Scandinavia's Oddly Popular Single Letter Place Name 

If you had to name somewhere after just one letter, which letter would you choose?

We have a saying in Norwegian. The danes can write it, and the Swedes can speak it.

You failed to mention that there's a sizeable swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which is probably the main reason Swedish in mandatory in school. It's one of the official languages of Finland.

"ö i å" means "island in small river" in swedish.

Your Ö was perfect, but Å needs practice

Swedes and Norwegians can understand themselves mutually. Danes, however, no one can understand them - even other danes.

As a Finn I never heard anyone put any further meaning to Å, just a letter to know for other languages along side with C, X, Z, Q, W. Swedish language remains in Finland because we got a sizable native Swedish speaking population, some have unique identity from Swedes and Finns and some are just Finns who speak Swedish. This is completely different from Russian speakers who are just Russians and often move in and out of the country and have no special cultural place in the nation. Swedish remained strong as it stayed as the language of government, nobility and well educated even when Finland was autonomous under Russian empire. Swedish rule is seen more positively as shared history while the 1800s are sen more as a occupation by Russia.

"Imagine having a letter in your alphabet that serves no purpose" Well as a Dane I can think of several "Q", "W", "X", and "Z" come to mind.

4:16 "Imagine having a letter in your language that serves no purpose" Spanish speakers: you mean *H*

I’m Swedish and Norwegian is usually quite easy to understand (except for Bergen who have a really weird accent). But danish is quite hard if they’re not from Copenhagen, everyone else have such strong accents!

Why have certain letters make certain sounds when you can just put 4 letters together and pronounce none of them? THIS COMMENT WAS MADE BY THE IRISH GANG

I'm Finnish and I've never heard of anyone suggesting to replace mandatory Swedish with Russian. We might hate Sweden but it's friendly hate, we're frenemies. Russia on the other hand...

I’m Swedish and I’ve been to both Norway and Denmark, and basically when it comes to understanding the other languages: I can pretty much understand all and any written Danish and Norwegian, I can understand most Norwegian speech, and Danish people sound like they’re extremely drunk Norwegians so it’s a bit harder but in the end you usually get there

Problems with Swedish language in Finland aren't really about us feeling that they're invading our language or anything like that. It's mostly just that learning Swedish is time take from learning something "actually useful" like German, French, Spanish or Russian for people who live near the border. Also the fact that if you want to work for the government, you pretty much have to be able to speak Swedish at least to some degree even if the job is something where you'll never actually get/have to speak it annoys a lot of people.

Nah, Finland and Iceland are not "considered to be Scandinavian". They are simply not Scandinavian. They're Nordic just like the actual Scandinavian countries. Just because people constantly get it wrong doesn't mean that they are Scandinavian.

How I normally explain the pronounciation of the 3 extra vowels is like this: Å - like how an British person would pronounce the vowels in Bought or Straw Ä - like how an American person would pronounce the vowels in Rat or Bad Ö - there is no exact match, but the closest is the i in Girl or Bird

4:03 All three claims here are false. I'm Finnish, and I've NEVER heard anybody suggest that Russian should be compulsory. Additionally, there are far more Swedish speakers here than Russians, and it's not even close, and our linguistic ties with Sweden are far greater than with Russian. I have no idea where you got this info from, but I'm happy to correct it in any case.

I studied Swedish at university. In one of my literature classes, my professor had me read Ibsen in Norwegian, which I did not speak and had never studied. He told me I’d be fine, and he was right.

French teacher: "À quelle ville habites-tu?" Student: "J'habite à Y." Teacher: "Non, on dit *j'y habite"*

Many of the Finnish coastal towns and cities are named by rivers. That's why you get places like Borgå, Ingå and Sjundeå. Last one literally means "seventh river". Their Finnish names are just phonetically "translated" as Porvoo, Inkoo and Siuntio.

As a swede I can understand written and spoken Norwegian (standard Norwegian, that is) easily but Danish is a little bit harder. If a Danish person speaks slowly and articulate their words then it should be okay. Normally we just use English if we find the inter-lingual conversation difficult.

I'm swedish and my dad told me a interesting story about he was once working with a icelandic guy who lived in denmark for a few years before moving to Sweden and he spoke perfect swedish. My dad asked him how he did that and he answered he just mixed icelandic and danish to speak swedish! I always found that really interesting! :)

I'm from Lofoten, and Å is basically just down the road from where I grew up. I live in the UK now and a few years ago I brought my husband and a few members of his family to Å and they all thought it was so funny with this place with this funny one letter that " no one knows" as its name. They all had to have their photos taken by the sign that said "Å" 😁😁😁😁

I'm swedish, and about two years ago I spent five weeks in Denmark as part of my university studies. In Denmark I had a Danish student helping me around, and she also introduced me to a Norwegian student doing the same thing as me. Although us three didn't meet up much, when we did we could talk to each other without much problem. Of course some words means different things, so you might have to explain some things, but other than that it's actually not that hard for us three languages to understand one another

Finn here. The way I understand the whole ''why is Å in the finnish alphabet'' thing, is because why would we have a completely seperate alphabet for swedish if the difference is 1 letter AND swedish is also an offical first language of Finland. Might as well just work with a single alphabetical system.

Oh, let's hear some mispronounciations Edit: you were actually better than I thought with Ö

Im norwegian and me as a norwegian listening to a danish, sounds like drunk gibberish.

Fun fact: There is a town in southern Sweden called Råå, and in that town there is a small river, an 'å'. Now some people in Sweden joke about there being eels in this river, but why would they do that? Well, the Swedish word for eel is 'ål', which in turn makes the eels in the river 'Råååål' which literally translates to 'Råå river eel'. Because the Swedish language rarely allows more than two of the same letter in a row, 'Råååål' is the word with the highest amount of the same letter in a row.

4:05 Russia definitely isn't more spoken than Swedish in Finland, and Russian definitely doesn't have more linguistic ties to Finnish than Swedish does. Boo.

"Å" is literally just pronounced like "awe". No more complicated than that.

The word "å" comes from the same root as Latin "aqua" and French "eau". There is an Old English cognate "ēa".

Closest Finland gets with place names is II, (two "i"s) which comes from Sami languages and means "night". Now by Finnish spelling standards it's two "i"s, but that's just the way Finnish marks long vowels, so speculating about things it could have been just "i".

When trying to say ”Å” its more like the sound you do when you see some thing cute ”Aww”

Neither Q, W, or Z, are used in any native Swedish words. It’s even unclear if W is even in the alphabet. (Edit: Q is used insanely rarely, but it does in fact happen.)

I live in Aalborg, and almost everyone here gets mad if you spell it Ålborg. It's because when the letter was officially introduced to the Danish alphabet in 1948, it was required by law, that Aalborg changed its spelling to Ålborg. However, many people here resented this change, and in 1984 the original spelling was reintroduced, so now we have two official ways for spelling the 4th largest city in Denmark... soooo, I guess we can kinda relate to the Finns then... hei suomalaiset ;)

4:10-4:43 not finnish, but i am close being estonian and we have a literal section of our alphabet named the "võõrtähed" or "foreign letters", which aren't really used outside of loan words.

About the 'Having a letter that you have no use for': Here in the Netherlands we only really use the Q for loanwords. A lot of 'qu's already turned into 'kw'. All mainly Germanic languages are in a similar situation. The current alphabet is a Latin invention, after all. English has enough French and Latin influence to make it work well, but even then those letters are sparse. Frisian ditched Q and X all together, and reduced a single C to its phoneme (S or K). There are some beautiful Akwadukts here. And funny that you mention Japanese scripts for your example because extended Katakana is filled with symbols that basically aren't used. The 'We' symbol exists, but 'Ue' is used in basically every single case. These symbols aren't even exographs. And more Dutch: We have the word 'Aa' for for a small river, but also 'E' for dammed Aas. Edam is a Dam on the E. That's where that cheese comes from.

Well. A Norwegian from Oslo can easily be understood by a Swede around Stockholm and vice versa. But all variations and dialects of our languages makes them harder to understand depending on where you are from and what you are used to. Danish however is the odd language out. At least we swedes have a very hard time understanding Danish. Some people understand it better tough, like the population in Skåne (southern tip of Sweden). Great video btw

Swedish is actually more widely spoken than Russian is in Finland with 5% speaking it as their native language and another 40% speaking it as their secondary language and, Russian isn't related to Finnish at all and Russian is actually distantly related to Swedish and there more Swedish loanwords in Finnish than there are Russian ones, but in eastern Finland there's some Russian speakers and no Swedish speakers so it makes sense for them to learn Russian, and as a Finnish-speaking Swede I find it pretty ridiculous that Finns are forced to learn Swedish Pakkoruotsi, also Swedish Danish and Norwegian are practically the same language just different language standard forms. P.S. Perkele

2:53 This is false. No one understands Danish but the Danish, and then barely. (more serious answer: yes, to some degree, with huge asteriskes for Swedes understanding Danes (with their insane counting system). SE+NO mostly no problem. Though in the corporate world everyone is using English now, so I think we're slowly drifting away from this mutual comprehension, but I'm not a linguist.)

3:05 Depends on dialect and willingness to attempt. When talking Swedish is easier to understand than Danish for a Norwegian speaker. While written danish is easier than written Swedish for the Norwegians that write in Boomål (Written Norwegian originally based on the language of the Norwegian upper class after the union with Denmark) (This is my own experience as a Norwegian, so I won’t speak on behalf of others)

Holy molly I was in a town called Å in Lofoten and it was such a cool and beautiful place .... and I have a good laugh on the name too :) thanks for this vid

Your way of saying "always" begins with a near perfect Swedish Å.

In danish « Ø,ø » means island, and « Å,å » means smaller river. In Icelandic we also do have single letter words for example « Á,á » means small river too.

The reason why cities like Aarhus and Aalborg ditched the Å is to become more globally accessible. They argued that the Å would be too difficult for foreigners to understand, which could deter tourism and businesses, so they changed their names. However, the municipals of the cities consider both to be correct.

The way you pronounce "Å" sounds at times more like how you could, in some cases, pronouce "Ö". However, think of how when you say the word "Always" or "All". The A's in those words when you pronounce them are very similar to the correct pronounciation of "Å".

I'm a Swedish-speaking Finn, and yeah a lot of Finnish people feel pretty strongly about Swedish and the way it's taught in schools, and would like to see it gone from the educational system in favor of something they feel is more useful, though the usefulness varies heavily from region to region. There are many municipalities in mainland Finland that are heavily bilingual and some that are majority Swedish-speaking. It's weird how Swedish-speaking Finns were largely swept under the rug in this video (though you did at least acknowledge Åland). We make up 5% of the total population and maintain a strong linguistic and cultural identity distinct from both other Finns and from Swedes, though a lot of foreigners have no idea we exist, and a lot of Finnish-speaking Finns don't like us. What I'm trying to say is that Swedish is not just some random detached language that Finnish school children are bugged with and forced to learn for no reason, as this video might have you believe. It's an official language in our country the mother-tongue of a native linguistic minority of Finns. The letter Å might not serve a purpose in the Finnish language but it does serve a purpose in the country of Finland overall. But yeah. Just wanted to share my perspective. 4:04 Also, the claim that there are more Russian-speakers than Swedish-speakers in Finland is pure nonsense! There are about 280 000 people with Swedish as their native language and about 80 000 with Russian. 1:37 Also, also, not part of any group?? Ever heard of the Nordic countries? The Nordics is not an obscure group at all and it's baffling to me that it wasn't mentioned.

Finland is Nordic, together with Scandinavia, Faroe Islands and Iceland (and sometimes Greenland)

6:53 I think that the reason that only small villages have the name Å is because it is the name for a Small river and not a big river. Because for a small village a small river would be a significant feuture so they decide to name it after the fact that there is a small river there.

The situation of Swedish in Finland is a bit complicated. The main reason Finland still uses Swedish is that historically Swedish has been the dominant language of education, governance, commerce and the upper class because of Swedish rule. However, after Finland was transferred to Russia, it was granted autonomy meaning that the Swedish speaking elite continued on with what they were doing and was never replaced. There was even a period of language strife between the svekomans and fennomans on whether or not Finnish should be an official or even a recognized language of Finland. Ultimately it was agreed later on that Finnish would be put on equal ground with Swedish after which it shortly became the overwhelmingly dominant language of the country in almost all fields. It's mostly because of this that mandatory Swedish exists in schools and universities. It is widely unpopular. Swedish is next to useless in Finland. If you don't live in a Swedish speaking area or don't have Finland-Swedish family members, it's highly unlikely you'll ever learn/need to speak Swedish fluently ever. Even in Sweden where Finns often go for a vacation trip, Finns use English because Swedes, like Finns, are avid English speakers. I have never heard of anyone saying we should replace mandatory Swedish with Mandatory Russian though. That would make little sense to throw out one language forced upon Finland historically for another language that people tried to force onto Finland in a different point in History (see Russification of Finland). Overall Finnish society views mandatory Swedish in a similar light to national Conscription (where men once they turn 18 must go to the military for a period of time from 3 or 5 months to almost a year). Once people are done with mandatory Swedish and/or military service, they become apathetic to the issue. "Why should you not be forced to learn Swedish, if I was forced to?" Similarly, the removal of mandatory Swedish isn't really discussed a lot outside right-wing nationalist politics.

"Å" is a fairly recent letter. It's predecessor "á" is still used in Icelandic and Faroese, as well as in some inofficial writing systems for the more unusual language variants found in northern Sweden. As the sound of "á" changed, writing changed to "aa". To save space in handwritten documents, one letter was put above the other. The same thing happened with the other Scandinavian letters. "Ae" became "æ" or "ä", and "oe" became "ø" or "ö". The Icelandic "ö" replaced the old letter "ǫ". "Å" entered Swedish when the printing press was introduced in the mid 1500's. It didn't enter Norwegian until they stopped using the Danish writing system in 1917. Danish introduced the letter in 1948.

Me: Where do you live? Scandinavian: Å Me: Which one?

Video: is supposed to be about Scandinavia Also video: contains 1 and 1/2 - 2 minutes of Finnish stuff *what ?*

1:28 While it technically is true that Estonian is closer to Finnish than any of the languages of Scandinavia, I think that it's worth mentioning that the Saami languages of the northern parts of the peninsula are also in the Uralic language family. And from my understanding, Finland is considered separate from Scandinavia for geographic reasons more than linguistic ones.

The letter Å is originally from northern Germany, where it was and is used in certain Low Saxon writing systems. It has been living in a small niche there, but for some reasons it really caught on in Scandinavia.

7:28 is the other way around. Before 1948 the letter å/Å was not a part of the Danish alphabet, and was instead spelled Aa/aa

My friend What's your favorite singer ? Me : its complicated

Possibly your best video yet!

As a Norwegian, I understand spoken Swedish fully and spoken Danish almost fully. In writing, I understand them both fully. As you showed in the video, "Å i Lofoten" means "Å in Lofoten", so "i" is single-letter preposition in Norwegian, and in fact in all three Scandinavian languages. It just means "in". But Danish, specifically, also has a single-letter personal pronoun, and just as with English, it's always capitalized: "I". The difference is that while the English pronoun is used to refer to oneself, the Danish pronoun is used to refer to other people, specifically it is the second person plural subject pronoun. I thought it was funny that both Danish and English both ended up with this strange capitalization of the letter "i" when used as a pronoun -- but not when used as a preposition.

In Sweden we have a joke that Danish sounds like someone trying to speak Swedish with a hot potato in their mouth. We can understand each other pretty well, but were in the country you live also play a role. If you live near the Norwegian border you'll have an easier time understanding of them, and if you live in the south you have an easier time with Danish. On the other hand someone from the south might struggle with Norwegian and so on.

1:49 perfect pronounciation of Ö, but you messed up Ø, even though they have the exact same pronounciation...

Well the think with Finnish school teaching Swedish is like in the UK they would teach Welsh in your school just because you have shared history. In Finland you really don't need Swedish because it's only spoken in west Finland and Åland, but still most of them understand Finnish. And you begin to learn it in 7th grade and get only 3 year to learn it. So it just mostly feel's like a waste of time :D

Å basically makes the English "O" sound. As in when you say the letter "O". Just without the other part of the sound. When you say o you actually make two sounds. You start with the Scandinavian "Å" sound and then it turns into a Scandinavian "U" sound.

"Å" in norwegian also means "to", as in to do. (it is pronounced similarly to the spanish o)

2:36 me being proud he used a Swedish alphabet Du gammla du fria intensifies

My family's cabin is called Åbua, which just means "shack by the river / lake".

There are a few big towns in northern Sweden that you missed that are all named after their rivers. The biggest are the cities “Piteå”, “Luleå” and “Skellefteå” which means “pite river”, “lule river” and “skellefte river” respectively.

There is a smaller river in Germany, too, with the name "Aa". Has it something to do with that? (In Northrhine Westphalia.)

I want to go to A so much.

The ö letter just looks surprised all the time

I'm from Finland and I speak Finnish as my first language. I did not learn any Swedish because I did not care about Swedish... I'm born and raised in Savo (Savonia) so basically no one speaks Swedish where I'm from. I did live four years in Pietarsaari/ Jakobstad, a city that mainly has Swedish speaking residents (around 56% Swe, 34% Fin, 10% other). Pretty much the only thing I knew in Swedish was "en öl, tack" when I moved to Pietarsaari. I did learn little bit while working as a a practical nurse in a bilingual nursing home. At the moment I study Russian and would have been happy learning Russian back in school.. Why can't we choose from few, maybe like Swedish, German or Russian, "pick your poison". Something like that.

Probably Stargate fans stealing that sign. :P

“Finland can’t be a part of any group” Sweden: “hold my empire”

Lofoten is absolutely lovely to visit too. I recommend renting a cabin there in one of the villages in the summer if you're the type that likes cool summers and long walks among nature. My family stayed in Tind, which is the second furthest town there right next to Å. Standing on the edge of the island right outside of Å, staring out at the sea and along the ongoing islands, feels like you're at the edge of the world. Lofoten is also a great place to vacation on foot or by bike, there's lots of places to camp.

In Denmark there is a village called "No". And here is a sentens in West Jutlandish : A æ u å æ ø i æ å. Meaning : I am out on the island in the river.

The letter Å is pronounced like eau(water in french).

As a Finn: Yea I'd love to get rid of the forced upon Swedish, and so do most of the people I've talked with about it. I've never heard someone say they'd prefer Russian to be an obligatory language in school tho. Sadly the government has recently only added more obligatory Swedish in schools.

6:13 Å does mean river but in north sweden we also use it as a word for "and". You could say "Du å jag" which means "you and me"

Well there's "Á" in Icelandic which is basically the same letter except the top part is different, both letters mean the same thing and are pronounced alike (considering "å" has way more variatuons due to dialects)

Yeah we do understand each other, but its harder the understand the danes, for both us norwegians and Swedish i have heard

æ ø å to you:)

In Norwegian “Æ e i A” and “Æ e i A æ å” are actual sentences(if you speak the North-Norwegian dialect), it basically means: “I am in A(the way we divide school classes in Norway are by letters, so it is like: I am in the class of A)” and “I am in A too”

If you read an older book you will see the aa in place of å. Basically the circle over the a is the second a from the aa which has been moved on top and eventually just turned into a circle. A place name such as Aalborg or Aarhus can be spelled in their original form, or in their more modern form of Ålborg or Århus- the pronounciation is the same

As a Swede I can understand Norwegian but Danish is really hard to understand

0:23 DetRIOT

In danish, the use of AA outdates the Å. The cities of Aalborg and Aarhus didn't drop the use of Å, they just didn't change when the letter was introduced(well, Aalborg changed it back after a short while of being Ålborg)

@7:43 I do belive Aa was first and then due to difficulties in deciding between saying a long 'a' and a 'å' for sound for the same two letters, they decided to write the 'Å' sound as an A with a small a on top, then over time the a on top simplified to a circle. That is also why the ring isn't filled in, its not a dot, its a small simplified a.

0:25 You spelled Detroit wrong

Why not just call them the Nordic?

Your pronuncitaion of "ö" was really good

There was a similar word for stream in Old English namely 'ea', which is obviously related. Certain names for streams in north Germany also carry a related element.

I live in Finland (Turku/Åbo) and I can say without a doubt your assessment of Finnish opinion of Swedish and Russian is really off. I know a lot of natural born Finns that speak no Finnish but speak Swedish fluently, but I know absolutely no Finns that speak better Russian than Finnish. There is even a Swedish Speakers party in government, and I work at Åbo Akademi, an entirely Swedish speaking university (I myself am from Canada). So there is absolutely no one calling for Swedish to be replaced by Russian as the second national language.

I am Norwegian, and I can easily understand both Swedish and Danish, but that is probably because I have a Danish grandmother and I live in a part of Norway historically linked with Sweden.

Actually visited one of the towns named Å in the Lofoten islands Norway, pretty unique place, like mountains that just erupt out of the ocean.

I am Norwegian and have been to Å (in Lofoten) multiple times (my grandparents live close by), and it is a nice place, which I would recommend visiting, not for the name, but for the amazing nature.

I think it's worth mentioning that Ø and Å aren't accented versions of O and A, but are their own unique letters. (1:52)

(Video about the Scandinavian languages and letters pops up in my recommendations) Me, a Scandinavian: *_Mmm myes_*

I live in Århus. Det next biggest city in Denmark. A few years ago it was change to be spelled Aarhus, to make it easier for tourists. But as you said Aalborg is know as double A. Århus is known as the worlds world's smallest, big city. It's also know as the city of smiles.

I have always heard that Scandinavia was Norway, Sweden, and Finland. No other countries, not even Denmark, was included as part of it.

Hi. Great video. I just have one little comment. I just wanted to clarify something about the aa instead of å part. I'm from Norway and only know this to be true for the norwegian languages (yes, there are two norwegian languges. three if you include sami), i do not know if the same goes for the swedish and danish languages. Å derives from the norse à and was originally written as aa or AA until 1917. People then started to realise that it was impractical and could lead to some confusion. For instance "Sjaaande" (new norwegian for "see" in Present Participle) could either be read as "Sjåande" or "Sjaånde". Thats why they changed it from aa to å. So the names of the places you listed with aa instead of å are in fact just still writing their names the old way.