How Similar Are Danish & Norwegian (Bokmål)?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 14 тра 2024
- In this video I compare two closely related languages: Danish and Norwegian (Bokmål). 🔹 Learn Norwegian with NorwegianClass101 ►( bit.ly/Norwegianclass101 )◄ or Danish with DanishClass101 ►( bit.ly/Danishpod101 )◄
🔹 For 32 other languages: langfocus.com/innovative-lang...
Special thanks to Jens N. Nielsen for his Norwegian samples, and Christian Fredlev Sand for his Danish samples. And thanks to Malin Bakke Frøystadvåg for her additional Norwegian samples, and Malthe Asbjørn Vesterlund for his additional Danish samples.
🚩 Check out Langfocus on Patreon: / langfocus
Special thanks to these amazing language enthusiasts who are Langfocus patrons:
Ali Mametraimov
AmateurTextualCriticism
Anjo Barnes
Anton Opanasenko
Auguste Fields
Bennett Seacrist
Bill Walderman
Brandon Gonzalez
Brian King
CFitz17
Clark Roth
Colin Milner
Irina Bruce
J Choi
Jacob Madsen
John Moffat
Karl-Erik Wångstedt
Kenny
Kirk Kirkpatrick
Marcelo Loureiro
Matthew Etter
Michael Arbagi
Michael Cuomo
Michael Regal
Mody
Moe
Nobbi Lampe-Strang
Patricia Roxanne Warner
Paul Falstad
Rosalind Resnick
Ruben Sanchez Jr
ShadowCrossZero
Simon Jaglom
Sonja Lang
Victoria Goh
Vincent David
W T
Walter Moore
Wolfgang Egon Schroder
Yamen Zein
Yuko Sunda
19jks94
Abdullah Al-Kazaz
Adam Powell
Adam Vanderpluym
Alan Corley
Alen
Alex Hanselka
Alexandre Smirnov
Ali Muhammed Alshehri
Alvin Quiñones
Andrew Transini
Andrew Woods
Anthony Kinread
Anthony Peter Swallow
Aous Mansouri
Ashley Dierolf
Avital Levant
Bartosz Czarnotta
Ben
Brent Warner
Brian Begnoche
Brian Morton
Bruce Stark
Chelsea Boudreau
chris brown
Christian Langreiter
Christopher Lowell
contumaciousCulimancer
Cyrus Shahrivar
Daniel Young
Darek
David Eggleston
David LeCount
David Sherman
Dean Cary
Debbie Willow
Diana Fulger
Diane Young
DickyBoa
Dieter Raber
Dina Trageser
divad
Divadrax
Don Ross
Donald Tilley
Dulta Tracey
Ed B
Ed Heard
Edward Wilson
Elizabeth Evans
Eren Parla
Eric Loewenthal
Evolyzer
Fabio Martini
fatimahl
Fawad Quraishi
G Bot
Grace Wagner
Gregory Garecki
Guillaume Brodar
Harry Kek
Henri Saussure
Herr K
Howard Clark
Hugh AULT
Ina Mwanda
Jacek Sz
Jack Jackson
Jackie Donnelly
Jaidyn Workman
Jakub Krajňanský
James and Amanda Soderling
James Lillis
JAMES ORR
Jay Bernard
Jenna Matthews
Jens Aksel Takle
JESUS FERNANDO MIRANDA BARBOSA
Jim McLaughlin
Jim Wink
JK Nair
JL Bumgarner
John Gavin
John Hyaduck
Josh Rotenberg
Josiah Scott
Julie Sriken
K M
Kenneth Lum
Kimball Pierce
Kirk Vistain
Klaw117
Konrad
Kristian Erickson
Krzysztof Dobrzanski
KW
Kyle Ibarra
Kyle James
Lance Bedasie
Laura Morland
Lee Dedmon
Leo Coyne
Leo Barudi
Lincoln Hutton
Lissette Talledo
Lorraine Inez Lil
Louie dela Fuente
Luke Jensen
M.Aqeel Afzal
Mahmoud Hashemi
maiku
Margaret Langendorf
Maria Comninou
Mario Sotelo
Mark
Mark Bonneaux
Mark Judge
Mark Kemp
Markzipan
Martin Blackwell
Merrick Bobb
Merrick Bobb
Michael Poplin
Michael Sisson
Mike Frysinger
Mohammed A. Abahussain
Mário Pegado
Naama and Geoff Shang
Nadia B.
Nicholas Gentry
Nicole Tovar
noxialisrex
Oleksandr Ivanov
Oto Kohulák
ou_lyss
Papp Roland
Patrick smith
Patriot Nurse
Paul Flynn
Paul Shutler
Pauline Pavon
Paulla Fetzek
Peter Andersson
Peter Nikitin
Peter Scollar
piero
Raymond Thomas
Renato Paroni de Castro
ReysDad
Richard Kelly
Rob Hanssen
Robert Brockway
Robert Sheehan
Robert Williams
Robyn Morales
Roger Smith
Roland Seuhs
Ron McKinnon
Ronald Brady
Saffo Papantonopoulou
Sergio Pascalin
Shawn Galloway
Sheila Perryman
Sierra Rooney
Sigbjørn Nerland
Simon Blanchet
Skarlett Gabriela
Stefan Reichenberger
Steven Severance
Suzanne Jacobs
Tara Pride
Theophagous
Thomas Chapel
Thomas Gijsbers
thug rife
tommy dahill
Ulf Hermjakob
Vinicius Marchezini
Vitor
Warren McKenzie
William MacKenzie
William O Beeman
Yagub Alserkal
yasmine jaafar
Yeshar Hadi
Yuriy Vrublevskiy
Yuval Filmus
zhangyimo
Éric Martin
Навальный
Hi everyone! If you're learning Norwegian, check out NorwegianClass101 ►( bit.ly/Norwegianclass101 )◄ - one of the best ways to learn Norwegian. For Danish, check out DanishClass101 ►( bit.ly/Danishpod101 )◄ I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do!
For 33 other languages, check out my review! ► langfocus.com/innovative-language-podcasts/ ◄
(Full disclosure: if you upgrade to a paid plan, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it, and the free account is pretty good on its own!)
@하단 you are.. a Troll
That's a Norwegian word .. 🇧🇻 hi👋
Paul, is difficult to make a West Germanic unique language?
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
ugh like the diff of Brit USA Aussie & Scot English.. whatever
Hey comrade, how about Finnish language?
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 oh trust me, this was not intended as a defense of the English language
@@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).
this is true we dont pornounce half of the word like in french.
@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.
There was a comment in my Norwegian course as follows: "I can only understand a Dane who wants to be understood..."
jeg forstår bare dansker som vil forstås
@@tiagocastro8434 jeg forstår kun danskere som vil forstås (in Danish)
Jag kan bara förstå en dansk som vill bli förstådd.
This is something I recognize from Dutch and German.
Eg forstår berre danskar som vil bli forstått (nynorsk)
As a Dane: I think it's mostly laziness when we switch to English. If we made an effort to listen carefully and speak slowly, we would see that our languages are almost like dialects of each other, and we could help each other expand our language knowledge instead of staying safe with English.
why would they use English to understand dialects fo each other? are they that good at English?
@@user-nc5yc9es6j in Scandinavian countries most of people speak English since their languages are only spoken in their country, so English is a must for not being like in a bubble. (I mean being able to communicate with People outside the country)
The same happens in the Netherlands.
There's this running joke that Danes switch to English when someone starts to talk in Bornholmsk.
Jag håller med/ är enig med/ dig!
@@user-nc5yc9es6j They at least should be. Last time I checked Swedes, Dutch, Danes and Norwegians are all in the top 5 of best English speakers as their second language. As a young Swede, it's interesting when you think about it that your Swedish teacher can sometimes, very rarely, explain something in English to make people understand better.
As a Norwegian speaker, I refuse to speak english with danes or swedes.
Same
Much appreciated🙏🏻From a Dane...
Same
I would say the same, but Danes insist that I speak English even if all I want to do is order a simple baguette and am speaking slowly and coherently. If I slur my words on purpose they have an easier time understanding what I say.
I am bilingual Finn (Finnish and Swedish) and I refuse also to speak English among my fellow citizens from Norway and Denmark. It is really not that hard if you just want to understand them. Even Danish is fully comprehensive if you know few things, like the numbers above 49.
Kind of funny to see "kveld" is old-fashioned in Danish, while "aften" is old-fashioned in Norwegian.
Ikke tenk på det
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.
Languages are weird lol
Kvöld på Isländska, (Kvøld på färöiska). Danskan sticker ut.
I’m Russian. I have studied both Danish and Norwegian and love them for their simplicity!
I think the following things should be noted about the differences between Danish and Norwegian that were not stated in the video.
1. Numbers.
Norwegians use standard number counting from 20: tjueen (20+1), tjueto (20+2), whereas Danes use the “German” counting: enogtyve (1+20), toogtyve (2+20), and so on. But that’s just half of the trouble. Danes measure numbers greater than 40 with multiples of twenties:
50: halvtreds: (-0.5+3)*20
60: tres: 3*20
70: halvfjerds: (-0.5+4)*20
80: firs: 4*20
90: halvfems: (-0.5+5)*20
It can be a great headache for learners, especially when learning the ordinal numbers, when they have the full form written out like this:
77th: syvoghalvfjerdsindstyvende
2. Danish uses the verbs to have and to be with the verbs of motion when forming the perfect tense (like French and German) whereas Norwegian uses only the verb to have (like English). For example:
We have come.
Vi er kommet (Danish) vs Vi har kommet (Norwegian).
He has fallen.
Han er faldet (Danish) vs Han har falt (Norwegian).
3. Norwegian keeps the definite article (-en/-et) at the end of the noun when it is accompanied by the adjectives before it. For example: The big bad fox.
Den store stygge reven (Norwegian)
Den store stygge ræv (Danish).
4. Both Danish and Norwegian have the irregular adjective that changes its entire stem from singular to plural. It’s the word “little/small”. Danish is pretty simple here. The singular form is lille and the plural form is små.
Norwegian is a bit harder. Liten for -en words, lite for -et words, lille for words that have the definite article and små for the plural forms. Examples:
A small car - En liten bil
A small house - Et lite hus
The small car - Den lille bilen
The small house - Det lille huset
Small cars/houses - Små biler/hus.
5. Funnily, the word “frokost” means “breakfast” in Norwegian and “lunch” in Danish, whereas the word “middag” means “dinner” in both languages.
6. Danish uses a lot of voiced consonants that are voiceless in Norwegian. Examples:
Kød - kjøtt (meat)
Brug - bruk (use)
Bag - bak (behind)
At besøge - å besøke (to visit)
Grød - grøt (porridge).
All in all, I find Norwegian language more melodic due to their pitch accent and more clear pronunciation than Danish. Yet I love both Denmark and Norway, I have good friends in both of them and the people of both countries are really great.
Thank you for the great video, Paul!
P.S. Also thanks everyone who made it to the end of my long comment lol
What do you mean by "simplicity"?
Actually we use the verb to be when the verb involves motion in norwegain too, as I norwegain I would say «jeg er kommet» or «jeg var kommet» meaning literally I am come, I was come. But some people say Jeg har kommer (I have come), both is accepted but the first one is more correct and traditional norwegain according to Språkrådet
McDucky I mean that their grammar is one of the easiest among other European languages.
Inger Juni Lærdal I guess same thing can be said about English too when it comes to the verb “to go” and sometimes to the verb “to come”. “He is gone” instead of “he has gone”, “he is come” sounds archaic but still used nowadays along with standard “he has come”.
@@ministr2302 yeah maybe, english and scandinavian do have really similar grammar. As a child I struggled really with learning english, except for the grammar, the grammar was so easy, actually easier than in norwegain, but the phonetics was really difficult! Do you as a russian feel knowing a complicated language makes learning a simple language easier? I imagine it is easier for you to learn norwegian than for me to learn russian, so I really envy you there! I wish norwegain was more complicated (more similar to old norwegain) so maybe I would have it easier learning other languages
I'm Danish - and I prefer that we speak our own languages when I'm among Swedes and Norwegians.
I am Swedish and I agree. If we want to understand and to be understood we can find a common Nordic language, kind of pidgin I think.
It is easier to understand danish if you speak pretty slow lol
@@MarkusHolst1960 you'll kinda left out Icelandic
@@mihanich well, yes. I did. And Faroeic. I don't think any other Nordic speaker understand them. And they don't understand us.
Du er også fra den ældre generation. Min farfar foretrækker det samme, når han møder en svensker eller nordmand
As a swedish person (who also studied German) who grow up in southern Sweden close to Denmark and watched danish TV (with subtitles), I have learnt some danish vocabulary. When I worked in a nordic company with employees from sweden, finland, norway and denmark, we typically started the meetings by asking if anyone required the meeting to be done in english. If people from Stockholm, northern sweden or finland participated, we typically did the meeting in english. If I were there with mostly danish/norwegians, we did it in "scandinavian" which is basically whatever local language you have, simplifed and articulated better. Yes, danish people can articulate if they want to :P
Honestly I think it's just because it's fun for us to attempt to sound norwegian/swedish "singing" our words
Wow this is so interesting! I am from Austria and sort of the same thing happens when germans from the north and austrians are in a meeting. Either we switch to standard german or still speak bavarian but better articulated depending on how well the german can understand.
As a Dane:
I've never talked English to anyone except a Swede that insisted on it. I had a good friend from Northern Norway whom I had no issues communicating with. I think we should talk more in our languages inbetween.
Agree. Also Dane.
Danish is slightly more difficult to understand to me, compared to swedish (I'm Norwegian), but it's not so bad that I have to use English to communicate with either one of you (Danes/Swedes) . Reading Danish is much easier than reading Swedish though.
As a Swede I know Danish people who prefer English. They are from Jutland, so probably have had low exposure to Swedish.
Even as a non-native danish speaker, I enjoy communicating with Norwegians in danish/norwegian, and mostly it works just fine. On contrary, if I used my native Swiss german dialect in Germany, I'd really have much more trouble to be understood.
@@helena_5456 Danes struggle to understand Bornholmsk, so no big deal. :D
As a Swede, I have a way easier time understanding Norwegian than Danish as it is spoken, but can understand all of it when I read.
As another Swede: same thing here. I also found it easier to understand a couple of Norwegian nurses than a Swedish (Skånska/Scanian) surgeon. Damn half Danes. XD
@@Elora445 it also works this way between slavic languages - i can undestand some of them in spoken form, and everything in written form. (russian speaker)
@@Elora445 Jävla 08a! JK! I'm from all over the place so even though i live in the south (Småland) I have the same problem some times. XD
I have to say I am amazed by the answers of some Scandinavians here. I am Dutch and I can read all your languages without a lesson, it does take some willingness to understand them and sometimes the context helps. But it is very easy. I read a Norwegian newspaper to my GF and she understood it well. She read a Swedish text and had very few problems, wondered about a few words but she managed alright. Now I some over here saying that they are having some troubles reading oneanothers languages?? Your languages are still closer to oneanother than my Dutch is. Clearly so. I am amazed, because I know many Dutch who can just read your languages. There is a Dutch/Danish languages test (similarities) with a Dutch Guy and a Danish girl. For sure manyy words are chosen on purpouse, but some sentences are not. Yet the Dutch guy in particalur understoond everything without any hesitation if I am correct and the Danish girl was also spot on most of the time. I am amazed that the written form still poses problems for some of you.
@@Serenoj69 As i said, i have no trouble reading any of it. It is the pronunciation that is the problem, especially with Danish, it is not pronounced as is it spelled.
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.
må can also mean must in danish depending on the use :)
Må jeg bli med dosen't mean may I come along it means this. May I stay with
Coming from a Dane
@@sebastianh1441 hvad er pointen? :) den første sætning i OP's anekdote er på norsk.
@@finnelkjaer7461 LOL.
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".
Great video! :) I'm a Norwegian, and I think it would be a shame if we ever have to speak English to each other in Scandinavia.
As a person who studies Norwegian:
I can understand to some extent Swedish and Danish, but it's easier to me to understand Swedish when it's spoken and Danish on paper.
I can say that also applies to me since I studied bøkmål while in Norway
@Henrik Wallin Danska förstår du väl lite också?
Jag hade inte så stora bekymmer med danskan när jag var i Köpenhamn att förstå. Jag förstod ju inte allt såklart men ändå det mesta...
Swedish has a lot of vocab differences tho. I think danish is easier to understand as a Norwegian speaker actually.
@@snimothy Well it depends on I think. I'm from Sweden and both Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are very similar. However, Norwegian and Danish are more similar when it comes to the vocabulary. If we go back for like 200 years, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian were even more similar to One another. If we go back to the beginning of the middle age/Viking age Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Faroese were like different dialects more or less.
same herr
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!
lol
@@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
I’m a Dutch citizen who studied Scandinavian languages at university. I majored in Norwegian but have always loved the way Danish sounds so I’ve been practicing a lot of it lately. Since the written languages are practically the same, I’ve been watching Danish films and series with Danish subtitles.
You’d be amazed by how fast you start to understand it without subtitles. It’s just a matter of getting used to the different sounds.
Luckily Denmark has a whole lot of excellent films and series so there’s a lot of good learning material out there!
As for Swedish, sorry guys, it was never my thing. It sounds like a made up language Norwegian kids would speak just for fun 😅
There does seem to be different accents on these two language styles... Norwegian sounds more lilting and sing-songy...whilst Danish sounds more clear and straightforward...no lilt.
As a dane, i really appreciate that last sentence, music to my ears haha
@@frederiktigerdyr1403 Denmark and Sweden are the 2 countries that both love and hate each other the most out of any 2 countries ever I swear
Danish honestly isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Once you memorize how a word sounds, it almost never strays from that, and when it does, its usually not that bad. Verbs can be somewhat annoying though, that I will say. Danish verbs suck, but at least I don't have to look at any conjuation tables
swedish sounds like norwegian in an italian accent ( ik ook ben nederlands)
I'm Danish. If there's a Wikipedia page that doesn't exist in Danish, I go for Norwegian Bokmål or Nynorsk. If it's not in Norwegian, I go for Swedish.
Edit: I prefer to keep the conversation in Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) so I can improve my understanding of either Norwegian or Swedish. I only ask for the English translation if I don't know what they're saying.
Try English Wikipedia, it's guaranteed to have more information than the Danish and Norwegian pages combined, unless the subject is very specific to Denmark.
@@BurnBird1 // I do, but I also like to know what things are called in my native tongue ;-)
I'm norwegian and I always go for the english wikipedia page. I'm not sure why I prefer the english one over the norwegian one, weird thing.
You'll end up killing your languages if you don't give importance to it (by replacing it by English in every way possible)
You'll end up killing your languages if you don't give importance to it (by replacing it by English in every way possible)
Interesting fact: Modern Norway's first king, was the Danish born Prince Carl, who was renamed Haakon when taking on the Norwegian throne in 1905. He never properly learnt Norwegian, and spoke Danish throughout his reign. Never the less, he was deeply loved by Norwegians, and became a powerful symbol for Norwegian resistance during the Nazi occupation.
Also: King Christian X, Haakon VII's brother opted to remain in Denmark during the war. He is most famous for wearing a David star after the nazis ordered all jews to wear one in Denmark. In short time a lot of ethnic danes began to do the same, which made it almost impossible for the nazis to round up the jews. Later the danish resistance movement ssmuggled most of the jews over Øresund to Sweden, as a result the germans "only" ended up killing 100+ danish jews during the war. It is quite interesting to compare the two brothers really, Christian X was very conservative with an extroverted personality and saw it as his duty to serve and rule his people. Haakon VII was on the contrast pretty introverted and shy, never trying to dictate the politics at all and instead a 100% symbolic and uniting, elected by the norwegians through plebecite and not appointed by god. He wass also way more liberal than his brother. It just fascinates me how such different personalities were such good friends, acted differently when faced with the german Blitzkrieg and what they perceived as the best option. And they both won the war for their nations. Sorry for so much to read
@@sanderskovly7641 it was fascinating.
@@sanderskovly7641 good points about the differencies in personalities, but I don't think Christian really opted for staying. He had no alternatives as the Germans took immediate control over Copenhagen whereas the ship carrying the occupation force for Oslo was sunk in the Oslo fiord. This gave Haakon time to leave Oslo and the Norwegian terrain as well as the British/French expedition force also gave Haakon a realistic chance of staying free and later being evacuated to UK. But they both handled the different situations very well for their nations.
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)
@@finnelkjaer7461 jepp, dansk skrift, svensk tonefall= norsk
@@skimt7818 østlandsdialekten
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.
they *say* they can't speak that well, but it has shocked me multiple times how well the 70+ year olds speak English in DK
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!
Amen! I feel the same among my Slavic people. The use of English disgusts me.
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.
@@amjan Same, I'm Bulgarian and I'd never speak to any of our Western neighbours in English.
lol if I speak spanish to a Brazilian he would be very ofended, he would rather try to speak in English
I am Dutch and feel the same for German. No English please.
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.
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.
I was born in 88 and I prefer to use Norwegian when communicating with Danes & Swedes. Using English to do so is absurd to me.
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.
Norwegian here: I love that we can communicate with Swedes and Danes, and it would feel absurd to speak English with either one of them. It's so valuable to be able to understand each other's languages. We get TV and radio from both countries that is subtitled, so we have the opportunity to hear it (maybe more than the other two hear Norwegian). As children, we would watch films based on the books of Astrid Lindgren in Swedish, also subtitled. Though I have heard that nowadays, these children's films are sometimes dubbed into Norwegian in Norway, and I find that ridiculous because I want us to understand each other. I've met lots of Danes who immediately switch to English with me, even though they could most often understand me, as I kept talking to them in Norwegian. Swedes usually have no issue understanding us, but Danes sometimes seem terrified of Norwegian and immediately want to speak English. I want us to keep learning each others' languages and speaking the scandi languages with each other.
I personally feel like we switch to English with Swedes. Maybe I am also different since I got family in Norway so I am bit exposed to it. We do speak Danish to each other so not as exposed as I could be.
Jeg lærer norsk siden to år og jeg kan leser litt dansk, men jeg kan ikke uttaler enn si (?? "let alone"? My dictionary isn't of much help here) forstår det. Det er altfor komplisert for meg!
Svensk klinger like norsk når noen snakker det og jeg kan forstår litt.
I have the same experience with Danes (except Danes I have met in Norway). I struggled understanding Danish for a while but after watching "Riget" (the Lars von Trier tv show) in my teens I have had no problems with it.
@@wohlhabendermanager
I've passively learning Danish for a bit and hearing Norwegian pronunciations is just so weird to me now lol
Danish pronounciation summed up:
Try in the first part of the word and give up on the rest
As a Dane with a Norwegian study partner: we have only ever used English a few times in the beginning with a few of the hard words with a big difference between them. We understand each other quite well and have learned to understand the others way of speaking. It was quite easy actually.
Keys & Locks I don’t think this video demonstrates how different the languages can be. Bokmål is grammatically very close to danish, but you don’t have to drive far outside of Oslo in Norway before the dialects start sounding quite different. I won’t speak to how different danish dialects in Jylland are compared to Skjælland, because I don’t know, but I grew up on the Swedish border 2,5 hours from Oslo and my local dialect has fewer diphthongs, we change a lot of common use words (skar instead of skal (shall), itte instead of ikke (negation)) and it isn’t uncommon for dialects in Norway to make big changes to vocabulary words.
@Keys & Locks There are two Danish dialects that can hardly understand each other. "Jeg synes" in one is "a tøs" in the other. On the "Why not just one Scandinavia?" part, I think it is cultural differences. We have also had a lot of war between us, so I do not think it would happen
I think there was a mismatch in one of Danish phrases: the text was "det er almindeligt" but the speaker said "det er normalt"
Swedish Slacker I agree. Jeg er enig.
10:08
Alot of the words, if not the vast majority are synonyms, and you would understand perfectly what the other is talking about even though it might seem old fashioned to the other.
@@kennethstople3969 the mismatch was between the spoken Danish phrase and the Danish phrase written on the screen
@@erikz1337 Oooh...
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 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!
eu sou brasileiro dmorando na frança nao falo ingles nem sueco,noruegues,dinamarques
As a brazilian who can speak english I feel rather annoyed and pissed off. I’m part of a (relevant) minority though
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.
One sounds like singing, the other sounds like talking without closing your mouth
@watergod 83 for me danish sounds like not closing your mouth and making sounds with your throat the whole time
@@loose_leaf_lofi Same here!
I was looking for a good description of what I was hearing. It's not at all like the oft repeated potato-in-your-mouth description. Definitely a lot of, "say this consonant, but only using your throat," going on in Danish!
when i hear danish i always think about how the words want to come out of their mouths but they don't let them and they keep them in xD especially the soft d words
As a Norwegian, before having the basic English skills, if there weren't any Norwegian dubs or subtitles for movies or video games I would always pick the Danish versions. I would not usually pick Swedish because the written language is way more different. I would say that I'm more comfortable than the average Norwegian with Danish. Also I've been to Denmark more than ten times in my life. I always start talking to them in Norwegian, then turn to English if I have to. Though honestly, It's kind of a dealbreaker for me, because it's just laziness that prevents us from communicate.
I'm Danish and I don't find written Swedish very difficult. But it's perhaps because I watched many English and American series with subtitles in Swedish television as teenager.
I did the same thing with video games and movies. I played almost every EA game at that time in Swedish and watched the live action Scooby-Doo movie with Swedish dub cause there were no Norwegian Dub haha
I used to do that too! Norwegian was always my second go-to language. Movies, videogames, subtitles, brugsanvisninger (forget the English word), everything!
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.
For Norwegians, Danes and Swedes not to understand each other’s languages is just laziness in my opinion. It’s a damn shame not to be able to understand our neighbors when the languages are so similar. I find great entertainment in understanding the nuances. Also, it’s practical when visiting Sweden and Denmark. A lot of misunderstandings can be avoided. Like “frokost”, which means breakfast in Norwegian, but lunch in Danish.
@@jmj7196 I live in Stockholm and have no problems understanding Danish. It's just about getting used to the pronunciation - Speaking English is just failing...
Som norsktalende fra Østlandet, synes jeg det er umiddelbart lettere å forstå svensk enn dansk. På den annen side, om man oppholder seg over en lengre periode i Danmark, si ca en uke eller så, så lærer man fort å tolke og forstå dansk. Skriftmessig sett har norsk svært mye mer til felles med dansk enn svensk, av historiske årsaker. Er uansett glad over å leve i et hjørne av verden hvor godt naboskap og mer eller mindre felles kultur, språk og historie er av en positiv verdi som jeg tror de fleste av oss skandinaver setter pris på.
Sant sant
As a Dane, it's mighty eye-opening how I could read your sentence in a fluid manner and understand everything perfectly!
@@CHRoOMAX fordi norsk bokmål er basert på dansk🤪
Ibland tar det en stund innan man förstår om man läser en dansk eller norsk text, då de är otroligt lika i stavningen. Innehåller den många G så är det danska man läser, och är det en övervikt med K så är det norska...
I usually have to switch over to English when speaking to a Dane, but Swedish is perfectly understandable. From Norway
Helena_ so are you Norwegian
Because you have had Swedish TV, more than Danish.. no?
Reading is the opposite. Right 🇧🇻👍
@@Strykehjerne I can read both Swedish and Danish without any trouble, but with that being said, I am half Swedish 🤪
I think is the same phenomenon that happens between Italian, French and Spanish: French is like a brother grammar wise to Italian, while Spanish is more like a cousin, but I have much easier time understanding a Spanish speaking then I have with a French, especially if it speaks with a Parisian accent. I speak Italian with Spanish people but switch to English with the French
Dane is closer to Norwegian then Swede, but it's harder to understand. I guess spelling is more important then grammar when you try to understand someone.
you may challenge yourself by learning CHinese XD
Written Danish and Norwegian bokmål are, to me, different dialects of the same languages. (As a Dane who works with translation, I translate Norwegian bokmål as quickly into English as I do Danish, and I lived in Norway for too long to stumble over false friends.) Then again, I see all the Scandinavian languages as dialects of the same language (derived from Old Norse, the closest approximation of which is Icelandic, which is somehow much harder than either Norwegian or Swedish. I can at least still read Faroese; Icelandic is a lot harder. Oh, well...), but you have fluid dialects in effect, so geographical positioning has a large impact.
However, I think you got it on the nose with speaking slowly and clearly, adapting to each other's grammar, etc. I lived and worked in Norway for a while a few years ago and within a few months, I could still not speak Norwegian (I don't think I'd ever claim to be able to do that, even if I lived out my life there), but I could adapt my Danish pronunciation and grammar to where I was fully understood and no one asked to speak in English.
Despite there being no real practical reason, I still feel there is a large cultural incentive to keep our ability to understand each others' languages alive (Danish-Norwegian-Swedish, and any combination of it). Culturally, I feel like we still gain something by staying aligned, and that cultural understanding is bound to degrade when we can no longer understand each other, let alone read each others' stories and languages.
I looked for the lyrics of a Christmas song online once, one of my (Danish) mum's favourites. Ended up on a Norwegian website, since I knew (mainly from the word 'kveld' that it must be Norwegian. Found that on their list of Nordic Christmas carols/songs, there were nearly no Danish songs. A quick glance told me that it's because we share 95%+ of them in common.
My childhood favourite author was Astrid Lindgreen, and I only gained a deeper appreciation for her when I read her works in Swedish. The Swedish version of Sabaton's Carolus Rex can still make me cry, in the original far better than any translation. We may have had old wars between us, and old bad blood and so much history, but in the end, we're offshoots of the same culture and it would be such a shame to lose that that I can't even find the words for it.
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.
So, I see we are in a North Germanic language series, and that is absolutely fine by me.
In 2 years, he’ll cover Icelandic & Faroese
@@seid3366 this aged well
@@txdorovaa half of it
I think the whole "Us Scandinavians like to speak English to each other" thing is a newer thing among young people. Because they're really the only kind of people I've heard that from. I can literally go across the border, speak my own language and we can understand each other well. I remember seeing a 2-hour debate as well between Danish and swedish journalists while they only spoke their own language, so it's really not that difficult for most people.
I'm Norwegian working in Sweden with a bunch of Danish colleagues. I understand them just fine if they speak their native languages, and they often ask me to speak Norwegian because "surely" they will be able to understand me. Unfortunately they don't understand me because I have a dialect that is different from the Oslo-Norwegian they're exposed to online or on TV, so I end up either speaking English or trying really hard to adjust to Swedish. The biggest issue is that Swedish word ordering is MUCH less flexible; for instance I can say any of the following Norwegian phrases that mean "My parents' house"
Mine foreldres hus (My parents' house)
Foreldrene mines hus (The parents mine's house)
Huset til mine foreldre (House to my parents)
Huset til foreldrene mine (House to the parents mine)
But in Swedish the only one that parses is "Mine foreldres hus". If I accidentally use one of the other sentence structures they get thrown completely off, thinking I've missed a verb saying "the house to my parents".
So if it's ever important that we communicate clearly, then we speak English. When we're casually talking about swordfighting or the like, everyone has to try to sound as Swedish as possible so that the poor Swedes have a chance at understanding anything.
I come from northern sweden and in spoken language "Foreldrene mines hus" would be accepted as somewhat normal. "Jag ska hem till föräldrarna mina" isn't a foreign way to speak where I'm from.
We have something like this in former YU languages, although not used. It sounds odd for every day use, although I can see it being used under the right circumstances. Some of them sound as if a poet was struggling to properly write his verse.
Mojih roditelja kuća
Roditelja mojih kuća
Kuća mojih roditelja
Kuća roditelja mojih
@@alexanderjohansson8133
Same here, and I'm from the center/middle part of Sweden. Do we understand it? Sure, but it just sounds awkward.
@@alexanderjohansson8133 The Norse genitive "mines" used to indicate something that belongs to something belongong to you, doesn't seem to be a feature of Swedish, though. With just "foreldrene mine" people get it, but they fall off with
"Festen hos foreldrene mines hus var bra" or "foreldrene mines hus er rødt".
@@Tobbzn Some people struggle with some things, but I can assure you that 100% of the people im surrounded with on a daily basis would know exactly what that meant (given you have an easy accent to understand). It's incredibly likely that
A: the people you've encountered dont understand norwegian well
B: You have an accent they struggle to understand
I'm confident in saying that the small grammatical differences isnt what makes norwegian/danish to be misunderstood by swedes, its when you use completely different words. All those words in those sentences are close to identical in swedish and I find hard to believe that the s at the end of "mine" would trip people up in the sentence. We use s at the end of words for possessive suffix as well, it makes complete sense.
For example we dont say "Det høres bra ut" for "that sounds good" but it does make sense to me even though it's not how we say it.. The minute grammatical differences has no bearing in the comprehension of norwegian at all.
I am Danish, and prefer to use Danish when speaking to both Norwegians and Swedes. When I'm abroad for a few months, having the chance to speak my own language is really nice, and it builds a sense of comradery when you have a couple of Scandinavian people in a hostel all communicating in their own language.
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.
Younger people seem to have more problems.
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:)
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.
not to mention the fact that most Norwegians use dialect when speaking.
This was just the topic I was interested in yesterday! AMAZING!
Awesome video on this topic and love the comments, and that people mostly want to keep speaking their beautiful languages! Thanks tak!!
As a foreigner who used to live in Norway, I recall a period when I was a bartender and my colleague was from Åland Islands. We decided not to use English and were speaking Norwegian to each other instead. She was trying hard, but her speech was an example of “svorsk”, which is a weird mix of Norwegian and Swedish. Somehow we managed to communicate without much problem. Fun times.
It might seem to be a useful skill on the surface, but learning to communicate between ourselves (DA, NOR, SWE) is beneficiary to our understanding of own languages, but most importantly, it is a piece of living history. The fact that we can communicate across three different language semi-unimpeded is amazing to me, and I think that we should strive to keep this possibilty alive!
Det har du helt rätt i.
I love your videos!!!! Thank you! I'm having a really good time watching this video right now! :)
Thanks again Langfocus. As a fan of Danish cinema and a self taught student of norweigan, i may someday be able to watch both without subtitles!
Danish and Norwegian when written are very similar, and yes the pronunciation is quite different. But Swedish has a lot more words that are totally different from Norwegian and Danish.
What a coincidence, I was just watching the old video about how the Danish language has collapsed, and now this shows up.
Surprise!
Kamelåså?
@@jakubpociecha8819 Kamelåså!
@@zsoltsandor3814 Yeah...kamelåså! *points at not-kamelåså*
That weon? (Win? Wen? One? The danish counting system is no complicated, I just made a sound and pointed at a video)
I am learning Bokmål now! Was glad to see this, I've been wondering how close Danish is. Thanks for the video!
Two videos one day🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Great, thank you for your great work👍👍
Some years ago I heard a Norwegian man tell this story: when he was a young man he once was at a party i Oslo. There he saw a girl that he liked a lot. After the party he offered her a lift home. The girl had come to the party with a Danish girlfriend, and the Danish girl asked: Må jeg være med dere. In Danish it means: Can I come with you. But in Norwegian it means: Do I have to come with you. So the Norwegians said no, and left without the Danish girl. The couple started dating and got married.
The man laughed and said they got married because of this misunderstanding. The mans name was Stoltenberg. They had several children and their son Jens became the prime minister of Norway, now he is the top leader of NATO.
As a norwegian: I prefer to communicate in our respective languages because it helps us retain that connection. Using English all the time makes it really hard to understand the other languages, which i think is a bit sad. Also it help comprehend other languages being able to understand certain words in languages even outside Danish and swedish. So I want to keep the ability to understand the other two languages, by using them to communicate with others. Also, having english to fall back on in case there is some misunderstanding is great.
Agree. Let's agree to stick to our native tongues. :)
This guy just blew my mind with that video... As usual - perfezione, Paulissimo!!!
Thanks for the video Paul!
I'm swedish, and usually have no problem talking to a norwegian person in our respective languages. Danish is a lot harder, amd some dialects are just impossible.
Paradoxically as a Dane the only Swedish dialect I have any trouble understanding is the Scanian dialect.
Some of the Jutland dialects of Danish are quite different and even have a definitive article that precedes the noun. So, “æ mand” instead of “manden” and “æ hus” instead of “huset”. That probably doesn’t help.
@@SaturnusDK I think that's because we swallow the words almost as much as you do. 😁
As a Dane, with a degree in Danish, some Danish dialects really are impossible to understand. lol
Its funny cause we (Danish People) understand Norwegian a lot better than Swedish as well👍🤣
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.
I'm so happy with all the Scandinavian videos! I've actually wondered for a while what the differences are between Danish and Bokmaal.
Congrats on a million subs!❤️
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?
@@skimt7818 bruh, dark. Do you think all Scandinavian languages will die off without evolving naturally into something else?
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.
Norwegian here, I personally adapt my Norwegian to either Swedish or Danish when I speak to other Scandinavians. It's like what you said towards the ending, that you learn to understand the features of the languages and adapt to it. My best friend is Danish and I wouldn't dream of speaking in English to him. I would say that it's more of a cultural thing. The Scandinavians speak English that to each other are usually the younger ones. This being said, I would only switch to English if there is a word I do not understand. This tri-language thing is what I love most about being Scandinavian.
It's a bit like that in the UK with Welsh, Scottish, English ;-)
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.
Wow, i study Norwegian (Bokmål) and youtube have recommended this for me, awesome.
JEG OGSÅ LMAO
Åå så kult, hvordan har det gått så langt?
In cities like Stavanger and Kristiansand the stød and bløte konsonanter is still used and the Bergen Dialect is a mix between Norwegian, Danish, Low German and Dutch
This is true, but a minor correction in the Bergen case in that the dialect itself is wholly Norwegian, but the pronunciation is what is influenced by Danish, Low German and Dutch.
@@Hooga89 Bergen dialect is the only dialect in Norwegian with only two grammatical genders
@@ganjafi59 No, refined Oslo dialect also only has two grammatical genders, it's just that the moment you leave the city proper you suddenly get feminine grammatical gender, so Bergen is more traditionally associated with only having two.
@@Hooga89 I’ve never heard anyone talk purely in the refined Oslo dialect, but I guess it still exists. Is there any data on how many actually speaks in that way?
@@ganjafi59 Newscasters usually talk like that on television if they are from the Oslo area for example. They would never say "Sola" or "Hytta" for the sun and the cabin respectively, they would say "Solen" and "Hytten", e.g. masculine ending.
First of all, as I Dane I really enjoyed this video, along with your other Scandinavia language videos.
There was just a small thing I noticed at 5:30 and that is where you say that the e is not pronounced in “side”. This is somewhat true, as in informal danish (which is the way the speaker pronounces it) the e is not pronounced, but it instead stretches the soft d sound out so it is longer and more distinctly pronounced. And in more formal and slower speech the e is pronounced.
Just a small rather insignificant note, keep up the good work as always ^^
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): ua-cam.com/video/s-mOy8VUEBk/v-deo.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".
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.
Last time I was this early the Scandinavians were still speaking Old Norse
Thats an interesting comparison; why dont you try reading the middle English of Chaucer. Now that is difficult & although it is only 600 years ago it is well nigh incomprehensible without a dictionary & detailed notes.
@@anthonyehrenzweig1635 It's the same with most languages. A modern day German wouldn't really understand Old High German either. Yeah you'd be able to pick up bits and pieces and work out vaguely some parts, much like English-speakers can with older English texts (even Old English to an extent), but Old High German is very much a different language to modern German.
Example:
"Fater unser, thū thār bist in himile,
sī geheilagōt thīn namo,
queme thīn rīhhi,
sī thīn uuillo,
sō her in himile ist, sō sī her in erdu,
unsar brōt tagalīhhaz gib uns hiutu,
inti furlāz uns unsara sculdi
sō uuir furlāzemēs unsarēn sculdīgōn,
inti ni gileitēst unsih in costunga,
ūzouh arlōsi unsih fon ubile."
And here in modern German:
"Vater unser im Himmel,
geheiligt werde dein Name.
Dein Reich komme.
Dein Wille geschehe,
wie im Himmel so auf Erden.
Unser tägliches Brot gib uns heute.
Und vergib uns unsere Schuld,
wie auch wir vergeben unsern Schuldigern.
Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung,
sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen.
Denn dein ist das Reich und die Kraft
und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit."
@@palepilgrim1174 I think the German is closer than the Old English. I can understand the German better. The Old English is a different language .
@@anthonyehrenzweig1635 Try listening to the Lord's Prayer in Old English though. But you are right English has changed more from Old English than German has from Old High German. Both have changed to the point of becoming unintelligble, different languages though.
That's why we have terms like Old, Middle and Modern for languages. If it had just stayed the same language from Old High German to modern German we'd just be calling Old High German German.
If that makes sense...
As a Swede living in Norway, I think understanding each other is the most important part. If you speak any of the three languages, you can get very far in understanding the other two just through exposure. Taking the next step to actually speak the other language with correct pitch/pronounciation is increasingly difficult since the languages are so close to each other, but also fairly useless because of my first point. When I talk to my Norwegian and Danish friends and colleagues, I use 98% Swedish and only fall back on Norwegian/Danish/English in the rare case where the word or phrase is so foreign to the other speaker that they don't understand.
Also worth mentioning is that I find that for some people, their vocabulary and dialect shifts towards the country where they live. In my case, my dialect has stayed mostly the same even after 7+ years, but I definitely use some Norwegian words, or Norwegian versions of the words (without the pitch). That simply comes down to preference. Some words are just better in one language or the other. (My favorite example here is "Levere" (no) vs "Leverera" (se). It's simply easier to say.)
In the beginning, I struggled a bit with using or not using certain words, thinking that people would consider it weird or offensive if I injected a Norwegian word in an otherwise Swedish sentence. Now I just say fuck it and mix and match when it suits me. Nobody has complained so far. Sometimes I even use both the Swedish and Norwegian version in the same email for example.
As usual, the assymetric intelligibility of the three languages make things a bit easier/harder depending on your native language. It takes more mental capacity and active listening to understand Danish, but I usually have no problem understanding most Norwegian dialects. (Even the ones Norwegians themselves consider difficult.) There are of course some exceptions.
Norwegian has that singing quality since of it's pitch accent, which corresponds to Danish stød that gives it a almost hiccuping sound
Dialekt varierar basert på kvar i landet ein er ifrå. Syngende dialekt finn du mest av i sør/aust landet.
@@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?
@@meadish Det biir skreve "bli her/stend still".
Ah my two favorite languages in the world
I say each episode
A comparison between German and the Scandinavian languages would be interesting. Danish actually sounds quiet similar to German, but the actual spelling compared to the written language is really weird. Norwegian sounds quite different though
Minor quibble: it's quite, not quiet.
Danish sounds similar to German? I'm German and I don't really understand what you're on about. 😂
Unlike Dutch or Luxemburgish, Danish isn't really intelligible if all you know is German. I think it has some English sounding features like the a's turned "ey"s and "e"s in pronounciation.
I think the R depends on which dialect you speak in Norway. The Danish sounding R exists there too. It also exists in Skåne in Sweden I believe.
@@memsom it's also used in Blekinge & somewhat in Småland (south eastern regions)
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
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?
Paul: "The accent of the capital, Oslo, serves as the de facto standard"
Me: (west coast dialecttic sounds of begrudged acquiescence)
Doesn’t the West of the country speak (Newigian) Nynorsk?
@@seid3366 Technically, Nynorsk is just a written form, so nobody speaks it. But yes, when it was created in the 1850s its purpose was to have a written form of Norwegian not as affected by the Danish influence in the cities, like Bokmål is, but rather represent the districts. As someone from Bergen, my first elementary school had each grade subdivided into one Bokmål class and one Nynorsk class (I was in the Bokmål class). Nynorsk has virtually fallen out of common use completely.
@@Efreeti R.I.P.
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. 😊
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.
I sometimes start reading in the wrong language, for example start with Danish then realise it is really Norwegian. It can take a few words to spot which one it is.
I also have to take some time to switch between these languages. When I have been speaking to Norwegians a lot or watching a lot of Norwegian TV it takes me a while to stop singing and switch to that all familiar potato (I am Icelandic)
As a Dane that has happened to me a few times too. I once started reading something on Wikipedia and only noticed I was reading Norwegian because a small pop-up appeared asking if I wanted to translate it to Danish. I was really confused at the time since I thought it wanted to translate it from Danish to Danish.
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.
I speak Danish, but I went to School in Norway for a year. I quickly learned when to use norweagen words (numbers like 50, 60, 70...), but mostly we just talked the two languages as one. The Danish people spoke Danish, the norweagen spoke norweagen bokmål/nynorsk/dialects. When visited by a swedish school, we all just spoke our own language, but when swedes and danes had problems understanding each other, we just met in some kind of mostly-norweagen-language-mixup.
First of, thanks for the great videos, I enjoy them very much!
My native language is German and I'm currently learning Norwegian. It is pretty easy for me to understand in the written form as some words are either similar to German or similar to English. Only the grammar is confusing sometimes and I have difficulties to understand it when spoken by native speakers - maybe this is because they are using their dialect, not bokmål (or nynorsk, respectively).
Knowing some Norwegian certainly helps me to understand Swedish and Danish better, at least when reading those languages. I think I'd struggle to understand a Swede or a Dane when I listened to them.
My grandpa had a Danish mother but he said he liked Swedish better than Danish because it sounded more melodical to him. He could write German perfectly well but had his little problems when speaking German.
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.
The funny thing is that Danish was spoken in the upoer class members of the society back in the day, since Denmark and Norway was in union. So the norwegian launguage was formed by danish, and Dennark (after the union ended) updated their language because of the people who lived in Denmark who were originally Norwegian. So Norwegian IS old-fashion danish and danish IS old-fashion norwegian.
Did this make sense? XD
Btw love your videoes Paul🤘🏼
Folkene som bodde i Danmark var opprinnelig norske?
No
The differences remind me of the ones between Spanish and Portuguese. On paper, much is similar, in speech, wildly different.
More or less yes
@@leonardoparchao9939 Do you speak Portuguese?
As a native of brazilian portuguese, I think the same. Reading in Spanish is easy.
@@catherinecrawford2289 yes I am Portuguese
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?”
I think your the best language youtuber I wait for all your videos
I'M LOVING THIS!
JEG ELSKER DET!
jag alskar dig
As a Norwegian who moved to Denmark a year ago I can say that I reached maybe 90% intelligibility in just a couple of weeks. But cracking the last 10% was surprisingly hard. Being able to hold a "normal" fast moving conversation is really a completely different exercise than simply understanding words and sentences. I think this is why people tend to resort to English, whenever it gets a little rough. But exposure and time really does the trick, and I wish I had more exposure to spoken Danish growing up. (We get a lot more exposure to Swedish through TV shows and stuff).
Edit: I'm 24, so relatively young. I have the impression that older people have less trouble understanding other Scandinavians.
My Grandmother came to Denmark from Norway in the late 50's, and she still speaks with a very thick Norwegian accent. It's even worse when she writes - she still writes "dere" when she means "you" and sometimes even puts "dine" or "mine" after the adjective, where we put it before in Danish. Example: "Forældrene dine" / "Dine forældre"
Our parents had more exposure though. Our tv networks or the proximity to one another meant we got more of their programming on TV. And there was less English content, no internet, no youtube etc. So all the exposure got people used to it. Today, we all get way (too much) exposure to English, so convenience and impatience make English look like a quick solution.
I remember I once met this Australian girl who had learned Swedish and Norwegian online, and was on a Scandinavian trip, talking about her experience taking a train through Denmark.
Every stop they had she could read the sign of the place, but the woman announcing it always said something completely different. Which confused her, she thought the announcement recordings must have had a glitch. But then after a while she started to realise that's just how Danes pronounce things.
Norwegian here. I speak Norwegian when talking to Danes. As long as they don't talk very fast, I can understand them fine. Had I taken a trip to Denmark, it would not take many days before I would become very custom to their pronunciation, but it can come as a surprise at first, since they to slur and delete many sound.
will there be a video about icelandic language? :D
Just found your channel, and found it really interesting, especially if I'm learning few languages, and more in plans :)
I'm Norwegian, so is my mother tongue. Firstly, I want to say I loved the video! Secondly, I want to answer the question of the day: Basically, I agree with the other natives in the comments - no English! Even though English proficiency is very high here, it feels awkward to me to use it with other Scandinavians.
I can understand that the other person's language is difficult if you're not used to it, but with just a little exposure, we can get by with minimal problems. Our countries have a long history of interaction and partnership, and I find it shameful that we can't communicate simply by using our Viking tongues. Just speak slowly and clearly.
So in my opinion, Scandinavians should be acquainted with each other's languages. It's easier to be friends when you understand each other! Cheers and have a good one!
There is a dialect continuum.
I prefer to keep speaking danish, when i encounter a norwegian or a swedish person. Although sometimes the Nynorsk version is difficult to understand, for regular danes. Being faroese I don't have too much trouble with the other languages.
Thank you! Useful for learners ...
thanks for this very clear and well organised video - think i got it! norwegian seems more phonetic like german and danish is a 'french' version, meaning with silent letters, endings and mispronounced stuff which will trip up foreigners (including norwegians) ! not sure how icelandic, faeroe or greenland dialects fit in this scheme, Mr Jorgensen, but it would be good to know; worth subscription
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!!
As a Russian:
Det er nesten ingen forskjel for meg mellom norsk og dansk.
> norsk
*bokmål
I am Russian, too, and I understood this sentence because I speak Swedish. I guessed that forskjell must be "difference" (it is "skillnad" in Swedish) and the other words are more similar to Swedish.
Det finns nästan ingen skillnad mellan svenska och norska 😀
Som allereie sagt, so gjeldar det kun Bokmål sidan med Nynorsk er det ein større skilnad.
Der er næsten ingen forskel for mig mellem norsk og dansk.
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.