North Frisian, Old Norse and Proto Germanic will come together and form Actual Hodiern Norse. 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
In Denmark there isn’t quite a standardized form of danish as in Norway and Sweden, what we call standard danish is just the language in the region of Copenhagen which got to main dialects called Højkøbenhavnsk (High Copenhagen) and Lavkøbenhavnsk (Low Copenhagen), these two dialects differ in pronunciation and vocabulary and both of them have a ton of sub dialects.
In my opinion, having lived in both Norway and Denmark, it's the complete opposite. Danish actually has a standard form (rigsdansk), while no standard form exists in Norwegian. A town approximately an hours drive away has a dialect wildly different from the ones from my hometown in Norway. Honestly, the sub-dialects in my hometown are in some ways more varied than a lot of the towns surrounding the area I lived in Sjælland.
