Danish vs Non-Native German Speakers | Can they understand it? 

Can you do a video on whether Bulgarian - N. Macedonian - Serbian speakers would understand each other? I think that would be very interesting

One of them speaks Swedish, I mean, come on!

Ikr

Additionally, his English sounds like that of a native speaker, too. At least when judging from the things I heard him say in English when we recorded the video with Norbert. Impressive!

Runzhi is goals all around

He certainly has an ear for languages and is able to learn languages very quickly, partly by just listening to them (but on the other hand, eight years in Germany are enough to master German which, after all, is not that difficult compared to his native Chinese)😉

Ja das stimmt👌🏻

Yes!

Yes. It was particularly good to have non-native speakers, who did not have a Germanic language as a mother tongue.

Most of them seemed to speak 'several' Germanic languages, though, which should be more of a benefit than a hindrance in this case. (Particularly Runzhi knowing Swedish, as per his own statement.)

Seemed that Runzhi actually managed to interpret "kan lide" as its German cognate "kann leiden", although I believe the German means "can suffer" and the Danish "enjoy, like", so it would still be confusing...

Indeed!

Thank you, Mic! For your commitment to the project and your excellent work! ❤️

Great job, Mic (from a Swede) 🇸🇪

Thank you Mic!! Hope we could work together soon in the future!

Bravo! Echt toll! ich bin selber kein deutscher Vatersprachler, habe aber in einer Stadt an der Ostsee über ein Jahrzehnt lang gewohnt, wo es im Sommer viele dänische Touristen gab, und im Ernst, es ist mir schon ein paar mal passiert, dass ich dachte es wären chinesische Touristen, bis ich mich umdrehe und sehe dass sie "weiss" sind. Dann hab ich erkannt, dass es Dänen sind. Irgendetwas an dem Klang der Sprache erinnert mich an Chinesisch, nicht unbedingt Mandarin, sondern eher Kantonesisch, oder Vietnamesisch. Ich weiss dass dieses nicht chinesisch ist, aber der Klang ist in meinen Ohren irgendwie ähnlich.

@@wham_ Tack så mycket!

Prospera Pascha sit!

At least you can understand German hahaha

Omg Luke what are you doing here 👀

For the genius that you are, Luke, Danish would be an interesting language to take up!

Oohhh mein gott! The one and only Luke!

great idea! Would love to see more videos like this. I speak some German so can, sort of see if there are cognates and similarities, but it's much better and more interesting when it's done like this. Thanks for your time!

Ja po proikolu na russkom jazyke latinskimi bukvami tebe nalishy, po pravilam angliiskoi transkriptsii. Ty ponimaesh (po polsky rozymesh, uznal eto iz video Norberta), chto ja dumaju pro polskii jazyk? Polskii jazyk innoplanetnyi dla russkogo cheloveka. V nem tak mnogo shipyashchikh. Kogda ja slyshu "Cheshchch" ja srazu je usnaju polsii jazyk. 3 shipyashchikh zvuka iz 4! Dla menya eto inoplanetno zvuchit! Ja dumaju, chto dla inostrantsev polskii jazyk ochen slozhnyi!

Well, it’s not easy to imitate the Danish accent, as it’s almost as hard to imitate as the German accent, but it’s not even close to the difficulty level of a tonal language etc, so it’s still possible to learn and imitate it, though it takes a lot of practice and learning every word automatically, as well as listening to a lot of spoken Danish, to really memorize all the Danish sound patterns and intonations and sounds and nuances and glottal stops etc automatically, so that the hern knows exactly what it must imitate - the neutral American accent is one of the easiest accents to imitate, as easy as the Norse / Gothic / Icelandic / Faroese / Dutch / Norwegian / Welsh / Breton / Cornish accents, which are amongst the accents that are the easiest to imitate, so one can sound native in these languages even as a beginner or intermediate, though German and Danish have an accent that is very hard to imitate, so I have even heard many native speakers of German and Danish that didn’t have the right German sound aka that typical German sound and the right Danish sound aka that typical Danish sound, and, out of all Germanic languages, I would say German and Danish have the accents that are the hardest to imitate and the most complicated pronunciations, so I am struggling a lot with these two, though I can understand most of the new words I see because I am already advanced level in Norwegian Bokmål and Icelandic and upper advanced level in Dutch and upper intermediate level in Norse and German and Swedish etc, so even though I am beginner level in languages such as Danish and Gothic and Faroese at the moment, I can understand most of the new words I see! (I should be able to imitate the Danish accent, as I am naturally great at imitating accents, plus I kind of know / hear how the Danish accent is done, like, the vocal technique and stuff, but, when it comes to actually trying it myself, it’s like, even my Rs aren’t working anymore, and I just get stuck, and it even feels like I cannot control the muscles involved in speaking anymore and like I am unable to just tap into Danish mode and maintain that accent, though a few times I had some of those moments when I randomly said some Danish words and they had that Danish sound, so I don’t understand what am I not doing right and why I cannot do it on purpose, but I am practicing Danish pronunciation a lot, and trying to learn every Danish word automatically, so hopefully one day I’ll be able to just switch to Danish mode automatically and get the right Danish accent throughout the full sentences!)

Jeg synes at Norbert burde lage nok flere videoer som lar språkelever å delta i videoer sånne.

Does anyone know what does the word überhaupt really mean in English? I know its literal translation is overhead, but I just cannot grasp its true meaning from context... It can be very confusing because some say it means at all, but I don’t think it means at all, but more like definitely or absolutely, but I really don’t know, maybe it’s something else, so hopefully someone can explain its meaning with example sentences as well!

By the way, I understood almost every Danish word after seeing the text because I am advanced level in Norwegian and upper intermediate level in Icelandic / Norse / German at the moment (very close to advanced level in Icelandic) and upper advanced level in Dutch and mid intermediate level in Swedish, so even though I am beginner level in Danish, I can actually understand most words because they are so close to the Norwegian and Icelandic word most of the times and other words are close to the Dutch or German word!

Swedish has this thing where they pronounce a Word slower like “Hu-vet” and in danish its just in one go “hoved”

Däänsk is een heel wunnerlike Spraak.

@@dan74695 Is that Low German? Early Low German had a massive impact on the Continental Scandinavian languages...

@@hakanstorsater5090 Yes.

Haha, yeah I guess you're right, Danish stands out phonetically

Besides perhaps Vietnamese and Xosa Danish to me seems impossible to pronounce. The stöd and all those swallowed down sounds.

@@MicsLanguages It actually takes Danish toddlers up to half a year longer to become fully comfortable working out what their parents are saying to them then toddlers anywhere else on planet Earth. The reason is, ultimately, that they speak Danish in Norway (controversial! but true in a way) and the Danes would rather die then be mistaken for Norwegians.

I could always recognize Danish as it has a very refined and modern sound with very cool pronunciation, and I could always hear the word er which has a very unique pronunciation with certain variations of the R-controlled vowels and vowel-controlled Rs and also because of the glottal stops, and, all Germanic languages have that super refined sound, actually, as Germanic languages are the most refined languages, kinda like Celtic languages, with the Norse languages being the most refined languages ever created like English and Gothic and Dutch, as English is also a mostly Norse language, while Dutch has been influenced mostly by English and Norse languages, and Gothic is also mostly Norse, so they are as refined as Norse / Icelandic / Faroese / Norwegian / Danish etc, but it’s also easy to tell if it’s Danish or another Germanic language, even when one doesn’t know Danish at all, because Danish has very unique variations of the soft R sounds and glottal stops and a very different tone and accent, so when one hears Danish, one just knows it’s Danish - I am like upper beginner in Danish at the moment, but I can understand most new words when I see them, due to my being advanced level in Norwegian Bokmål and Icelandic upper advanced level in Dutch and upper intermediate level in Norse and German and Swedish, and, now I can even understand some words and sentences when hearing spoken Danish, as I’ve been learning and listening to a lot of Danish lately!

I know that it may seem impossible at first, and, the Danish accent isn’t easy to imitate, being almost as hard to imitate as the German accent, and, I would even say that, Danish and German are the languages with the accents that are the hardest to imitate and the most complicated pronunciation, out of all Germanic languages - however, they are nowhere near the difficulty level of tonal languages and languages with clicks etc, which are category 10 languages to category 7 or 6 etc, and, both Danish and German are category 1 languages (as all other Germanic languages) tho both Danish and German have a category 2 pronunciation and accent, which means, they require more practice and learning each word very automatically with its pronunciation and spelling, as well as listening to a lot of spoken Danish and spoken German, to develop the right accent, so, if one learns them to a native speaker level and pays attention to every detail and each glottal stop etc, one should be able to imitate the native accent eventually!

Of course! Why didn't I think of that? Allzeit bereit is something you hear fairly often. So there was no reason for me to speak about English there 🤔

And closer to Dutch 'altijd'.

weil man immer immer sagt, aber allzeit ist eher ewig.

"altid åben" is in dutch "altijd open"

@@tammo100 funny, in German we would say ”durchgehend geöffnet“ (going through opened literally, but permanently opened).

You said Danish is similar to French ?: also for the twenty system in counting !

@@RECAMPAIRE True, makes it even more complicated.

@@RECAMPAIRE in comparison to orthography and orally spoken.

Danish is similar to norwegian, icelandic, swedish. Norwegian and danish grammar is the same with 98% of the same words. Most people Can read swedish and norwegian naturally in Denmark, and i would say everyone Can speak it if they just talk with people from the other country for more than a day

@@stylebreaks757 Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are considered dialects of the same language. Whereas Faroese, Icelandic, Elfdalian and others show they are more a dialects it Old Norse.

-ken still exists as a now somewhat outdated diminutive suffix in Dutch and Flemish.

Yeah, the first 2 sentences i struggeled with as a norwegian. They were very difficult, and i doubt danes actually speak like that. "I know a man, which is married and in no way can suffer/endure his wifes plates" is so wierd. Same with "han kan kun lide at spise af den skål" (he can only suffer/endure to eat from the bowl). I guess since its from a story or a book, it makes it more idk poetic? Or formal which makes it more difficult.

👍

It was very difficult for me in full speed Danish. But i understood almost everyting in the written form. And when i knew what he was saying, i could somewhat hear it as well But I thought the exact same thing about forlader. It's was either "förlåter" or "får lära" ("have to teach"). And I couldn't hear any other thing than " han går till stugan" ("he goes to the cottage") in the part "to many pieces" and the way he said "he only wants..." and wife (kona/fru) is very diffrent from swedish sorry for my bad english ✌

Det här gick så mycket sämre för mig än jag skulle vilja erkänna. Men jag håller med om "forlader". Fast innan jag såg det skrivet tyckte jag det lät som "förlora" vilket också skulle funka.

"At forlade" also has the meaning "to forgive" in older Danish. You only run into it in things like older bible translations, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and a few phrases like "alt forladt" and "om forladelse". ("Om forladelse" - "I beg your pardon". The "I beg"/"jeg beder om" is implied. "Alt forladt" is like "no worries".)

It is almost identical to Dutch though. "verlaten" and in this case I think the pronounciation is even closer. What is it in Swedish then?

@@jaysimoes3705 förlåta [ fur-loa-tA] It even existed in Old English as well in the form "forlætan", where it also meant "leave", as it still does in its Danish & German equivalents. In modern Swedish its meaning has however completely shifted to the "forgive" sense. To express the "leave" sense Swedes now say "lämna", which doesn't exist in Danish or the closely related (Bokmål) Norwegian.

Low German should help quite a bit, though.

If you're beyond the very first beginnings, German actually helps a ton.

XD

Perhaps that series of videos could be brought back, now with multiple contestants?

@@767scarecrow oh yeah, that would be awesome!

Pprt.

HOw much of Norwegian can you understand as Swedish?Im Romanian but I was always curious about these things, I thought you can almost understand everything between these 3 countries , Norway, Sweden and Danemark?!

Yes for me as a Dutch it is basically the same. In most comparisons I have seen it seems that we Dutch have an easier time with Scandinavian languages than Germans and certainly English. It seems like Dutch is much closer to these languages than the other two, but that is really just my take on this. Personally too I find I seem to have a lot less trouble than Germans with especially written Danish. Written most of the time I have no trouble at all basically and I never learned any Danish.

"Tallerkenner" got me really puzzled. I didn't recognize it as the word for plates, but more like something like "Plate servant" in German when I first heard it spoken. The spelling was so different from Swedish "Tallrikar", so it was really hard to get the first one, but after hearing the other sentences I could figure it out. You really need to sharpen your hearing to 110% when listnening to Danish ;-)

Because it's a relatively new import from (Standard) German, I'd guess.

I feel it is the opposite for me with German. I understand 95 % German, but have trouble speaking it 😅

French in the "familial" register is like that for me.

I think they would have spotted more of the obscure cognates.

@@teacoffee42 ok but they have 5 years plus living in Germany. The C2 doesn’t necessarily mean u have zero foreign accent therefore I wouldn’t use that. Instead just listen to the speaker and how they communicate. U could do the an experiment on integrated native like speaker and “native speaker”. My guess is that it will be the same shit after x amount of years.

Define "practical terms". It can be really annoying when your idiomatic and grammatical knowledge exceeds that of the normal native speaker, but you just can't shake the accent. Much better to have a convincing accent and just a minimal core vocabulary.

would you say Bokmål is closer to Danish than Nynorsk? I know this is so linguistically, but I am asking if this is what it feels like to a native speaker.

Viel Spaß !

With North Frisian if possible, since that is quite different from West Frisian, but much closer to English.

Het is vaak (vele malen) stukgegaan, maar zijn vrouw heeft het altijd weer samengelijmd.

Only when they get to numbers I get really confused, everything else is easy to understand

It is intelligible to North Germanic speakers, but almost COMPLETELY unintelligible to West Germanic speakers in both spoken and written forms (written forms are a bit more intelligible). It's like Chinese "dialects"... Dutch is like standard German compared to this

In written form I can understand quite a bit, like 50%. This is reduced to 1% in spoken form. (I'm a native Dutch speaker)

@@peterl0815 North Germanic means Scandi, not German as spoken in the North of Germany.

It is understandable for native speakers of Germanic languages. Those Germanic languages being Swedish and Norwegian with a particular emphasis on western dialects of Norwegian and southern dialects of Swedish in terms of natural mutual intelligibility.

Mic explained that he largely created these sentences from words that sounded close to other languages, such as German, Swedish, and English to help the participants, so that's why they were a little weird-sounding

Tbh, the Germans tried that stunt during WWII, and were immediately exposed. If you come here, you've undoubtedly noticed that people here like making foreigners say stuff like "Rødgrød med fløde". Today, it's just for fun, but 70 years ago, sentences like these became code words. So, when you were invited to an underground meeting and wanted to avoid German, or other, spies, you simply threw out anyone who couldn't perfectly pronounce the tongue twister. Our language literally worked as a deterrent for spies, because, while they may have learned to speak it, they could never attain a Danish accent on top of the dialect they were taught, which made them extremely easy to spot.

@@pipkin5287 Just like I suspected, a spy-proof country just because of how y'all pronounce your language. Another question, does the word "shibboleth" even make sense in Danish when just about any sentence spoken aloud fulfills the same function? :v

@@magnusengeseth5060 "Shibboleth" is an English word, and while I know that it means something like an "outdated habit/tradition" I'm not sure we have a specific word for it in Danish. Not sure what you mean when you say that just about any sentence spoken aloud fulfills the same function though, can you elaborate? We have three distinct dialects in Danish, with sub categories for those three, making up a total of ~35-38 dialects, which doesn't account for accents on top of that, so "how we pronounce our language" can be quite different! 🙂 Most people hear the insular dialect and think that that's how everyone speaks, but that's only because most never go outside of Copenhagen or the greater Copenhagen area, where that dialect is the most prevalent. Go to Fyn, and they start to throw the silent letters or the window. Go to the mid-eastern region of Jylland, and they sound more like the queen, with a much clearer articulation. Go to the southern and western parts of Jylland, and you'll see the word - yes, the word - "æ" being used as a placeholder for many others and "moin" being a catch-all greeting.

@@pipkin5287 Shibboleth in this context comes from a story from The Old Testament or some other old text where friends and foes alike were crossing a river. The dudes on the other side of the river only wanted to save their countrymen, so they asked everybody to pronounce the word "shibboleth" - something only a true local could do without years of practice. The fleeing enemies trying to pass as friends swiftly got their throats cut on the river bank, presumably along with a few unfortunate locals with speech impediments. So the word shibboleth has come to mean just about any word or phrase that is very difficult to mimic for someone not in the in-group. It can refer to anything from how to say certain words to how you use slang terms without sounding like a narc.

If you've ever had a police officer come by your school to warn you about the dangers of drug use and then start reading a list of slang terms for various drugs that were already outdated when your parents went to school, you have encountered one field where shibboleths are still very relevant and where there seems to be some universal law that dictates that no uniformed policeman can ever get within a decade of using the correct lingo for the current street name of any drug.