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[LANGU] Swedish compared to Dutch/English/French/German

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Basler Biker
Switzerland

[LANGU] Swedish compared to Dutch/English/French/German

Post by Basler Biker »

Under construction -

Everyone is invited to contribute,

  • either by sharing your own view and experience, or
  • by referring to a well-reputed source (with mention of author)
  • or copy-paste from a well-reputed source (with mention of author)

How is your knowledge on vocabulary so far? Test yourself here!


BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

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Basler Biker
Switzerland

Re: [LANGU] Swedish compared to English/French

Post by Basler Biker »

May I share my findings, being fluent in EN/NL/DE/FR and learning Swedish. I found many similarities, but they are situated o different aspects of the language.

Grammar
We can hardly claim that Swedish grammar is like English grammar, far from that.
One can't say that Swedish is like French, no, far from that.

Vocabulary
Swedes have adopted many French words, and of course many English words too, especially those with regard to technology.
In both cases, words from French or English origin, Swedes have adopted the word as a sound, but have chosen to write them as if it were Swedisg phonetic notation. Look at these examples

  • sajt => EN:"a (web) site"
  • fåtölj => FR:"an (arm) chair"
  • fason pl fasoner => FR façon(s) = manière(s) / EN manner(s)

Swedish words make me often go "back in time" to Diutch words that have been forgotten. Some people will call these words "outdated" or "obsolete", but often they are quite to the point of expressing a certain "nuance". One should not forget that English has a vocabulary of 600.000 words (including those of Shakespeare and older writers and poet) and that French and Dutch have 350.000 words.

So where are all those words gone in Dutch, or in English, if it s known that you can be considered fluent if you practice an English vocabulary of say 5000 to 7000 "Oxford basic" words, and be able to say anything that you want.

So for Dutch also, people nowadays use a very poor subset of words (and too often just English loanwords) and the fact that I learn Swedish makes all these words come back in my Dutch memory.

To be continued in "Swedish compared to Dutch/German". viewtopic.php?p=5367#p5367


BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

User avatar
Basler Biker
Switzerland

Re: [LANGU] Swedish compared to Dutch/German

Post by Basler Biker »

The words are so similar, easy to "see" the cognates.

Just one example here: the Swedish verb "undvika" = ontwijken, oftewel "vermijden om iets te doen"
One example from German: "ursäkta!" (sorry) vs "(keine) Ursache" (no need, no reason, to apologize)


BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

User avatar
Basler Biker
Switzerland

Re: [LANGU] Swedish compared to Dutch/English/French/German

Post by Basler Biker »

An interesting comparison by SweNedGuy. (Exact quote)

Many of us Swedish learners don't have English as our mother tongue. Especially for German and Dutch speakers, I found a multi-facet vocabulary quiz.
Note that the vocabulary quiz goes far beyond the vocabulary learnt in the Swedish course. However that shouldn't really be any problem. I guess you will be doing just fine.
It works in both directions: you either have a word in Dutch/German with 4 Swedish words to guess which is matching. Or you have a word in Swedish with 4 Dutch or German words to choose from.

Is Swedish vocabulary really so straight forward? Do you easily recognize the 'cognate' or make a correct guess by elimination ?
To Dutch speakers: do you sometimes recognize a word because you also happen to know the related German word (in case it differs from Dutch) ?
To German speakers: do you sometimes recognize a word because you happen to speak or understand 'Plattdeutsch' and more words of your regional language are closer to Swedish? In case you happen to understand Dutch, do you consider it useful to recognize Swedish nouns ?
To Swedish speakers: Do Dutch and German nouns and adjectives most often mean what you first thought? Does your knowledge of English provide any help for recognizing Dutch or German?
Some thoughts: when reading Swedish, we won't know what 'subset' any of the nouns or adjectives belongs to. Nor do we have a sample of 4 German / Dutch words to choose from. Attaining a 'Stalinist score' on the quiz shouldn't make us overconfident.
And one final note: of course it also exists for English, though you probably will find less obvious cognates.

Links: note that each Quiz is also organized in THEMEs (animals, body parts, etc)

Again, many thanks to SweNedGuy for these nice links to practicing your vocabulary


BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

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