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Does everyone also notice that in Swedish and Norwegian K, G, and R are pronounced a bit palatized, if followed by a, o, consonanst or at the end of the word unlike in Danish, Dutch, German or English ? Noticed it as I speak Swedish , German, Dutch, English and learning Danish and Norwegian
They just differ a bit in how old fashioned they are. As far as I've understood, aften in Norwegian is understood and deemed old fashioned, while kveld in Danish is so old that most people won't even be able to guess what it means.
Swedish is closer to Norwegian because "kväll" is far more common but "afton" is used in some situations like "Christmas Eve/julafton" and the newspaper "Aftonbladet" which has been around since the 19th century.
Danish is the French of the Germanic languages, if you’re pronouncing every consonant you see in any given word then you’re almost certainly pronouncing it wrong
but at least in French the rules are fixed, whereas in English you have to learn the pronounciation of most words separately, there are no universal rules, it is phonetic anarchy, even considering RP only
@@lucaArenzano That is wrong; there are basic rules in English pronunciation but there are many words that must be learned separately. So for example "thare ar menny werds" is how part of (ov) this sentence should (shood) be written. Almost all (aull) the problems relate to (too) the spelling of vowels but what (whot) is written is pronounced - completely unlike Danish which swallows (swolloes) whole (hole) syllables & makes a mockery of its written language (languidge).
@Maxwell Hart That's a very good point. To me the most difficult thing about understanding French is that the vowels seem to mix into eachother, making it hard to understand what is being said. It's often the same in Danish, with all the diphthongs, and letters that are not pronounced.
One interesting false friend is the word «må» which means «may» in Danish and «must» in Norwegian. A former norwegian prime minister claimed that this difference was the reason he got together with his wife. When they first met at a party she was with a danish relative. When he during the party asked his future wife to come for a walk her danish relative asked «må jeg bli med» meaning, «may I come along». The norwegians however understood this as «must I come along» and answered «Nei, du MÅ ikke», meaning, «No, you don’t have to» which the dane understood as «No, you may not». Hence they went for a walk just the two of them, and the rest is history.
I experienced a similar thing when working in the duty free shop on one of the boats going between Norway and Denmark. A guy asked "Hvor mye må jeg ta med?", meaning "How much can I take?", but I understood it as "How much must I take?". Needless to say he seemed perplexed when I told him "Du MÅ ikke ta med noen ting".
11:10 I think you got it wrong, Paul. When a Norwegian tries to speak Danish, he has to make himself intelligible by speaking LESS clearly than he's used to!
@@Langfocus: Paul a totally aside comment. I was just informed that the Navajo language is the most extremely difficult. Do you know it and agree. If you haven't done so I'm planting an idea for you on a new video.
I'm french and I feel like norwegian is much more articulate than danish. When I hear the sentences while reading them, I can clearly see the relation between what I hear and what I see in norwegian, but in danish it could say something else than what is written and I would maybe not notice. Do you agree with it ?
@@madame.caribou the same way that I can understand a Malian talking French but not necessarily when a French person speaks. Bokmål is essentially Danish with a foreign accent
@@madame.caribou I'm learning both Danish and Norwegian and one of my friends, who is also learning Norwegian, joined me in one of the Danish reading practices one day. She had a hard time following along because what she was expecting to hear (based on what was written) was not what she was hearing at all. Lol
As a native Norwegian I have never "learned" to understand neither Danish nor Swedish, but I understand them perfectly fine when we communicate in our respective languages, almost just as I would when communicating with another Norwegian. (Which in a few cases are harder)
Regarding todays question: As a dane, i feel that being able to understand Norwegian and Swedish is very useful, as not everyone in the nordic countries are as comfortable speaking english as others. Especially older people are more likely not to speak english that well.
I'm a Dane, and I hate it when Swedes and Norwegian talk english to me. It's like choking our common culture, it's parts of us, our common language. I would never DARE speak english to any of them, I prefer to learn at least to understand my brothers and sisters better. We're not that different after all!
I agree we should use our own languages. In the past I used to think "I don't want to use English this time" when going there but it never worked out as so many Danes switched to English the instant they realised I'm not Danish so I started speaking English from the get go. 🙁 I want to go back to Norwegian/Danish conversations.
I'm Swedish. Last year I met and briefly spoke to a young Norwegian couple in Belgrade, Serbia. Of course we spoke to each other in Swedish and Norwegian. There is a special bond between us Scandinavians that becomes apparent when meeting abroad.
As an American I have had a conversation with a Brazilian in Spanish while that person spoke Portuguese to me. We understood each other, but I'm not sure how he felt about it.
I'm always speaking spanish to brazilians and they're always thrilled about it: it seems like brazilians love speaking spanish so they kind of try to hispanize their portuguese meanwhile I try to lusonize my spanish. It works perfectly fine. (By experience, portuguese people don't appreciate that, though) I've never tried with italians though because most of those I meet are happy to speak french to me. Same goes with Romanians: they always speak perfectly well french...and any other european language haha those people are simply the best polyglots I know!
While some Romance Language speakers (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) can understand each other with little to some effort and some Northern Germanic speakers (Swedish, Norweigian, Danish) can understand each other with the same amount of effort, English has no companion language that is truly mutually intelligible to the same degree, although some cognates may exist in those other languages, both Romance and Germanic.
I'm from Argentina and I tend to speak Spanish with Brazilians because I feel much more comfortable speaking Spanish than Portuguese. I learned Portuguese but I only use it when we stop understanding each other or misunderstand a word. Of course if I went to Brazil, I'd make an effort to speak Portuguese there because they do the same when they come here.
Native Norwegian-speaker here, born 1969. I often have the feeling that I belong to the last generation of Scandinavians who think that we should preferably communicate in our native languages rather than in English. C'mon, it works! As a young adult, back in the early 90's, I was almost shocked to see for the first time Danish people of my age claiming not to understand me and insisting on communicating in English... Perhaps it's only me, but I definitely think it's a generational thing. People of my age and older still remember when we had common TV shows broadcast to Denmark, Norway and Sweden - with no subtitles - and that obviously had an impact on our mutual understanding of each others' languages. Does the future look bleak? I don't think so. Mutual understanding between Norwegian and Swedish is still quite good, and I suppose the odd Dane, left alone with us on a remote island, would also do pretty well. But where is the shared Scandinavian (or even Nordic) cultural space today?
Agreed!!! I'm Polish and it drives me mad when kids use English to speak to other Slavic people like Czechs or Ukrainians. It just takes a bit of adjusting, reaching for synonyms and archaic words and we can communicate with ease.
Jaaaa! It annoys me when we dub each other's shows on TV, which I suspect is a big part of the reason the younger generation aren't as familiar with the other languages. We managed in the 80s and 90s and I don't think kids are dumber than us, they just need to be given the chance to get used to it.
In my childhood there was neither Netflix nor cable TV. But in many parts of the country, it was possible to see Swedish, Norwegian or German TV (and radio before that). I think that made a huge difference, because we were a lot more used to hearing and understanding those languages.
Hey man, I am danish and I am from 2005, and I would rather prefer to use our own languages since some words is just really hard if not impossible to translate and get the same meaning out of, so yeah it seems like some of us still think the old way hahaha.
I started studying Norwegian because my best friend was from there and I totally fell in love with her language. But it's the only tonal language I speak and I find hard to practice in my country (she went back to Stavanger). But I keep studying. Takk for denne videoen. Norge og Danmark er vakre land og deres folk og kulturen er fantastisk.
Aaaactually… It's not exactly "linguistically incorrect" to call Norwegian a "tonal" language. Norwegian is more correctly referred to as a, "language with pitch-accent." The change in pitch in Norwegian functions like stress in English - it only changes the meaning of some words. Tonal languages, however, treat tones as equal to consonants and vowels. Or to put it differently: in Norwegian, English, and other non-tonal languages, words are made of consonants and vowels; while in tonal languages, like Chinese, Vietnamese, and most of the sub-Saharan languages of Africa, words are made of 3 things: consonants, vowels, and tones. [edited to sound less harsh towards the OP, because I'm not trying assert that I'm "right", but just share what I know]
@@John_Weiss Thanks John. I didn't know this. I always thought Norwegian was a tonal language because in my language "tonal" and "pitch" are translated into the same word. Or maybe because I just didn't know. But I see now that pitch accent is different from tones. Thanks!!
@@spanishwithlex I understand your confusion. Both Norwegian and Swedish have pitch accents, or tonal words accents (by Scandinavian linguistics, apparently). When reading pages like this one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics) Makes one definitely think that it's a tonal language. I suppose how often you change your pitch is what makes a language a tonal language or not, and Swedish and Norwegian just doesn't quite reach that amount, I suppose.
As a Norwegian I definetly feel that understanding the other Scandinavian languages is a usefull skill. Norwegian is a small language itself, but the mutual intelligibility with the other two languages expand our "home ground" to over 20 million people. I luckily very rarely witness Scandinavians switch to English to communicate, but the few times I did I frankly became a bit annoyed. How switching to a different language is easier than just slow down and pronounce words more clearly is beyond me.
When you speak a Scandinavian language, learning to understand the others is a question of exposure and nothing else. Most Norwegians understand Swedish fairly well thanks to exposure to Swedish music, TV, and summer holidays spent there. Even though Danish is more similar in vocabulary, the differences in pronounciation make it difficult to recognise the words spoken. Since the road to understanding the other Scandinavian languages is SO SIMPLE, I think it is a pity when people resort to English.
Norwegians generally know most "Danish" words because many older texts we still use have an archaic "Danish" like language. This includes many Christmas carols, poems and sayings, and even our National Anthem. In my experience Danes know less Norwegian, since they never had a "Norwegian" period where they were part of a kingdom ruled from Oslo, this only worked the other way, from Copenhagen to Norway.
As a Norwegian who grew up in Sweden, and now work a lot in Denmark and with Danish colleagues I find it is VERY useful and also powerful to be able to fully keep up and understand the other Scandinavian languages. I would highly recommend other Scandinavians to make the effort and keep at it with speaking "Scandinavian" to each other. This also broadens your perspective and understanding for your own language. It is both useful, polite and good for your brain to listen and learn. :) I always try to encourage others (who find it easier to just switch to English) to just speak slowly and then with a little time your "ear" will adjust to the words sounding a bit different and you will understand more and more quite quickly.
As a Norwegian that works with a lot of Swedes, all over Sweden, I can tell you that the younger Swedes struggle. Most Swedes understand Norwegian after a few months, in my experience.
The situation between Danish & Norwegian is HIGHLY similar to that between Dutch & Afrikaans. They both went their separate ways at around the same time. Norwegian Bokmål is strongly based on the standard Danish used by the former elites (like high Afrikaans is strongly influenced by the Dutch-speaking elite). The differences in pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary & idiom appear different to the same degree. It's amazing with all the parallels really!
Wow that’s a good comparison, I’ve always thought of Norwegian Bokmål as creole Danish. Afrikaans is considered a daughter language of Dutch, is Norwegian Bokmål considered a daughter language of Rigs Dansk (written Danish)?
@@skimt7818 Dæsken, nordlænning. Finnmark is the only place in Norway where some people speak pure Bokmål as the Saami population was forced to Norwegianise. Personally I use Bokmål, because I grew up in Oslo. All my family is from Tromsø and my mother use Bokmål along with my grand mother, however my great grand parents used to write in ny Norsk. Apparently it changed around 1950’s or after WWII in Tromsø. If Bokmål is a descendant of Danish is it considered as a descendant of old east Norse? Is Ny Norsk descendant of pure Norwegian making it a descendant of old west Norse?
I'm a dane working as a waiter at a hotel/ restaurant, and on holidays we have a lot of guests from countries around Denmark (Germany, Sweden and Norway) and I will always speak danish unless the guest wants to speak english- it seems way more polite to actually make an effort to understand. I would say by far every norwegian and swede prefers to speak their native language instead of english as well. I've only ever had one norwegian girl with a very "weird" dialect that I could not understand. Her friend translated my danish to his own norwegian dialect and the girl with the "weird" dialect understood what I meant. I should say that I understood what she said, but she could not understand what I said. And of course there is also always the slightly unintelligible swede.
Hej! Det är jag som är den delvis obegriplige svensken. Så vi möts igen - vilket sammanträffande! Kan jag få en skdlojhgttuueykdhlhljd och en kaka, tack?
@@meadish Ja tak, en skdlojhgttuueykdhlhljd og kage dertil. Ellers andet der frister? Dagens specialitet tror jeg er noget lige for dig- en hyskungdialiterendegunfst, dejlig fyldig, serveres afkølet og er selvfølgelig altid frisk:)
As a Dane working for a Norwegian company in Denmark, I really enjoy the communication with my Norwegian collegues. I have adpoted a lot of Norwegian words to make communicating easier, its auctally fun and I really like it. A collegue from Haugesund called me, she sounded so Danish that i couldnt believe it.
it is an obvious exaggeration to say that Norwegians, Danes and Swedish prefer English to their own languages when they speak to each other. Maybe it is the case with very young people with no experience with the other two languages, but apart from that, it would seem very odd.
As a Swede living in Denmark I have no problem speaking to my Norwegian neighbours, I just switch between Swedish, if they speak Nynorsk, and Danish, if they speak Bokmål. 😊
I love that it is necessary to introduce so many strange symbols and modifiers to write Danish in IPA. 😂 As a dane I find very easy to read Swedish and Norwegian. We even used Norwegian books for a couple of my university math courses. At least when I went to school it was part of the danish curriculum to have a short section about Swedish and Norwegian. For the spoken languages my understanding varies a lot depending on the dialect. I usually have no trouble understanding the Oslo dialect of Norwegian, while the western and northern dialects can be more difficult. Swedish is definitely more difficult and (surprisingly) skånsk kan be very hard to understand even though Skåne is the part of Sweden closest to Denmark.
@@Thelango99 Dialekt varierer basert på hvor i landet du er fra ja, men Norge har tonelag praktisk talt uansett hvilken dialekt man snakker. Alle nordmenn uttaler "bønder" og "bønner" forskjellig basert på tonefall uansett om de er fra Sogn eller Fredrikstad.
@@Thelango99 Jag vet att "kvar" på västlandsdialekt är samma sak som "var" på svenska. Men hur säger man "stanna/bli kvar" (to remain) på västlandsdialekt? Används ett annat ord i stället för svenskans kvar där?
This is quite a coincidence! I was having a discussion with someone about how Jamaican Patois is more different from English than Danish and Norwegian are from each other, and now this!!
I work at a hotel and I always speak Danish with Norwegians (and they speak Norwegian to me). There's absolutely no problem - kids, adults or the elderly. With Swedish people, I usually understand them, but they get barely nothing of what I say. I do believe it's a matter of attitude too though. Swedes over the age of 60 seem to understand me without trouble though and they manage to adjust their language too in order to make communication even easier.
@@cleverlyblonde true. Younger people seem to still switch to English, but it is in general easier with people from Skåne. I think what makes it easier for you guys is that you are used to hear the Danish R sound in your own words :)
I`m Norwegian and I find it quite easy to understand both Swedish and Danish. I think I have been more exposed to both those languages throughout my childhood compared others around my age but I find it to be a good thing since I have a few friends and family memebers who are Danish. I also find it special that the scandinavian languages is similair enough for us to be able to understand eachother and not having to use english. Sometimes it`s handy to be able to switch over to english, but I hope we can continue to learn from eachother and make an effort to keep talking to eachother in our languages as it is sort of a unifying thing and keeps us closer together.
It's interesting to see in this video how similar Danish and Norwegian also are to German. Like take that sentence "Crime is increasing due to high unemployment"; in German it would be "(Die) Kriminalität steigt aufgrund hoher Arbeitslosigkeit". And it is not surprising that the danish senctence is closer to the german one, since we share a common border. But the similarities are also evident in Swedish. Of course only in the written language, there are much differences regarding pronounciation.
Exactly! I used to have an “Iberian” cookbook with a mix of Spanish and Portuguese recipes and they listed all the recipe ingredient names in both Portuguese and Spanish. As someone used to Spanish, I walked away from that book thinking “Apparently you just switch nh for ñ, lh for ll, and ç for z and voilà! You have Portuguese!” But then I heard it spoken for the first time and I was like, “Wooooow! WTF is thiiiiiis?”
a dane here: I speak danish to Swedes and Norwegians and typically don't find it hard to communicate. I live in Copenhagen, there's quite a lot of Swedes from Malmö working here and I find most of them talk Swedish. I quite like how the commonality of the Scandinavian languages makes us more inter-culturally linked :))
When I was a volunteer Viking at an open-air reenactment museum in Denmark, we had a visiting group from Norway. They were checking out the place, because they were building their own museum. The local Danes and the visiting Norwegians were just talking in their own languages, maybe slight code switching, but mostly talking native. And they understood each other nicely.
Hi Paul. I'm Danish and have always felt a sense of "duty" to learn & understand the languages of my two brother nations. Even though Swedish, on paper, is quite more different from Danish in both pronounsation, spelling and vocabulary, I find it much easier to speak and understand than Norwegian! Especially Northern Norwegian is a struggle! I might be different from most, since the normal thing is to better understand Norwegian but in line of my work, where I've always, had many Swedish collègues, it's become second nature and I also daily listen to Swedish speaking radio because Denmark doesn't have any quality speaking radio after 6pm. The younger generations, unfortunately, now tend to give up quickly and just speak English with each other, which actually saddens & infuriates me somewhat..! Thanks for the programs and good luck! Held og lykke & pas på dig! Jesper
I’m dual English/Norwegian speaker who was raised in the USA (mom is from Norway, spent lots of time there with family and had lots of family visit us as well). I’ve always found written Danish and spoken Swedish easy to understand, though I’ve been trying to deepen my exposure by listening to Danish and reading Swedish. The only reason I’ve ever switched to English is just if I’m rusty in Norwegian if I haven’t been to Scandinavia in a while. I think it is incredibly special that all three languages can be understood and that’s worth preserving across our cultures. I still spend a lot of time in Scandinavia, though less in Denmark than in Norway and Sweden (my brother lives there, sister-in-law is Swedish, so we speak Norwegian and Swedish and English together). But under normal circumstances I always try to make a point to speak norwegian with Swedes and Danes and only switch to English if I have to.
Fascinating as always. In my experience, educated people from Denmark, Norway and Sweden tend when they come together to use their own languages, and mutually understand. Have you done a piece comparing Bokmål and Nynorsk?
The choir that I used to sing in once programmed a concert with works in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. I'm used to singing in languages I don't know, but that time was particularly hard simply because I couldn't keep track of which pronunciation rules to apply. The only saving grace for me was Danish, because I could ask myself sarcastically, "how would I try to pronounce this is if I had a piece of herring stuck in my mouth".
First off: good job with the video. Italian native speaker here who spent 6 years in Norway and one and a half years in Copenhagen. You average foreigner will use about one year to communicate in Norwegian and about 7(!) to do the same in Danish (based on feeedback from fellow countrymen who moved to each country). When I moved to Copenhagen, I expected to be able to communicate in no time as Danish appeared so incredibly similar to written norwegian (bookmaal). Things didn't quite go that way. It took several months before I started to feel comfortable in one on one communication. My company (at the time) subsidized Danish lessons, but, after a few sessions, in agreement with the teacher, we concluded that learning Danish didn't make any sense for me: my brain was wired with Norwegian, I could read anything without any troubles, and it was just a matter of moderating certain terms (kanskje/maaskje, like/kan godt lide, etc.) and getting used to the sound of Danish words. Norwegians find Danish pronunciation extremely funny. Here's how they make fun of it (DON'T CLICK ON THIS IF YOU ARE KNOW SWEDISH OR NORWGIAN! YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF LAUGHING UNTIL TOMORROW. I'M NOT KIDDING): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s-mOy8VUEBk.html&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=snurre PS: If we ever meet in person, please ask me about the joke with the three SAS flight assistants, a Swede, a Dane and a Norwegian "flyvertinne".
As a Swede who has worked with other Scandinavians and we had to learn to understand each other for work, and I've experienced how nice it is when we can all hang out together and speak our own languages. So I think it's sad that we resort to just English these days. But I also understand why since it's simply easier for most people. I think we should get more exposure when we grow up so we don't need to make an effort to understand each other. Our languages are so similar!
If you'd have included swedish in this, you'd be able to point to the continuum existing in the scandinavian countries. For instance swedish has both "ökar" and "stiger" which are both in use for "increase".
I've never got any problem speaking to Swedes or Norwegians as a Dane. If it gets a bit hard to understand the word, we just switch to english and then we are fine. Its only a few words we need to do that.
also worth noting: At 7:05 you talk about danish "p, t, and k" when doubled. It is in fact even more complicated than that. The vowel before the double consonant is usually pronounced as another vowel. An example could be "ikke". The "i" is pronounced like an "e". Hope this helps some of you
If you compare the differences of Danish and Norwegian to the differences among German dialects, they seem like the same language. Speakers of Austrian and Bavarian German frequently state that German dialects spoken in the northern half of Germany sound more similar to Dutch or English than to their own dialects. I would agree since I live near Cologne and can understand Bavarian German and South Eastern Dutch about equally well. But Scandinavian languages are also quite intelligible in their written form to me, there are much more cognates than with English. English and Icelandic are the two Germanic languages that are clearly distinct to me while the others have a lot in common, at least in writing.
Roughly 1/3 of modern Scandinavian words are of Low German origin. The medieval Hansa merchants left huge footprints. Speakers of Dutch and German will easily identify the majority of these words. In addition there’s all these words of proto-Germanic origin, also shared with speakers of English and Icelandic. Take body parts. Still strikingly similar in all Germanic languages.
True, since English and Icelandic were isolated from mainland Europe and left to develop on their own on their own respective islands. English became the most innovative due to strong Norman influence and Icelandic the most conservative, preserving Old Norse grammar while their Scandinavian cousins in the mainland changed. Mainland Germanic languages had lots of contact with each other.
I'd argue that German "dialects" are different languages, just called dialects for political reasons. That's the whole reason that "Hochdeutsch" was devised in the first place.
@@ghenulo Hochdeutsch started as an actors' and artists' sociolect so that plays and songs would not have to be rewritten every time one moves to another city. Must have been a huge pain in the ass in the middle ages.
@@peterszeug308 Please correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't this rather about people being able to read and understand the Bible than understanding artists and actors (especially when the printing press came up)?
I am born in Denmark but live in Sweden since many years. So I speak both languages fluently. Can change in the middle of a sentence. Norwegian is majority a mix of danish and swedish words, and maybe 20-30% own words. Been alot in Noeway, also working, my norwegian is quite good. No problem reading both bokmål and nynorsk. Ok, I've got alot for free, but I think when people don't bother to learn to understand the other two close languages, is pure laziness. You don't have to speak them, but understand them. Watch some tv-programs, read some books. In many jobs (I work in brewing) there is trade between the countries. Yes, alot in the nordic countries speak english very well, but not that well as the native language . Fun to hear persons with broad swedish, danisk and noewegian accents speaking english to each other.
As a Danish speaker, I find Swedish and Norwegian really easy to read. It is a bit harder to understand, partly because of differences in pronunciation. Many of the variants in vocabulary are words that also exist in the other languages, but has fallen from regular use. There are some differences, e.g. rolig means calm in Danish but funny in Swedish, or yrke which means job or profession in Swedish, but I don't think it exists in Danish. Some of the variant words and sayings are also pretty cool, and I occasionally find myself using vældig, hej du, verandre, hinsidan. Given the close proximity, I also suppose that many words and phrases have migrated back and forth. When meeting Norwegians and Swedes, I try to speak in our native tongues. Partly because it is great fun to exercise those language centers, but also because it is possible! If we need precision or speed of communication, switching to English is fine, because we are better at it.
Yrke exists in Danish, but is considered a bit old-fashioned. Another example is the word begyndelsen in Danish which is början in Swedish - even though begyndelsen exist in Swedish.
@@RiggieHeartland I have heard it used exactly once by a Danish speaker. The person in question was a roleplayer who was playing Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner Cronopia, so I just assumed it came from the source book. But now that I look it up, it actually does exist, though often spelled "ørke" and part of the word "ørkesløs". Another thing, I learned today :-)
As a dane. I refuse to speak English with Norwegians and swedes until it's clear we can't communicate. Ill do my best to modify my danish to meet a swede or a Norwegian, but we are Scandinavians, we shouldn't have to speak English to speak together.
My grandmother on my father's side was Danish, so this had an effect on my Father's and subsequently my accent while speaking Norwegian. I'm currently taking the Norwegian Duolingo course so that I can do the "official" pronunciation well.
I'm Finnish and fluent in swedish. I have no problem to understand norwegian language but danish is hard to understand if it is spoken too rapidly. I have noticed that while I was living in Norway I improved my danish skills. I have never been spoken english in Nordic countries. In Norway people told me that my "momin svenska" was easy to understand.
I'm a fluent speaker of Norwegian, to the point where it's displaced my native tongue (English) in my head. Despite learning bokmål first I now almost exclusively use nynorsk since I find it is much much much closer to how I speak in my dialect than bokmål ever could be. Nevertheless if I'm communicating with new learners of Norwegian or Danes I'll use bokmål, since to me bokmål is just Danish with some Norwegian sounds thrown in. It's a little upsetting to me how much the conservative form of the written language is displacing our spoken dialects now, it's especially noticeable among younger children who are losing diphthongs and Norwegian vocabulary and replacing them with monophthongs and Danish vocabulary.
We speak dialects. You really should know that bokmål and nynorsk are not spoken... Yes, bokmål used to be very close to Danish, but that was a long time ago. This video has very formal examples. Bokmål has changed a lot over the last century, especially in the last decades (with all the alternative forms). Please, take note. It's silly to talk this way about the largest group of people in the country (Eastern Norwegians), especially for a foreigner that doesn't know us well. We don't speak bokmål, Oslo dialect or Danish. We speak our dialects of Eastern Norwegian!
@@thomasnorb4077 I never said that I speak Nynorsk or bokmål, read what I said again. I myself speak a northern dialect which lies much closer to Nynorsk, and, to me, Bokmål doesn't fit how I speak. I am aware of radical Bokmål, but there are certain parts of Bokmål that I just can't get over, like writing *jeg* when I say *æ*, or having to miss out the diphthongs I say in *fleire* and *meir* when I write. That's not to say I don't have issues with Nynorsk - I do, just nowhere near as many. I wish I could write more anbeheitelse words that I say but can't write, for example. Nevertheless, the other aspects of Nynorsk gel with my speaking much better, especially the different declination of gendered nouns and the conjugation of strong verbs. I also find nynorsk to be much more consistent than bokmål is. Patterns are more obvious and have fewer exceptions. Please note that I DON'T HATE BOKMÅL. I just don't find that it suits the way I speak, and it feels like I'm writing a foreign language when I do write it. Indeed - bokmål developed from Danish and not from Norwegian, so I think I am.
@@talitek it is so unimaginable for me to write in a different way to my spoken language - even if i can understand how and why this happened. But also it wasn`t understandable for me that one letter or combination of them can make different sounds in different words, when I was starting learning english. It is still strange, but what can we do. My native language isn`t easy, but i`m glad that it is very much consistent in spelling and pronunciation.
I try my best to speak Danish with both Swedes and Norwegians. As for Norwegian, my understanding depends a lot on their dialect. With Swedish, I rarely have problems understanding them although they tend to have problems understanding me. What you usually helps me through is really to just raise my voice and speak slower
I’m Norwegian and I can understand Danish after hanging out for a couple of hours then I’m good. I speak Norwegian to Swedish and Danish people, but I’ll use some words in their language when I realise they can’t understand Norwegian words that well. I speak Standard East Norwegian. I find that I understand Swedish right away while having trouble with Danish in the begging game, then after listening for a wile it’s understandable. I’ve found that people from Malö are pretty cool because Swedes and Danes don’t understand them, but we understand each other.
In Iceland, we have to study mandatory Danish in both elementary and high school, since we are a former "property" of Denmark xD. Though I must say I find it personally much more comfortable and natural (no offense to Danes) speaking a kind of "middleground/neutral" Scandinavian that is a mix of Norwegian and Swedish. P.S. I'm still waitin' for a video about Icelandic ;)
I'm Norwegian and I have little problem getting around in Sweden and Denmark. Some places, I can speak my own language, other places, like in Stockholm, I have to switch to something more like swedish (I'm rather fluent, but they all understand I'm not Swedish). In Denmark, I have to round off syllables and "speak with a potato in my throat" as the joke goes, but generally, I rarely switch to English.
Well to answer the question. I'm from Innlandet in Norway and personally for me mutual intelligibility thing comes more down to dialect than language. I've had an easier time talking to danes in Copenhagen than I've had talking to someone from Stavanger in Norway. I'm not saying its impossible to stick to your respective languages, it can definately work fine, but just speaking English will likely make the conversation more fluid and save everyone time.
I won't say that understanding danish (as a Norwegian) is beneficial, but it can broaden your mind to how languages work. Being able to see cognates, and similarities in syntax can help with understaning why you say what you say. You can think differently of certain topics solely based on what language you're speaking (level of fluidity can alter this).
I have alot of Norwegian friends - on text and in spoken language - we use Danish and Norwegian - I speak Danish, and the speak Norwegian to me. It isnt that hard, you just have to tune the ear. Its a Scandinavian brother language, and let it remain that way!
The pronunciation differences between Danish and Bokmål seem no larger than those between RP English and broad Scots. Compare RP “hand” and Scots “hun”.
Josh Adams I think more like a strong Ulster vs Brighton. Especially if the Ulster used a lot of Ulster Scots words too. (The Ulster Scots is IMO harder to understand than the mainland Scots, as the Ulster dialect still has a distinct pronunciation of See and Sea, so in an Ulster accent see, sea and say all have different vowel sounds, and understanding which one is which is hard without context.)
I like that comparison. I've met Finns/Scandinavians that speak better English than some British people I know, I also find them easier to understand than the Scots.
If I repeat myself in Swedish my Danish friends can understand. Sometimes I use Norwegian vocabulary as well, if I think it would be more similar to the Danish. And I can usually understand them, but it comes from hearing Danish often. Norwegian took less effort to understand, but I also had more exposure to Norwegian as a child. Though I can communicate better with people from Northern Norway than from Southwestern.
I grew up in Northern Zealand with only access to 4 TV channels; two Swedish and two Danish. Thus limited I was watching some Swedish television and does understand and (to some extend) speak Swedish. I found that skill useful when I was driving replacement busses between Hellerup (just north of Copenhagen) to Elsinore (just a short boat ride from Helsingborg in Sweden) accouple of years ago. We had many Swedish tourists coming to visit the amusement park, Bakken, for a day trip. I found it easier to switch to my "broken" Swedish, than to speak English. :) Reading Bolmål is kind annoying to me. I get distracted by the "spelling errors" in Bokmål ... Bokmål looks like Danish spelled wrong. ^^
Noticed something interesting on the example sentence with the fast cars: In German there are different adjectives for fast. The usual is ‚schnell‘, but you could also say ‚rasch‘ and ‚hurtig‘. Similar to the Norwegian and Danish ones
I think that when you get outside of Oslo, Nynorsk becomes the norm. This was very interesting as I speak Norwegian and was reared in a Danish community in the US. Tusen takk!
As a Dane, I don't think it is a "useful" skill to learn Norwegian or Swedish, but I think it is important to our cultures, which is so similar and have such mutual history. I think it should be treated as more important on a national level, but I can only speak for myself. I don't know the history of Nynorsk, but I think it is an incredible way of bringing different dialects together, and the wish something similar for Danish, Swedish and Norwegian ❤️
I am Danish, and never realised that "almindeligt" should be pronounced "normalt" :D I think Norvegian is easier to understand in writing, as they often write it more or less how we say it in danish, but then completely botch the pronunciation ;)
Is it weird that I can read, speak, and understand danish better than norwegian? Danish is just so like english and I love it. It's much less taxing for my weak tongue so I can speak fast with it without losing any meaning.
I work in a Norwegian company with offices in Sweden and Denmark, but also in other countries. As long as a meeting only has participants from a Scandinavian country, we try keeping to speak our native languages. When we get new colleges, it is an effort for them in the beginning, but after a while, they get used to the differences. The biggest challenges are the words that are unique to each language. I think you missed an opportunity in this video Paul, because you were able to show the similarities between Danish and Norwegian, but not the major differences. For example, Danish numbers (50, 60, 70, 80 and 90) are a headache for Norwegian speakers. Other examples English Danish Norwegian Fun Sjov Gøy Shower Brusebad Dusj Can Må Kan Have to Skal Må Laugh Grine Le Cry Græde Grine E: Can I laugh? D: Må jeg grine? N: Kan jeg le? E: No, you don't have to cry D: Nei, du skal ikke græde N: Nei, du må ikke grine.
I'm Spanish but speaking Norwegian and with many friends from all Norway, Sweden and Denmark. With my Swedish friends it's very easy to talk to them in Norwegian and we all understand each other perfectly, but sometimes I find a bit hard to understand when they write messages en Swedish. On the other hand, I text message my Danish friends in Norwegian and they respond back in Danish and communication is perfectly fluid. The problem starts when speaking. In can't understand a single word in Danish and need to use English 😅
I think it's a pity when scandinavians speak english to each other but it's only some swedes who prefer to speak english with danes. I have never meet a norwegian who preferred it.
This is how Danish sounds like in a very distinct version from the 1950's: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2mkWrzSD1nM.html A word like "dag" is not pronounced as described in the Langfocus video - in the recording, it has a much more open A, the glottal stop is less significant, and the G at the end is clearly pronounced with a soft G which used to be a sound of its own in Danish. The language in the recording is very old-fashioned, but the words should be pretty easy to understand by other Scandinavians.
To be fair, that is a very mannered and deliberately affected (i.e. theatrical) reading, which isn't really representative of spoken Danish in the 1950s.
@@egbront1506 Sure, but is the murmuring in today's Danish more representative of Danish? In the recording above, there are sounds that are elementary sounds in Danish, but have almost disappeared during the last couple of decades.
I’m Norwegian and I have a half danish cousin. When I’m at her birthday, usually halve the people there are danish and everyone understands each other. I can’t feel any language barrier or culture barrier except for the birthday song.
I'm Danish but have Norwegian roots, so to me it's important that I'm able to communicate in Danish or Norwegian when talking to our family. Normally it becomes a mix where Danish is my "base language" and then I change the words I know is different. I also try to change my grammar, if I know a word is placed different in the sentence. I could just speak Norwegian to them, but I find it makes me sound a bit pretencious, so I stick with the formula above :D
I am German, and I speak Swedish. I had a mail conversation with a customer from Norway who didn‘t speak English very well. So he started to write in Norwegian and I wrote in Swedish, which was totally easy to understand. Not more differences than like a northern German speaker talking to somebody in Lower Bavarian dialect. I think Swedish and Norwegian are only called different languages because they are from different countries...
@@thomasnorb4077 yes, I know, I was in Norway too, but I found it ok to understand, not easy, but it worked out somehow. If you have two persons, say one from Rhineland and one from the Bavarian Forest, they'd have big issues understanding each other as well...
I have learned norwegian for years and still I am frustrated to listen to Danes while I can understand them pretty well when it's written! Another good video, Paul!
English is even more similiar to west-frisian and dutch. But in like in any case with english i guess similar means not being able to understand the language :)
I want to learn either Norwegian or Danish. But I’ll probably go for Norwegian… but right now I’m still stuck with my Italian (B2 level). ^^ So I plan to start next year. :) Thanks for this great video. :D
Others have probably noticed this already but at 10:05 when "forelskelse er almindelig blandt unge mennesker" is said in Danish he is actually saying "forelske er normalt blandt unge mennesker", normalt means normal so i would say the written translation is the most correct translation although if i was to say it myself I'd probably use "normalt"
At an art school that I used to go to, one of the teachers was Norwegian, and she always spoke Norwegian to us, though used words that we also have and use most of the time, but her pronunciations were Norwegian, and so was her way of changing her tone.
I think it all depends on what you mean by communicate. It is absolutely amazing when you can have conversations in your own language and still understand each other. In my previous work I was part a "southern European" group of friends and we spoke Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Of course using a simplified grammar and vocabulary. However, serious conversations should be held in a franc language, so there is no chance of misinterpreting the message.
As a Norwegian I grew up with lots of exposure to Swedish media, and a fairly short trip to visit both Denmark and Sweden. Later, living in Sweden for a few years, I guess I pidginised my way to a believable Swedish Västkust (Norra Bohuslän) accent, but couldn’t have done that in Denmark. Their sociolects and language culture would be too diffuse for me I guess, but I can understand most spoken danish except Sønderjysk...? I can only remember having to default to English speaking to a particular danish person, as he just couldn’t understand my “square” boring Østlands-accent... Nice videos and views! 👍😊
I believe Old Norse had a stød which was kept in Danish, while Swedish and Norwegians used pitch instead. I’m not sure if Icelandic and Faroese kept the glottal stop.
@@StillRooneyStarcraft most of southern Sweden is flat, yet the pitch accent is still present. Finland Swedish is mostly spoken along the coast, yet it lacks the pitch accent.
I'm Danish and have travelled in pretty much all parts of Scandinavia. I always speka Danish with Scandinavians, but change to a kind of Scandinavian pidgin to be more easily understood (and try to use native words, especially numbers for the other speaker). I've always been understood, but it's important to start very slow when beginning a conversation with a stranger, to let their bran switch over to understanding Danish. It usually takes them a second or so to realise - it's almost funny how you can see confusion becoming comprehension once you give them a moment. I've only ever experienced very young people wanting to switch to English, probably since they had very little exposure to Danish before. The young Norwegians I know who use to prefer English have all started speaking Norwegian with me as they got older. The only person I had real trouble understanding myself was a farmer from Dalarna - it basically sounded like a whole different language.
I think younger people lack a lot of their native vocabulary, which makes it harder to make the connections with our neighbors spoken languages. I understand Danish 10x better now as an adult compared to when I was 15 years old, just because my native Swedish vocabulary has expanded massively since then...
As a traveller in the Nordics, I tend to actually speak English with the Danes (although I understand Danish) and Swedish with the Norwegians. There are, however, lots of false friends in the languages. Also, we usually never just take for granted we understand each other. I've been in the situation talking Swedish to Norwegians about a computer system's "performance" (in Swedish, "prestanda") and having a whole class of Norwegians looking confused. The Norwegian word is "ytelse"... :)
One criticism: I have to play your videos on 0.5x or even 0.25x to be able to really hear the versions, before the next one is played. Can you please slow down the playback when you post? Danke. Nevertheless, honey, I adore your work. You are amazing, and I am always thankful to hear you.
The problem is that if they speak more slowly, people complain that they’re not speaking naturally and that it’s not a good representation of how speakers of their language actually sound. So it’s not a simple matter of fixing something. There are two competing forces at work and I have to try to balance them.
Danish guy here. I think the difference in vocabulary between Danish and Norwegian (and Swedish) is quite interesting from a semi-philosophical point of view. It made me think more about why I would say "stiger" instead of "øger" which still makes sense. My favourite of these that Swedes will say "jätta" when something is big or great, but to Danish ears, "jætte", means Jotnar or Jotuns, the giants in Norse mythology which are sort of like demons. I sometimes mess with my Swedish friends by saying, "Why are there so many 'jætter' in Sweden?". 🤣
As a native Norwegian speaker, and a second language Danish speaker, now living in Denmark, I think it's an abomination to our linguistical heritage to speak English to each other; that includes Swedish. I'm also a native Faroese speaker, and the same should apply to Faroese and Icelandic, although they have many more differences than the Scandinavian languages, imo. I might just be lucky to be able to speak Norwegian, Faroese, Danish and Icelandic, and understand all of them, including Swedish, without ever having to resort to English.
