It's a thing. I asked this Slovak girl I went to school with where she was from. She told me (a Canadian anglophone) in fairly thickly accented English that it's strange that I knew she was from somewhere else because she doesn't have an accent. (I then shared that my dad was Czech and she angrily informed me they are not the same thing, but that's another story...)
Well, I'm a Finn. My mothertong, my native language is Finnish. And I have always been very interested of it. I got Laudatur from the Finnish language in my matriculation examination. I'm 47 years old now, and I feel like I learn more of this beautiful language of mine basically every week or so. I've never stopped learning and hopefully I never will!
@@guruchintanan5686 I'd say the most important thing in learning any language is to be patient and interested in the language. We like to joke about how difficult the finnish language is, but it's not actually harder than any other language, because all languages have their own difficulties. What you might find annoying about finnish is that you'll at first be taught the official, written version of Finnish that almost no Finnish person uses to speak (and there are also many different dialects in Finland so how different people talk can vary drastically). But don't panic, you'll learn with time if you persist.
@@guruchintanan5686 For the swedish part, you don't really have to learn it if you don't live in a swedish speaking area! but in a swedish speaking area it could be helpful
@@derkateramabend This is the first time I've seen the words "decent" and "hotdog" in the same sentence. It's just a very linguistic night for me, I guess.
It reminds of the time I had a danish customer come in. I work in Malmö and this dude was talking to me. I responed, "sorry my danish is really bad, could we speak in english instead?". He got mad saying he was already speaking in english. bruh
I haven't met anyone yet, who wasn't accutely aware of their Danish accent xP. Maybe it's a generational thing (I'm 32). Whenever an English-speaker has wanted to speak to me on mic, I've always warned them, that while my written English is fluent, my spoken English sounds like a German who just had a cavity filled and the anesthetic hasn't quite worn off yet.
@@vanefreja86 Yeah, my canadian friends tell me that my english sounds like it's spoken from a native, but everytime I speak to a stranger they ask me where I'm from haha. I'm sami-swedish fyi.
I’m a Swede. When I was in Mexico I met a Norwegian and a Dane. We tried to communicate in some sort of Scandinavian and no one understood each other. But then as we were drinking and got drunker our languages kinda melted and we understood each other perfectly. So my theory is back in the days when our Vikings ancestors tried to communicate they all just got super drunk and took it from there. Maybe why there was some insults from misunderstandings too 😂
They actually all spoke the same language to begin with, Norse, an old danish “tongue” which came from Northern Germany/South Jutland, and can best be compared to the language of the Faroe Islands, and to some degree Iceland… 🇩🇰🇫🇴🇮🇸🇳🇴🇸🇪
I moved to Japan to study, and agreed to help with the local Finnish Association with their language lessons. There happened to be a Swede of all things there too, and the Japanese teacher just happily introduced us, saying that "well you guys are able to speak with each other perfectly then, right?" We just looked at each other and snickered.
because Japanese do not recognize swedish speaking Finns or Sami and karelians officially in Sendai there is well being Finland center and teach Finnish and a Finnish scret church group and Finnish xmas ironic he promotes Nordic using English but never mentions norn that is still spoken in North England Scotland
So true, I went to a comedy show in Sweden and everyone was really quiet. It may have been in part due to the comedian constantly telling the audience that they were a bad audience....
Finland here. He's absolutely right about everything he says about the Finnish language. If you just listen to the sounds in words, the Finnish sentence for "I'm gonna kill you" actually sounds much less violent than "I love you".
On the other hand Minä tapaan sinut means I meet you, like your meeting guests, so anybody who cant speak finnish should be careful in how you say this to finnish person, that you meet in bar.
Not sure about that. Minä MURHAAN sinut or Minä rakastan sinua. I think Murhaan is much more brutal than rakastan. Maybe it's more that you say murhaan stronger than lightly saying rakastan
I met a health coach and teacher a week ago, and he told me that the chances of accidental inbreeding is so high there, that a specific mutation occurs more often on those islands than on the mainland: A couple of extra ribs.
Kimi Raikonnen is a big role model of mine :D ! Guy crashes in the monaco gp, instead of going back to the garage/team, 10 minutes later he is topless on his boat, with his friends, seemingly getting drunk.
It always amuses me how Scandinavians point the finger at their neighbours for being drunks. I met in my life Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Danes, and I really cannot say which ones of them were more drunk than the others.
Faroese people actually also have a weird Danish accent very similar to the Icelandic one, and it's the best way for communicating with norwegians and swedes
The Icelandic pronunciation sounds a lot like the Finnish one, when speaking English or skandinavisk in general. A bit rough and very, very familiar. Intonation is different, though.
As a non-native Icelandic speaker (native English), I can relate to this. I always thought that Icelandic was so difficult to understand because everyone always mashes the syllables together. Then I heard someone speak Danish.
then you can't really have listened to a longe stretch of it an addition to 'rakastan'. It is possible to say it quite softly, not like he does at all. It is a bit like Italian, suitable for singing.
Non-Scandinavians: "Scandinavia is so cool. Such different, diverse countries but they still speak sort of similarly enough to have a basic comprehension of what they mean." Fins: "Yeah, we don't do that here." *Thousands of miles in the distant Ural region between mountains, lakes and towers of ice* Finno-Ugric ancestor: "I feel you, brother."
@@MrPicky - They're considered part of Scandinavia culturally either way. The "cross flag countries". I'm Danish and whenever anyone I've known have talked about Scandinavia, that has included Iceland and Finland.
@@VelkanAngels well you must then be a part of the younger generation that is more influenced by English culture. I see this in the younger generation in Iceland as well. Many of them think we are a part of Scandinavia. Even though that we share similar culture, lifestyle and flags (the cross) that still does not make all of us Scandinavian. And technically then Denmark isn't even a part of Scandinavia but is included "for old times sake" 😉
What makes the resemblance for me, is the subtle "harshness" and sharp consonants. Also the tone was quite monotonic, although the weigh was on different parts of the words.
+Chris The Swedish spoken in southern Finland is rather high pitched. The western dialects are based on older Swedish and sound more like standard Swedish.
I used to work in a lab in the United States that did neurogenetic research on alcoholism. I wondered why our scientific director and our collection of DNA samples came from Finland. Now I know.
Two Finns go to a bar. They get their drink and sit down. After 10 minutes one says to the other 'Nice bar isn't it'. 30 minutes later the other replies.. 'Did we come here to drink or just talk'?
Here's the original text: To svenskere sidder i en hytte og drikker, på et tidspunkt siger den ene: 'skål', hvortil den anden svarer: 'Fan, skal vi drycka eller prata skit'?
I can and like to report, all the finnish guys and girls i met in Germany and Switzerland (just 4 persons) are speaking German like Germans. Fluently without accent. Very impressive!
So this is basically what a Southern European convention would be: Portuguese: Te amo. Spanish: Te amo. French: Je t'aime. Italian: Ti amo. Greek: SAGAPOOOOOOOOOO
Well that’s because greek is not a romance language, unlike french, italian, spanish or portuguese. And I wouldn’t classify the french as southern europeans, they’re western european…
@@maxrolland3148 everyone (or mostly everyone anyway) knows Greek isn't Romance. Just like Hungarian, Romanian, Albanian or Lithuanian are not Slavic, to some people's surprise. Or when people realise Chinese, Japanese and Korean are actually rather different, or Arabic, Turkish and Persian. And yes, France is Western European, but it's also Southern European. Those two classifications aren't mutually exclusive, besides France is big enough, so depending on which region we talk about it can be more Western Europe or more Southern Europe. The same applies Italy (Northern Italy can very well be included in both Southern and Central Europe) as well as Spain and Portugal (again, Northern Spain and Northern Portugal is more Western than Southern, besides the Iberian peninsula is the Westernmost bit of mainland Europe). Even Greece can be classified as both Southern and Eastern, which is basically what the Balkan region is like.
The geography is somewhat irrelevant though. The point is that the first 4 languages you listed are all in the same language branch (derived from Latin), whereas the 5th is a language branch of its own with no connection to Latin, so obviously the language would be completely different. While the same holds true for the Scandinavian languages vs. Finnish, the joke still works, because Finland is a Scandinavian country like the others and is considered one of our "neighbours" same as the others. Finland is the one that stands out from its pack. That doesn't even remotely hold true for Greece in relation to Spanish, Portugue, Italian and French-speaking countries, cause Greece has nothing to do with any of those countries :l
I am italian, and reading the comments i probably am the only one here. I am so curious and fascinated by your culture. I ve been to danmark and sweden , enjoyed every moment of my holiday there , love the places, food, people. Cheers dear Scandinavian friends!
I am Arab. Totally unrelated linguistically, but find this extremely funny. One, for the comedic part of it. Second, for Arabs judge each other the same way. Not only, countries, but cities or even parts of the city. I think this is common among nationalities with diverse dialects.
Hah! We hungarians just hate each other. Like everyone on the train looks at each other angry/distant, but as soon as you ask if you could sit beside someone, they become very kind.
except the scandinavians are actually related to each other genetically. While "arabs" aren't. Arab speakers from the levant are completely different. Lebanese people are white. So you're not the same people by far.
My grandma spoke fluent Finn, absolutely horrifying when she got mad and started yelling and speaking quickly. I’d argue it’s almost scarier sounding than German.
It's funny how perception of language changes due to cultural and historical stuff. When Mark Twain wrote about German he found it too soft compared to English ))
@@JessicaMiller-pc4dj mmm... I can try to recall my impression of English from my past ) First, it's a bit high-pitched (typical for languages with rich vowels articulation). Also, it's kinda staccato... I mean, it's kinda more rhythmically prominent, like TA-ta-ta-TA-ta-ta-ta-TA-ta-TA, while my native language is more legato (some even call it monotonous). I guess, that's why rock and rap work well in English. Though American language sounds more relaxed for me.
@@JessicaMiller-pc4dj do you mean standard American English? Quite common, coz almost the entire world is constantly exposed to it. More or less the same with the British RP. But things change dramatically with regional accents. For me, cockney hardly can be considered as an accent of English language. Sometimes sounds like Chinese or javanese or else. Northern English accents seem as someone is just gibberishing all the time. Same for Scottish (with the addiction of lots of strongs "Rs".) Sometimes, I'm afraid if brits (non RPs) are really speaking a very different kind of English or if they are conjuring some terrible spelling in a certain demonic language. I feel much more comfortable with American regional accents, in general (with the exception of the Boston area). Canadians sound like typical Americans, but with some exotic pronunciation (house, mouse, about, etc). It's not usual to be in a hard time with English spoke by aussies, Jamaicans, kiwis and Indians, but, in general, you just identify that they simply are people who come from these countries, speaking with their strong but recognisable accent. No problems, because it's different, but still English. My issue, and the problem with lots of non-born English speaking people is really about the UK regional accents. Most part of the time, those accents and dialects sound like a mixture of several languages, with one or another English word. It seems a pidgin or something like that. Very strange.
I'm jealous that a country can have a stand-up event with the performer speaking a non-native language and the crowd understands... wish the US would push at least a second for us to learn in school.
And I would like to suggest that the second language you should be thaught should be ASL (American Sign Language)! (I think that should be done here in Sweden [but with Swedish Sign Language, of course] as well.) - Sign languages are cool!
Though, on second thoughts, I'm not sure this is such a good idea - just look at the tensions between the Finnish and Finnish-Swedish speaking populations, and how they are intensified because schools are required to teach "the other's" language. It's not super pretty. :/ And requirement like this would have to come from a deep desire within the community itself, and then - why make it a requirement?
@@silviu7568 In the US, at least where I live, if you want to go to college you need at least 3 (Recommended 4) years of math in High School, 2 years of foreign language or 1 year of an art, 4 years of English/Language Arts, 2 years (recommended 3) of science, 2 years (recommended 3) of history, 2 years of PE, and there are multiple available electives. There are also options for Advanced placement, AVID, and Honors. AP is the only one to give college credit before college the others just look good on a resumé.
clearly you've never heard native english speakers attempt finnish, this guy was perfectly understandable even at the start to me as a person who's heard australians give it a go lol
@@Analyytikko got a similar thing in Danish, "den man elsker, tugter man." It means, if you're being a little mean to somebody, it's because you love them.
As a Brit with some schoolboy French and a tiny amount of Japanese I can only say how impressed I am by this routine moving through the scanda languages glued together with English and the audience understands perfectly. Bless all you wonderful northern folk
As an Englishman it sounds like you guys have the same sense of brotherhood and rivalry that the UK has with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Love it, long may it continue. Greetings and best wishes from your North Sea neighbours. :)
@@SocialDemocrat1789 you guys are literally brits tho (historically) how can you guys not be allied to us? why do you hate us? you have our system of government, our language, our scientific discoveries (well the whole world does but i digress), places and buildings over there are named after us, your comedy is like ours, you basically stole the london rap scene recently (as new age australian rap wouldn't exist without us, don't think we didn't notice) etc. we have so much in common why the hell would we not be brothers?
As a Finn it's cool that the other Nordic languages are so similar! I could actually follow my coffee maker's cleaning instructions that were written in Norwegian based on my Swedish knowledge (which is not that impressive to begin with).
@@maxrolland3148 Estonian a little, hungarian no chance. I've heard that estonians can understand finnish better than vice versa since to them finnish sounds like a weird ancient version of their own language.
@@ikkimi7745 Interesting, that's a similar situation to Icelandic and Norwegian then, as I've heard Norwegians sometimes can struggle with the "Old Norse" vibe of Icelandic, but the Icelanders don't struggle so much in the opposite direction.
@@maxrolland3148 more estonian and less hungarian but there are suprisingly many words that sound the same. J’ai oublié quand je regardais cet video, Je parles français aussi.
@@Finlandpro1 I learned basic Korean and it wasn't so tough, although you have to learn their writing system (which is actually quite logical.) I have Finnish friends but learning the language seemed pointless because their English is so good
Miguel Sandels Eres español??? When finns happen to say "mina rakastan sinua" it does sound like they're gonna murder you while you sleep!!! Luckily, they say it like once every 3 years 😅 phew!
We did have Icelandic Magnus Magnusson as the quizmaster on UK TV's Mastermind. Agree his accent in English was very clear and elegant. His catchphrase when the time was up was, "I've started, so I'll finish". We all wondered if that was what he said in the marital bed!
Italian native speaker here. Finnish sounds very melodic to my ears. I especially love how they pronounce vowels. I look up to you, my dear Scandinavian friends, for your rich culture and for being able to preserve it.
dane here. My absolute favorite place to visit is italy. Such rich culture and foods, and im not even a food guy - this changes when im in italy. People drive like crazy though :D
I'm a Finn and my favourite language is Italian and I speak some of it, it sounds so melodic. Our languages actually have some similarities like in the way words are pronunced. Saluti dalla Finlandia ❤
Oh my god I’m Mexican and that part of the Macarena being invented in Finland is the best thing I’ve heard!! i had to rewind 3 times to listen to the end without laughing 😂
Icelandic is relatively monotonic and tends to emphasize the first syllable of a word just like the not related at all finnish. Icelanders in the other nordic countries have a tendency to be mistaken for finns by non-speakers of either language. and this works the other way. once I had a finnish girl read me a passage from an Icelandic book. It was creepily accurate.
Icelandic and Finnish have a very similar phonology, we pronounce letter mostly the same way, and Icelandic also often has the stress on the first syllable, similar to Finnish.
I'm a half Spanish half Venezuelan from Madrid, never been anywhere further north than Germany, and I still loved and laughed out loud at this hahaha I guess humor has no frontiers
Самое интерестное, что темпераменты наших и северных народов очень схожие, и много вещей , теже языки (Украина, Россия, Беларусь) тоже возникают смешные конфузы)
how to make to make delicious fruit wine in finland: put two raisins in a wooden barrel, add 30L of vodka, let it sit for two full sauna sessions, enjoy , if too fruity, skip the raisins, good for 80 swedes or 6 finns...
I live in Northern Ontario where we have loads of mäkäräinen and hyttynen. The local population is mostly French speaking (Franco-Ontarien, NOT to be confused with Quebecers. I will save those two Finnish pearls till the right moment.
Yeah they didn't handle the pandemic that well.. True that. I just watched an Danish/Swedish news about Sweden and Finland, they speaked about how/why Finland handled the pandemic so well compared to Sweden.
The funny thing is, I have a Danish friend who once, many years ago, tried to convince me that when he went to England everyone thought he was a local. And he demonstrated his shitty English accent. I had no idea how to tackle that situation... so I just nodded.
Try having english classes with 30 other danes... Some people are so convinced they are rocking amazing british accents when they all in fact sound like in this video
Indeed, it's the Copenhagen accent though which is also the one Swedes always joke about when they mock our language. It's clear that most of them have only ever been to Copenhagen, which is understandable I suppose. I guess most people visiting France also just visit Paris etc. You can immediately identify the Copenhagen accent if you're from another part of Denmark as well. The Swedes always use the excessive use of 'soft D' from Copenhagen a lot when they make fun of the Danish language for example. It's true enough but it just doesn't go for other parts of the country. The word "meget" (a lot/very) is basically pronounced like "Maard" (soft D) in Copenhagen which it isn't elsewhere for example. You don't get people in Southern Jutland, the west coast etc. saying "maard" so the stereotype doesn't really go for them. They still have both an accent and a dialect of course but it's not at all like the Copenhagen one, not even close. :) There's something about his Danglish accent that screams Copenhagen to me but I'm not really sure what it is. Maybe it's the "rhythm" or something, but you wouldn't get that kind of sound in Aalborg, Aarhus, Esbjerg, Odense or whatever. It's very clearly Copenhagen-English.
American here, and I actually left the country once... Was in Germany at a cafe and the server was speaking perfect English without even what I'd call am accent, just a very crisp delivery. I know many Europeans can speak English, but this was so perfect that I was compelled t ask him where he learned English so well. His reply - "back home in school in Denmark".
@@Eyepice Nope. North America and South America are continents, and Central America is a region of North America. There is no continent called America.
Cause he pronounced all but 1 of the D's as hard D's like Norweigans, Swedes and... well, everyone else except Danes do (apparently), lol. He said "undskyld, hvor er Rådhuspladsen?". Both of the D's in "undskyld" are silent, so is the 2nd D in "Rådhuspladsen" (he got that one right), while the first is pronounced softly, kinda like the "th" in the English word "the", only a bit softer. Basically to get a soft Danish D, you say the English "th" without letting the tip of your tongue touch the upper part of your mouth at all xP. Fortunately that sound is only used in the middle of a word or at the end, or it'd sound even dumber. The first D in a Danish word will always be pronounced hard (words beginning with D, I mean), while D's preceded by a vocal will be soft and D's preceded by a consonant will be silent. That's not a grammatical fact I know about or anything, but I can't come up with a single Danish word involving a D, in which those rules don't hold true. If another Dane sees this and they can come up with one or more, please let me know! Only thing I can think of is maybe a few town names like "Hundige", but town names - same as people names - tend to not follow "rules" of pronunciation very strictly, so I don't count that. :l Also, I just realised "Hundige" might originally have been a compound word, combining "Hun" (she) and "dige" (dam), in which case such pronunciation rules wouldn't have applied anyway, as compound words are two seperate words, only with the space removed. I'm only still writing cause I'm bored at this point.
@@Lugmillord Saatana = Satan Perkele = Goddamnit Vittu = Literally translates to cunt, but in this context it means something more like fuck Mäkäräinen = Blackfly
@@legendteigen461 Well, in a sense it could be argued (though only by crazy historians) that the Faroes are what remains of the old Norwegian Realm. The Faroes were a taxland to Norway since the early middle ages, but were awarded by the Brits to the Danish king as personal property (along with Iceland and the colony of Greenland) at the treaty of Kiel, when the Dano-Norwegian Realms were sundered. Mainland Norway was awarded to Sweden, the Norwegians rebelled and a new Norwegian kingdom in union with Sweden was established.
You don't have to be from a Nordic country to enjoy this. I'm American and I have just enough cultural exposure to get these jokes, I love the part at the end because I've always thought that Finnish sounds like the language written for Death Metal.
Actually there are lots of metal bands in Finland (like Nordic countries in general) though many of them sing in English. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JLlVEC5VCv8.html But they do metal versions of Christmas songs: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yKyg4m1qIOQ.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YXtQ72YbfDA.html
Metal is huge in Finland, There's even a heavy metal band for children called hevisaurus which is pretty hilarious there are also a lot of popular internationally known Metal bands from Finland, like Nightwish and Stratovarius for example, but they do sing in english
Finland is like the adopted brother who's very close family now, and Iceland is the little Brother who was your closest friend, then moved out and made a name for himself, then surpassed you in some things, and to your dismay, started listening to Denmark's favourite music instead of yours. Love you both!
Went to Denmark as a Dutch person, reading wasn't super difficult, lots of similarities with Dutch, but then they started to speak and I was lost as soon as they opened their mouth.
I'm from Mecklenburg and worked 10 Month in Netherland at the German border - learned the regional dialekt in 3 month - through my own low german dialect. Tried this in Sweden afterwards, by working there for 4 month. Could understand nearly 80% - Speak maybe 10%, by the end. Now I live in Switzerland for 5 Years, after 3 weeks I could understand nearly everything - can just speak 5 sentences today in this dialects... Can't really figure out, how this "learning germanic languages /dialects" really works... By the way: I still love The Netherlands, I have a lot of good memories of the time there!
@@elbruhmomentonumerodos9227 You mean Dutch? Id have to agree. I'm Dutch myself but when I switch back from English to Dutch it takes me a while to gather myself 😂
@@himfromscandinavian5354 ok my bad. I just assumed English was a lingua franca used by Scandinavians. If there's a specific Northern Germanic language that all Scandinavians understand which one is it?
I went to Denmark once, thinking I actually could speak the language perfectly. It was so embarrassing when everyone looked at me like a mad man, Which is especially embarrassing since Danish is a mad mans language! I dont think I can ever show my face in Denmark ever again.
icelandic danish was way easier to understand than actual danish. the way your people pronounce letters somehow makes danish more understandable for norwegians
Yes, I speak Finnish and when I hear people speaking the Sami language it feels kinda weird in the sense that I feel that it sounds very familiar, my brain pick up the structure of the language, like it should make sense, but it doesn't!
I remember I was playing a game of Among us, and I just started talking icelandic. And some Danes and swedes understood me and replied in their own language. We weren't talking the same language yet we communicated with each other perfectly.
I love that. I'm an American who was studying Icelandic for a while and was able to understand my cousin when he texted me in Norwegian. It's so amazing how connected all the Nordic languages are.
You should check Finnish comedian Ismo, or swedish comedian Fredrik Andersson. The latter only have a few videos in english but really good, and Ismo have alot
Ari Eldjárn is on Netflix, too, I keep going back to his show there because he's so funny in it. He has worked on these jokes here since and the show is sooo good :)
