[LANGU] Swedish compared to Scandinavian languages

[Basler Biker]

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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)

[Basler Biker]

My personal experience, as a Swiss being on an international conference in Amsterdam, with 10% of the other participants being Danish, Norvegians, Swedes, is that those three nationalities would gather during the coffee breaks ... and just speak to each other in their own language. So they all seem to understand more or less what's being said in the "other" language.

Some Norvegian participant said

"I just speak Norwegian while communicating with Swedes and Danes, and they speak their own language too If I speak to Swedes who seem to be unfamiliar with my Norvegian dialect, then I will occasionally select words which I believe would be more familiar to Swedes, as there's always more than one way to say something. What I never (have to) do is to insert Swedish words into my speech to make me better understood.

So that says a lot already about mutual understandability.

I also heard that Danish seems to be the odd one out for pronunciation. And Norvegian seems to be the most intonated.
If you thought that Swedes were going "up and down" to stress syllabes (2 or even 3 in a single word), then Norvegians will even beat them.

Someone else said "Danish is the key to any skandinavian text. Swedish is the key to any skandinavian conversation. Norvegian is the key to both "
My experience here is that, when I see Swedish being written, I can fairly well recognize words similar to Dutch, German. But if I hear Swedish...that's another thing. Scandinavians will understand, but other Europeans such as Dutch and German speakers will have a problem. On my personal journey to learning Swedish, the listening/understanding is by far the last and most difficult hurdle.

If you are considering to learn one of those three languages, then here is a nice summary on the differences (that doesn't make one or the other more difficult) (source: Skidbladner)

• In writing all of them are for the most part mutually understandable. There are a number of 'false friends' that one has to be aware of, but nothing major.

• Norwegian and Swedish are for the most part mutually understandable when spoken.

• Danish has more vowels than the others and foreigners usually find the Danish pronunciation the hardest. It started deviating from the others already in the 12th century and it has gotten worse. However, with some exposure it's not hard to learn to make out the different sounds in Danish if you for instance know Swedish, at least as long as the speaker isn't of the mumbling variety.

• Swedish has two grammatical genders, Norwegian has tree.

• Both languages have regional dialects, but the Swedish ones have become more unified than the Norwegian ones.

• Since Norwegian is so diverse it has two official written languages that deviate from each other: Nynorsk and Bokmål. Norwegians learn both in school and uses the one that fits their local dialect the best.

• Since Norwegian is so diverse differences in pronunciation are less of a problem. Speakers of Norwegian are used to a lot of differences. This makes it easier for a foreign speaker.

• Since Norwegians are used to a lot of variations in pronunciation they find it easier to learn to understand Danish pronunciation.

• The Norwegian grammar is more complicated than the Swedish, but it's in my opinion not a huge difference.

• The Norwegian pronunciation is somewhat easier than the Swedish, but again it's not a huge difference.

• Sweden is a larger country with almost twice the number of speakers. Swedish is also one of the official languages of Finland, that since old has a Swedish speaking minority living along the coastlines. Everyone in Finland is forced to learn some Swedish in school, something that's not too popular by the students.

• You really shouldn't study these languages at the same time. Some may be able to do it, but most people will mix them up horribly. However, if you only want to gain a general understanding of Scandinavian languages I suppose it could be an option...

• Swedish has been greatly influenced by Low German. If you know German this will give you a much easier time learning the vocabulary. I am bit unsure of Norwegian in this aspect but I think the German influence is quite a bit less. (Danish is also influenced a lot by German.)

• When it comes to the Duolingo courses I get the impression that the Swedish course have the upper hand when teaching beginners. This is however a bit difficult for me to judge, and the Norwegian course is not in any way bad. The Danish course is a bit peculiar..

• Some say that Norwegian is a middle option. In some ways this may be true, but it is much closer to Swedish than to Danish. I think that it's mostly the exposure to a lot of different dialects that help the Norwegians understand Danish. Danes will have some difficulties understanding both Norwegian and Swedish.

So I'll add to that (already mentioned above too) - since I have been several months in Helsinki for work - If you have plans to go/relocate to Finland, you may want to learn Swedish. All, everything more or less public is bi-lingual, even for a minority of 10/15% established Swedes living there. That means: on your arrival in Finland you'll feel all happy to be able to read travel instructions on airport and in train stations, road signs, publicity on the streets, TV programms (always subtitled in "the other" language), restaurant menu's, street names. So that make it quite easy, because from Finnish, without some decent learning, you don't understand a comma nor a iota of it