Faroese Language | Can Danish, Swedish and Norwegian speakers understand it? 

Boa noite, amigo italiano!

I immediately guessed the first word, as I could understand almost every word - an animaI that gets angry when seeing red, and the female version of that animal is an animal that ppl take milk from, which is a cow, so, the animal that had to be guessed is an 🐂 ox / bull! I had to pause the video to share this comment, as I am trying to determine how many words in Faroese I can understand at the moment, because I am advanced level in Icelandic and Norwegian 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 Faroese and Gothic and Danish, I can understand most new words that I see! I also guessed the apple and the stadium and the water, and I could also understand most words used to describe the 3rd word, but I didn’t guess it, as I was thinking that the building would be more something like a bank or a huurhuis or something like that, where there is lending and leasing etc, and someone that lends dollahs rather than books, so I was close, but not 100% correct, and I didn’t have a lot of time to think and fully process every word, and I must have missed a keyword that was referring to books, but I’m happy to see that I could guess four out of five words, even at a beginner level in Faroese, because most words are the same or almost the same as the Icelandic word!

By the way, there is also a language called Norn which seems to be very similar to both Norse and English, at least when it comes to words / vocab, though its aspect is not like the Norse / Faroese / Icelandic aspects, but speakers of Icelandic and Faroese and Norwegian and Danish and Swedish and English might understand a lot of words - and, there are two extra versions of Norse, namely East Norse and Greenlandic Norse, which are a bit different from normal Norse aka West Norse, being different languages, but they are very close tho, and, there’s also the earliest version of Norse aka Proto Norse which is also a different language, but it’s probably easy to understand many of the words or most of the words if one is a speaker of Faroese or Icelandic etc, and, the Middle versions and the Óld versions of Norwegian / Danish / Swedish etc are also different languages with different spelling rules, but they are also very close, so it would be nice to see all of these languages compared, so hopefully ppl that have learnt or studied those languages can participate in some of the language-related challenges in the near future, and hopefully all the ancient Germanic / Celtic languages can be brought back in the near future, as they are so pretty and should still be spoken and used, being so artistic and poetic, so, I am trying to learn all these languages, and I would recommend learning them / as many of them as one can!

Many times, I understand full sentences in Faroese, for example, the sentence ‘Tað sum vit so nú fara at gera er, at eg fari at... vit fara at hava fimm orð og eg fari so á Føroyskum at lýsa ella geva klú um, hvat... hvørji hesi orðini eru, og so skulu M, A and G gita, hvat... hvørji hesi orðini eru’ which literally means ‘that as (that / it which) we so now fare at do (go / are going to do) is, i fare at (am going to) ... we fare at have (are going to have) five words and i fare so on Faroese at describe (i am going to describe in Faroese) or give clues about, what... which these words are, and so shall M, A and G guess what... which these words are’ and many other sentences as well, so I could understand every single word, without looking at the English subs, and I also didn’t look at the Icelandic subtitle yet, because first I want to see how many words I can understand and how many new words’ meanings I can figure out from the context, and after that I will read the Icelandic subs and the English subs, to check if I got all the meanings right, and, I also know that sum probably means as because sem means as in Norse and Icelandic tho som in Swedish etc can also be used in cases wherein the words which or that or who would be used in English, and, I think the word that means so in most Norse languages can also be used with the meaning then, so the Faroese word so could probably be translated to then in some of these cases - in many cases I can also tell the meaning of some new words from the context, for example, I haven’t seen the verb at gita before, but from the context I can tell that it means að giska / at gissa / to guess because I recognize / know all the other words in the sentence and I also know that the verb að geta in Icelandic can also mean to guess tho its normal meanings are to get and can / could etc when used together with the past participle of another verb, and it’s most likely cognate with gita! (By the way, if one is learning Faroese and Icelandic and Norse etc, re the LL sound, in Icelandic the LL is usually pronounced TL, and in Faroese the LL is usually pronounced DL or TL or the D sound can even sound between a D sound and a T sound and then the L sound right after it, and, the aspired letter combinations like the TN in vatn are pronounced by adding a bit of an H sound in there and in a slightly nasal way, but it’s the good type of nasal sound which is kinda closed and projected towards the inner part of the nose or under the nose or somewhere around that area, which sounds cool, so the Norse nasals are not the same type of nasal sounds as those used in French which are very open and projected towards the outside that can sound too nasal, so, in Faroese and Icelandic and Norse the nasal sounds like TN and the other aspired consonants are very subtle and elegant and romantic, which makes them very cool-sounding and unique!)

Thank you so much for your contribution to the project, Johan! 🤗

We certainly did. This was very interesting. As a swede I didn't expect to understand anything at all, but got all words. And it was a pleasure to hear skånska representing Sweden.

@@Ecolinguist Nie ma za co. :)

this was great. I loved it.

@Johan Petur Dam Nothing to criticize! You all created a really interesting episode with everyone's little effort into it. Thanks alot. Absolutely exclusive to have faroese standing in the middle of all. Often gets forgotten and left behind sadly.

Definitely should include both in a video

Faroese sounds more like Norwegian than Icelandic, it sounds like a mix between western Norwegian and northern Norwegian.

@@dan74695 yes but written Faroese is like 90% similar to Icelandic!

@@liljakaren97 It's very similar to written Norwegian as well, it's very close to conservative Nynorsk. I understand almost everything lakfpslfødlfpfl

@@liljakaren97 Me kunna samanlikna norsk, færøysk, og islendsk.

Well it's just slightly north of Scotland, so could be like a highland Scots accent rather than Irish.

Slaviska språk har också palatalisering före främre vokaler.

Well, you know, when my ancestors decided to move to the Faroes, they also decided to do a detour to the Irish sea and take... I mean marry a woman there first. In fact, DNA shows that we Faroese are 80-ish% Nordic in the male line and 80-ish% Gaelic in the female line. So we're an interesting mix in that respect.

@Prof. Spudd According to the Faroese speakers who communicated with some of the last Norn speakers, they were very, very close. In fact, they would have been mutually intelligible. For me when reading the remaining Norn texts, the most difficult part is deciphering the orthography the native English or Scots speakers used when writing down Norn.

@@vlagavulvin3847 Yes, but the Slavs call it hard and soft, while the Gaels call it wide and narrow.

I'm a Nynorsk user from the north and I understand almost everything. Faroese sounds like a weird mix between western and northern Norwegian to me.

Why do they always use Bokmål speakers, it sounds super cringe to hear and they barely understand Norwegian

@@FluxTrax They speak Danish that's influenced by Norwegian.

Yeah, I think it would've worked with more diverse dialects for the continental Scandinavian speakers As the Swedish speaker is from Scania, right next to the Danish border

@@FluxTrax cuz almost everyone speaks Bokmål

I'm Norwegian and I understand Faroese.

@@dan74695 good for you👍

I've also been there twice. And i agree, beautifull place. I was so lucky that i had sun and 16 degrees both times.

Og Nu! Grønlandsk 😅

Færøysk er eitt norskt målføre malfkwpflsæfppsøfåspd

It's a old Norwegian coloni that Denmark stole 😅

Yeah I was surprised too when I could understand the Faroese guy; I thought he was speaking danish in parts though?

me too

Beautiful ancient language. For me it sounds like Icelandic witn no rolled Rs and a lot of sh and dzh sounds. Also, the manner of speaking recalls me something from Scottish, monotonous and nasal

How long for?

I was also trying to find more videos with Faroese! By the way, Germanic languages don’t use rolled Rs, especially in the standard accents, though there might be a few groups of speakers that use rolled Rs in every language, depending on the accent / dialect, and, the soft Rs used in Icelandic and Gothic and Norse and Swedish and Norwegian are different variations of the soft normal Rs, which are also taps (soft Rs) and, it is usually easy to tell if an R is soft or rolled, as soft normal R and all other types of soft Rs don’t have the engine sound or motor sound that rolled Rs have and are pronounced softly and very softly, so, if one listens to languages that use rolled Rs such as Spanish, one can hear that the Icelandic Rs aren’t the same as the rolled Rs, as Spanish has both the normal rolled R that’s spellt with one R and the extra rolled R or the prolonged rolled R which is spellt RR in Spanish and in Italian also, though Italian also uses variations of the soft normal R when it’s spellt with one R only, though the Icelandic Rs are even softer than the Italian Rs! (Re the five words, I immediately guessed the first word, as I could understand almost every word - an animaI that gets angry when seeing red, and the female version of that animal is an animal that ppl take milk from, which is a cow, so, the animal that had to be guessed is an ox / bull! I first had to pause the video to write this part of the comment, as I was trying to determine how many words in Faroese I can understand at the moment, because I am advanced level in Icelandic and Norwegian 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 Faroese and Gothic and Danish, I can understand most new words that I see! I also guessed the apple and the stadium and the water, and I could also understand most words used to describe the 3rd word, but I didn’t guess it, as I was thinking that the building would be more something like a bank or a huurhuis or something like that, where there is lending and leasing etc, and someone that lends dollahs rather than books, so I was close, but not 100% correct, and I didn’t have a lot of time to think and fully process every word, and I must have missed a keyword that was referring to books, but I’m happy to see that I could guess four out of five words, even at a beginner level in Faroese, because most words are the same or almost the same as the Icelandic word!)

By the way, there is also a language called Norn which seems to be very similar to both Norse and English, at least when it comes to words / vocab, though its aspect is not like the Norse / Faroese / Icelandic aspects, but speakers of Icelandic and Faroese and Norwegian and Danish and Swedish and English might understand a lot of words - and, there are two extra versions of Norse, namely East Norse and Greenlandic Norse, which are a bit different from normal Norse aka West Norse, being different languages, but they are very close tho, and, there’s also the earliest version of Norse aka Proto Norse which is also a different language, but it’s probably easy to understand many of the words or most of the words if one is a speaker of Faroese or Icelandic etc, and, the Middle versions and the Óld versions of Norwegian / Danish / Swedish etc are also different languages with different spelling rules, but they are also very close, so it would be nice to see all of these languages compared, so hopefully ppl that have learnt or studied those languages can participate in some of the language-related challenges in the near future, and hopefully all the ancient Germanic / Celtic languages can be brought back in the near future, as they are so pretty and should still be spoken and used, being so artistic and poetic, so, I am trying to learn all these languages, and I would recommend learning them / as many of them as one can!

For sure! There's a lot of cultural influence in The Netherlands/Downlands from Scandinavia but many many hundred years have gone since then. To a Norwegian, Dutch sounds perfectly normal like Norwegian Østlandsdialect at a distance, but once you get closer it's like "wtf stop using made up words" 😂

As a Swede, I can often understand for instance billboards or ads in the Netherlands. A lot of similarities to the Scandinavian languages + English, so pretty easy to put together educated guesses.

I am German and don't understand a single word, LOL. Kinda surprising considering all of these languages are Germanic.

Dutch would be closer to Michal's Jutlantic dialect. There is like a second Germanic language group between Low Saxon, North Frisian, English and South- and West-Jutlantic.

As a native English speaker, Dutch is somewhat easy compared to the other Germanic languages. Some words are different but if we look at the written sentence we can generally understand

as expected, since english vocabulary is 58% romance loans, and only 26% native words and germanic loans. so it would definitely make sense to understand more from the romance videos than the germanic videos

English: a Germanic orphan raised by different foster parents, who were Romance languages the majority of the time!

More common now english is seen a distant Scandinavian or North Germanic language and not a western Germanic language, with a lot of frankish an latin influence. Also some small britonic pieces left.

English-based languages come mostly from Norse, as the creator of each English-based language made it by modifying mostly Norse words and by creating new words, including Modern English which is mostly a Norse language, so most base words are obvious cognates with the Norse words, but one may find it harder to recognize the cognates at first if one is reading them fast without pausing the video, especially if one hasn’t learnt any of the ancient Norse languages yet, due to their differences in spelling rules and aspect, so I would recommend pausing the video a few times, and trying to read each Faroese word slowly, and trying to think of the cognates (or possible cognates) in English, as one can recognize and understand a lot of cognates if one is reading the words slowly, one by one - for me it was easier as I am already advanced level in Norwegian Bokmål and Icelandic (which is the Norse language that’s the most similar to Faroese) and close to advanced level in Norse, so I could recognize the cognates faster and I could process most of them faster without pausing the video, though I am beginner level in Faroese at the moment, and, I am going to rewatch this video several times on different days to learn all the new Faroese words, as it’s not easy to find videos / resources for learning Faroese like vocab videos and videos with subtitles in Faroese etc, so I am using every resource / video that I can find to improve my Faroese! By the way, the Latin languages aren’t romance / romantic languages technically, so I don’t know why they are referred to as romance, as they are very neutral-sounding or normal-sounding and some of them are exotic-sounding, except for Brazilian Portuguese which is the only Latin language that has a slightly romantic feel to it, as it was influenced by Germanic languages a lot, so its pronunciation is similar to Germanic pronunciation, whereas the Germanic languages are the languages that truly sound romantic, with Icelandic being the most romantic language ever created due to its breathiness, being the breathiest language with lots of soft H sounds, while Dutch is also very similar to Icelandic with lots of H-like sounds that also has a very romantic sound, especially when pronounced with the right Dutch accent that uses the softest Rs and the softest Gs etc, and, even though Germanic languages come from Latin (so most base words in all Germanic languages are cognates with most Latin words and most Celtic words, anyway) and most technical terms in English were modified from Latin words, most of the base words in English and in the other Germanic languages have the forms and meanings that are closest to those used in the ancient Norse languages, so it should be easy for one to recognize the cognates in Norse languages, for example, the cognates kaldur / kalt / koldt etc mean cold and the cognates at koma / komið / kommer etc mean at come (to come) in Germanic languages tho in Latin languages their cognates caldo / calor / caliente etc mean warm / warmth and comer / comida / comé etc mean to eat / food / eat etc, so most words are cognates, but the meanings of the cognates used in English are the same or closer to the meanings used in the other Germanic languages than they are to the meanings used in Latin languages! Re the five words, I immediately guessed the first word, as I could understand almost every word - an animaI that gets angry when seeing red, and the female version of that animal is an animal that ppl take milk from, which is a cow, so, the animal that had to be guessed is an ox / bull! I first had to pause the video to write this part of the comment, as I was trying to determine how many words in Faroese I can understand at the moment, because I am advanced level in Icelandic and Norwegian 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 Faroese and Gothic and Danish, I can understand most new words that I see! I also guessed the apple and the stadium and the water, and I could also understand most words used to describe the 3rd word, but I didn’t guess it, as I was thinking that the building would be more something like a bank or a huurhuis or something like that, where there is lending and leasing etc, and someone that lends dollahs rather than books, so I was close, but not 100% correct, and I didn’t have a lot of time to think and fully process every word, and I must have missed a keyword that was referring to books, but I’m happy to see that I could guess four out of five words, even at a beginner level in Faroese, because most words are the same or almost the same as the Icelandic word, so, it feels so good to realize that I can understand so many of the new Faroese words, and to realize that my level in Icelandic is quite advanced!

Being a Dane when listening to Icelandic and Faroese if find it useful that i also speak English. Seems to really help with the pronunciation, words and the grammar. I would love to see how people from the English isles perceive Icelandic and Faroese.

Many dialects in Scandinavia have that diphthong.

Am feroisk

indeed, faroese is the product of gaelic influence on a scandinavian language xD

@@BarbarooTheKangaroo It just sounds like a weird mix between northern and western Norwegian to me.

@@BlueblueblueShark Hei! Eg er norsk.

Færøysk ljodar sum ei blanding millom vestnorsk og nordnorsk.

R-ljudet i Färöiskan får en verkligen att tänka på någon nordnorsk dialekt :)

@@dan74695 høgnorsk brukar?

@@heinemann0074 Eg skriv landsmål sum heve litet hågnorsk i seg.

@@oskich Ja.

What obvious Celtic influences did you notice?

@@explodingmonad4535 One example. English DUCK / Faroese DUNNA - Scottish Gaelic TUNNAG / Icelandic ÖND - Danish, Norwegian, Swedish AND

@@explodingmonad4535 I was thinking specifically of the phonology which sounds more like Gaelic than a Scandinavian language. Faroese looks Scandinavian but sounds Celtic.

@@Farerets That’s actually the worst example as it is disputed. Better examples are: drunnur, grúkur, tarvur, blak, and ærgi.

@@Farerets tarvur in old celtic tarb

Personally: Written Icelandic about 75%, spoken Icelandic significantly less. And I even took Old Norse at university. However, I'm sure a few months in Iceland would totally remedy that.

Faroese spoken slowly 90%, spoken fast and slangy 40%. Written faroese 90-100%. That being said I also know danish so other Icelanders might understand less since faroese has a lot of danish loanwords and influence therefrom.

but to be fair that danish guy doesn't speak so badly as many danish people. he doesn't pronounce only half words. :P

yes me too.

hopefully he will do one gutnish and elfdalian

Faroe Islands has a population of 50000

That's interesting, the French also use apple to refer to the potato - pomme de terre.

In my dialect of swedish, we often use 'pära' for potato, which is norwegian pære/english pear. But we use 'päron', the standard swedish version of the word, when referring to pear, the fruit.

In French it's the same word too. Pommes and pommes de terre. The root of "eple" is a word for any fruit not just what we call apples today. Maybe they thought of potatoes as a kind of fruit in the old days.

In Norway "Veske" is purse, while "Væske" is liquid. They are pronounced the same; one of the few instances the æ isn't really pronounced like æ. Just to make it more difficult LOL

@@SebHaarfagre In swedish it is "vätska" for liquid. 😛

Eivør and I do speak very similar dialects. In fact, we are from the same island but about 30 km away. However, our dialects are pretty different from the capital's. If you listen to the songs that Týr sing in Faroese, you will hear Heri Joensen's voice and he has more of a Tórshavn dialect (but not quite either as I believe he grew up in several places).

Faroese is closer to Norwegian. It sounds like a mix between northern and western Norwegian.

@@dan74695 I'm not personally a fan of saying that a language is closer to this one or that one or that a language is older than this one or that one but it is however true that Faroese takes a sort of middle ground with Icelandic being on one side and (West) Norwegian being on the other side.

I kind off agree that an Icelander was missing… I would have thought that was an unfair game before seeing this episode, as I considered Faroese closer to Icelandic than the Scandinavian languages… but, based on how much they understood it is probably more half way between West-Norwegian and Icelandic like Johann Peter said. I’m not sure that an average Icelandic speaker would have done any better than the rest of the crew.

@@sgjoni Færøysk er nærare norsk en folk tru. Når folk skulla samanlikna færøysk med norsk samanlika dei det næsta alltid med bokmål, sum er dansk, ikkje norsk.

Well, the fricative ð and fricative g were both completely lost in Faroese so to avoid a hiatus we compensate by adding a glide. But the glide depends on the preceding vowel so if the vowel is a i/y or í/ý it will be a /j/ and if it's a u or ú it will be a /v~w/.

@@johanpeturdam Fascinating! Definitely results in a more etymological orthography…I've heard Faroese and Icelandic have a fair amount of mutually intelligibility in written form due to this. Takk!

Most Norwegian dialects, but not all, have had a similar shift of the medial dental fricative, and more varyingly of the the voiced velar fricative. There are glides in most places were they were for us as well, though like I mentioned, there are exceptions.

Thank you, @Mina McVinnie. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

yes I would love a show with the Jutlandish dialects

@Mikael Brink Frederiksen Kære Mikael, tak for dit direkte svar på min henvendelse. Jeg føler mig beæret. I wasn't aware that South Jutlandic is so different from West Jutlandic. Very interesting! So there must have been other/different influences on South Jutlandic. A late friend of mine once told me that it could have come from Dutch farmers who were recruited(?) by the Danish government some hundred years ago in order to settle in the area and to cultivate it. Anyway: Now I came up with another idea for a video dear Norbert could do: West Jutlandic or South Jutlandic vs Standard Danish / Scania Swedish / Norwegian Bokmål. The latter three being relatively close to each other vs one language/dialect that is (at least kind of) new to the speakers of the other three languages. It made me smile when you wrote that you grew up with West Jutlandic but that you don't really speak it in daily life, because that's exactly the same with Low German for me. Though I wish I could talk Low German fluently. Varme hilsner og alt det bedste!

Ma nigga from the West Coast yo

As a west coast Swede, (only listening, not reading the subtitles): 40 % of Faroese 100 % Norwegian 70 % Danish

Faroese sounds like a mix between northern and western Norwegian.

@@dan74695 It's a lot like Icelandic. If I hear and I'm not listening it sounds familiar - like I should be able to understand it. Once I start listening I find that I can't really understand all that much.

Faroese has a North Norwegian r sound. Faroese just sounds like a mix between northern and western Norwegian.

Even the Danish?

@@deaganachomarunacathasaigh4344 yes because we learn danish in school, So I can speak the language ok

@@MarinoMoons Ohhhh ok

I could understand almost everything from all these languages, even lots of the Danish words! Re the five words, I immediately guessed the first word, as I could understand almost every word - an animaI that gets angry when seeing red, and the female version of that animal is an animal that ppl take milk from, which is a cow, so, the animal that had to be guessed is an ox / bull! I first had to pause the video to write this part of the comment, as I was trying to determine how many words in Faroese I can understand at the moment, because I am advanced level in Icelandic and Norwegian 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 Faroese and Gothic and Danish, I can understand most new words that I see! I also guessed the apple and the stadium and the water, and I could also understand most words used to describe the 3rd word, but I didn’t guess it, as I was thinking that the building would be more something like a bank or a huurhuis or something like that, where there is lending and leasing etc, and someone that lends dollahs rather than books, so I was close, but not 100% correct, and I didn’t have a lot of time to think and fully process every word, and I must have missed a keyword that was referring to books, but I’m happy to see that I could guess four out of five words, even at a beginner level in Faroese, because most words are the same or almost the same as the Icelandic word!

By the way, there is also a language called Norn which seems to be very similar to both Norse and English, at least when it comes to words / vocab, though its aspect is not like the Norse / Faroese / Icelandic aspects, but speakers of Icelandic and Faroese and Norwegian and Danish and Swedish and English might understand a lot of words - and, there are two extra versions of Norse, namely East Norse and Greenlandic Norse, which are a bit different from normal Norse aka West Norse, being different languages, but they are very close tho, and, there’s also the earliest version of Norse aka Proto Norse which is also a different language, but it’s probably easy to understand many of the words or most of the words if one is a speaker of Faroese or Icelandic etc, and, the Middle versions and the Óld versions of Norwegian / Danish / Swedish etc are also different languages with different spelling rules, but they are also very close, so it would be nice to see all of these languages compared, so hopefully ppl that have learnt or studied those languages can participate in some of the language-related challenges in the near future, and hopefully all the ancient Germanic / Celtic languages can be brought back in the near future, as they are so pretty and should still be spoken and used, being so artistic and poetic, so, I am trying to learn all these languages, and I would recommend learning them / as many of them as one can!

Færøysk er myket lettare fyre meg å fata en islendsk.

it sounds like he is speaking icelandic in a stockholm accent

If one learns the words automatically by seeing / revising / hearing each word many times over a longer period of time (spaced repetition method) until each word is instantly processed and automatically remembered, the words become permanent! By the way, I immediately guessed the first word, as I could understand almost every word - an animaI that gets angry when seeing red, and the female version of that animal is an animal that ppl take milk from, which is a cow, so, the animal that had to be guessed is an 🐂 ox / bull! I had to pause the video to share this comment, as I am trying to determine how many words in Faroese I can understand at the moment, because I am advanced level in Icelandic and Norwegian 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 Faroese and Gothic and Danish, I can understand most new words that I see! (I also guessed the apple and the stadium and the water, and I could also understand most words used to describe the 3rd word, but I didn’t guess it, as I was thinking that the building would be more something like a bank or a huurhuis or something like that, where there is lending and leasing etc, and someone that lends dollahs rather than books, so I was close, but not 100% correct, and I didn’t have a lot of time to think and fully process every word, and I must have missed a keyword that was referring to books, but I’m happy to see that I could guess four out of five words, even at a beginner level in Faroese, because most words are the same or almost the same as the Icelandic word!)

@@FrozenMermaid666 most Icelanders understand around 60 percent of Faroese or even more when it’s written down, but spoken they understand very little. Knowing Norwegian will help immensely as well considering Faroese is heavily influenced by western Norwegian dialects from a couple hundred years ago. Knowing Danish helps, but knowing Norwegian Bokmål essentially means you understand written Danish as that’s basically what it is :-). There are many loan words from English now as well so I would venture to guess that you would understand most written Faroese soon enough. There are some interesting words that are Faroese and perhaps even have some Celtic influences even in the pronunciations of some words. Once you become fluent enough though you won’t recognize individual words as much as you will hear phrases and sentences and they begin to come from your language center in the brain and not your memory. Once I switch my mind over to my Faroese language center the words almost come out in their own and sometimes I second guess myself if I used the correct word, but as long as I just trust myself I find that the words are usually correct 90 percent of the time. This is the same with Danish for me as well now.

I cannot understand many words in Danish and Faroese when spoken most of the times, though sometimes I can understand quite a lot of words, but if I see the written text / subtitles I can understand almost every word - I noticed that I even understand many full sentences in Faroese when seeing the subs, and, I think I shall be fluent in most of the Nordic languages in a few years, as I am in the process of learning! Many times, I understand full sentences in Faroese, for example, the sentence ‘Tað sum vit so nú fara at gera er, at eg fari at... vit fara at hava fimm orð og eg fari so á Føroyskum at lýsa ella geva klú um, hvat... hvørji hesi orðini eru, og so skulu M, A and G gita, hvat... hvørji hesi orðini eru’ which literally means ‘that as (that / it which) we so now fare at do (go / are going to do) is, i fare at (am going to) ... we fare at have (are going to have) five words and i fare so on Faroese at describe (i am going to describe in Faroese) or give clues about, what... which these words are, and so shall M, A and G guess what... which these words are’ and many other sentences as well, so I could understand every single word, without looking at the English subs, and I also didn’t look at the Icelandic subtitle yet, because first I want to see how many words I can understand and how many new words’ meanings I can figure out from the context, and after that I will read the Icelandic subs and the English subs, to check if I got all the meanings right, and, I also know that sum probably means as because sem means as in Norse and Icelandic tho som in Swedish etc can also be used in cases wherein the words which or that or who would be used in English, and, I think the word that means so in most Norse languages can also be used with the meaning then, so the Faroese word so could probably be translated to then in some of these cases - in many cases I can also tell the meaning of some new words from the context, for example, I haven’t seen the verb at gita before, but from the context I can tell that it means að giska / at gissa / to guess because I recognize / know all the other words in the sentence and I also know that the verb að geta in Icelandic can also mean to guess tho its normal meanings are to get and can / could etc when used together with the past participle of another verb, and it’s most likely cognate with gita! By the way, re the LL sound in Norse languages, in Icelandic the LL is usually pronounced TL, and in Faroese the LL is usually pronounced DL or TL or the D sound can even sound between a D sound and a T sound and then the L sound right after it, and, the aspired letter combinations like the TN in vatn are pronounced by adding a bit of an H sound in there and in a slightly nasal way, but it’s the good type of nasal sound which is kinda closed and projected towards the inner part of the nose or under the nose or somewhere around that area, which sounds cool, so the Norse nasals are not the same type of nasal sounds as those used in French which are very open and projected towards the outside that can sound too nasal, so, in Faroese and Icelandic and Norse the nasal sounds like TN and the other aspired consonants are very subtle and elegant and romantic, which makes them very cool-sounding and unique!

@@FrozenMermaid666 you sound like you are doing very well and I was very similar to you when I learned then initially. I first learned Icelandic when I lived in I lceland, then moved to the Faroes and learned it fluently, then moved to Denmark and learned it fluently. After those 3 I watched a lot of Norwegian and Swedish movies and I am like you in that I understand 90 percent of them simply by making educated guesses. I can even understand a good amount of Dutch and some German as well, but German is much different it seems. The Faroese have a language called Gøtudansk that they use to communicate with all of the Nordic countries and it’s a more intelligible mix of the languages and sounds close to Danish but without the harsh Danish sounds and without the Norwegian singing (even though the Norwegians will fight to the death to prove they don’t sing, they say the Swedes do 😂). My older two sons are Faroese and live in the Faroes and I still use it from time to time but I really haven’t even tried it much in 20 years until this past summer when my oldest son visited me in the states. I was still just as fluent it seems. Once you learn the languages you are learning now I have no doubt you will be able to understand all of the Nordic languages for the rest of your life. 😊I myself have decided to take up leaning Russian now after not having learned a language in over 20 years now so it’s been very interesting. I was spoiled with the Nordic languages all being so similar and relying on that, now I have to learn completely different words, but the grammar is similar to Icelandic and Faroese so that helps. 😊

Well they're all relatively grammatically tame and easy yo remember, faroese and Icelandic are the only ones who still have grammatical genders and cases

I was an exchange student in Sweden two years before and yeah, still understand a lot, even some of Faroese. Though because I lived further north in Sweden, I actually found the Swedish guy a bit difficult to understand as the Skånska accent is quite different to a more northern Swedish accent.

Thank you. And I'm glad you liked it. And your circlejerk comment made me rofl so hard. :D

I totally agree with you about the beauty of the Danish language. Especially when it's pronounced the way Michael or Jacob Matthiesen (from the Norwegian video) do it.

@Mikael Brink Frederiksen oh yeah, 've been there, heard it all :D They just dont get the melody as I umm.. call it.

@@johanpeturdam It was quite a lovely and nice experience and I'm really happy now :D

“Dance, monkey, dance!” :)

Now that would be a lot of fun!

@@MarkRose1337 Yes holy shit. Get a Swede, Icelandic and Dutch or Afrikaans person on it.

Maybe someone speaking Närpes dialect as well.

We have "voll" in Norwegian. Same meaning and usage. It's from Old Norse "vǫllr".

Vold exists in Danish, too. It usually means violence but can also mean a slope or a bank.

Yes, even in German we have this word: Feld (pronounced "felt") and you can also say "Fußballfeld" (football field).

Well faroese has some words that derive from Irish and Scots (Gaelic) and Tarvur (bull) is one of those originally Tarbh in Irish.

Do you speak Gaelic?

@@rafaeldebrasilia unfortunately no

I know right, I noticed many things in common with Faroese as well.

He's from Skåne, so it's cheating ;-)

@@oskich Oh well, no wonder he nailed it, then! 😁

hade... inte? ;)

Du hade inga problem? Det är slående måste jag säga. Jag är dansk och förstod inte ens en fjärdedel av det.

Lätt är nog lite överdrivet, men i sammanhanget var det inte svårt att lista ut vilka ord det var. Vissa meningar var helt omöjliga att förstå vid första försöket, men det blev lättare när man kunde läsa Färöiskan ovanför. Är rätt stolt över att jag lyckades förstå att tjuren blev ilsken av färgen röd på första försöket. Färöiska är lite enklare att förstå än Isländskan i den tidigare videon. Intressant att det finns många likheter (t ex Mjölk, vatten) med uttal och ord i svenskan :-)

@@oskich Det är vettigt.

​@@oskich Precis, både ljud och text hjälper stort i detta fall. De färingar jag träffat tidigare talade "danska" (berättarröst: det var inte alls danska). Som du säger är ljudbilden väldigt lik svenskan, det som försvårar är diftongerna. Det var inte svårt för mig att lista ut vad orden var. Arbetar mycket med folk från hela norden som talar vitt skilda dialekter. Så vissa drag finns i olika dialekter av olika språk. Vilket bara visar att det är ett spektrum av olika dialekter. Skånska har fler likheter med danska och sydliga norska dialekter än andra dialekter av svenska. Svenskan i Österbotten har fler likheter med norrländska mål som bondska än andra finlandssvenska dialekter i Nyland. osv osv. Färöiska har likheter med svenskan som saknas i danskan och norskan. Som kanske och mjölk, istället för måske och melk. För att ta två exempel.

Yes. I agree. It is really entertaining. DR, SVT and NRK should make some shows like this together.

@@Pracedru Ja, det ville være så oplagt - især hvor danskere og svenskere kan finde på at snakke engelsk med hinanden GRRRRRRH Men dansk TV har jo efterhånden det princip at kun keendisser må medvirke i udsendelser, hvor man udfordrer hinandens viden - eller mangel på samme :-((( .

I'm Icelandic and have observed it, i find a lot of mutual understanding.

@@andriandrason1318 Awesome! That's fascinating! I'm a native swedish speaker and I can't understand much elfdalian at all even when it's written.

being a Dane, the most difficult thing was understanding what the colour red did to the bull.

I think they moved too much their attention to the milk, hence they started thinking about the cows or the cattle.

Yes, Frisian (any dialect of it) is what left in this series, maybe a video about it with English and German speakers would be a cool idea 😄!! Also there is Yiddish, which could be compared to German.

and Elfdalian

If you're doing Scots, would be good to get a bayman from Newfoundland as well. Newfoundland English can be a challenge for unfamiliar English speakers.

Frisian being three languages would be sweet. West Frisian has hundreds of thousands of speaker IIRC while Saterland Frisian and North Frisian have much less. Having already heard some West Frisian some Saterland or North would be nice.

Smiling is a waste of energy.

Then you’d have to combine it w languages from the uralic family

I know that.

Yeah this would be interesting to see with Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian!!

@@mohamadmosa8116 Remember also that Saami is not a single language. Ecolinguist could try to pit North Saami against South Saami, against Pite Saami, against Lule Saami, etc.

Bad idea. Estonian and Finnish make a common group. Sami and Hungarian are different beasts. Call some Mansi for Hungarian, at least. And call another Sami for the first one )))

The number of native Faroese speakers is probably around 70 thousand or more, since there are around 20 thousand or more native Faroese speakers living in Denmark.

@@lokifgr4789 Sure - on the Faroes and elsewhere (mainly but not only in Denmark) in total. On the Faroes themselves, I estimate native speakers numbering around 47.000-48.000 as mentioned. In the world, possibly close to 75.000. And a few thousand non-native speakers, like myself, with various degree of fluency. Personally, I am close to the native level.

It was apple

@@TheRedleg69 Yes, I guessed it correctly because I thought of a fruit that was green.

Latin taurus? Why not Lithuanian turas? It's a common IE-feature, not separate Italic or Baltic or Slavic (and so forth).

@@vlagavulvin3847 because the commenter is an English speaker and Latin influenced the English language more than Lithuanian did (sorry)

Obviously ;)

The Faroese word tarvur (as well as Icelandic tarfur) is actually a borrowing from Middle Irish. I know that the Scottish Gaelic modern form is tarbh and it's probably a cognate to Welsh tarw.

@@johanpeturdam Also cognate with Latin taurus, Greek ταυρος, and possibly Hebrew שור (shor, ox), where the /ʃ/ was originally /θ/. It's suspected that PIE borrowed the word from Proto-Semitic or they both borrowed it from the same other language.

But honestly you can see the similarity between tarvur and tjur or words like that. It's the same root.

@@ShishiSonson Yes, it is. Faroese has retained the Germanic root too in the form of tjórur and tjórneyt both of which are archaic ways of saying oksi.

@@johanpeturdam I was reading that in old Faroese they said tjórur more than tarvur, but I wonder where the pronunciation would be similar.