So, ironically, the reason why Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are not one single language, is because they're too close to really need a common standard code, and the reason why Maghrebi and Levantine are not separate languages, is because they're too different not to need a common standard code. Shows how the concept of what is language is actually a pretty arbitrary idea
@@gamermapper Sinitic Chinese is normal word for linguistics you called out the whole branch and pick the daughter languages, for more sensible categories check sociolinguistics
Dane here. In my opinion understanding and communicating with Swedes and Norwegians really comes down to exposure and the will and persistence to understand the other part. That and slowing down and speaking clearly (yes, spit out the "potato" I know :P). This was also easier back when TV was limited to Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (and German) channels. It was easier back then, to build up a "passive vocabulary" of differences you needed to be aware of as well as "tune in" to dialects. We were kind of forced to it. Now it's all English. On a side note, I have a really easy time with Bokmål. I sometimes initially mistake written Bokmål for Danish with spelling errors, but then it's understandably as it stems from an old Danish dialect.
Swedes talk slower. They literally use more time to get the same message across on average. This is one of the reason why talking slower to them helps.
@@fastertove I think that depends on dialect too. Most of the people from my hometown (a small town in northern Västergötland) speak faster than most stockholmers and people from dalarna, for example.
As a norwegian, yes, these are all the same language imo. In Norway we are especially good at adjusting our ears because of our many dialects, and because of that, we have an easy time reading danish and hearing swedish. It really just comes down to exposure. I remember this kid I met who grew up with one danish parent and one norwegian parent, and growing up, he thought that danish was just a dialect of norwegian, despite what people say that danish is so hard to understand. My parents understand swedish better than some western norwegian dialects because the only TV-channels for kids that they had while growing up, were swedish ones. If we only give more exposure to each other's lanugages more often, there would be no discussion about this, and the answer would be obvious: they are the same language. It really wouldn't be hard to unite them all into one single written form as these languages are very similar to the point where they could be percieved as different dialects of the same language.
Spot on, at the same time, if we all wrote phonetically in our own dialect, then its quite possible it would diverge more from any of the 4 standards then there's differeces between the 4 of them
I as a swedish person (who grew up in Malmö meaning that I have a bit more danish influence than most) have a really hard time understanding spoken danish. If it’s spoken relatively unslurred, and with a closely related dialect, like Copenhagen, then I can, with some difficulty, have a conversation with a Dane. I can read it almost perfectly, but hearing it is hard. Norwegians, however, especially the ones that speak the dialects that have been closest to Sweden, I can easily have a conversation with. It does come down to exposure, but Norwegian and Swedish are closer than Danish, and Swedish. I don’t know how danish, and Norwegians hear each other’s languages, though.
I wish there was a thing like this in Slavic (or just South Slavic, because I am South Slav) languages as well. As a Bulgarian, I have travelled across the West Balkans and I could have an understandable conversation with the people, but not understand enough. The languages were obviously similar, but one language will use a different word or so. If there was a "Universal Standard Form", like Arabic does, where we can speak our own languages, but switch a word with a "universal word" so we can communicate, life would be so much cooler.
@@cerebrummaximus3762 То затова има междуславянски език, който е с цел всички славяноговорящи народи да го разбират този език. Ама не се учи за жалост.
My impression is that that 3 written languages are very similar, but the pronunciation is different. Of the three languages, Norwegian seems to be the easiest for native English speakers to speak, while Danish is the most difficult. Icelandic is like the distant cousin of the 3 languages.
Nobody understands Icelandic because it’s too distant, as the other there has evolved separately from a Icelandic, due to the latter being isolated on an island far out in the Atlantic ocean. Icelandic is after all the closest to you get to Old Norse, besides Ol English. Tho it’s easier for certain dialects on the Norwegian west coast, or at least for the Icelanders, to understand as its closer to each other and the fact that the Vikings who settled Iceland and Greenland came from those parts of the country.
As a Norwegian coming from Oslo I can tell you that first time I heard Swedish I tough that was Bergenser 😂. But yeah the rule goes that we Norwegians understand 99% of spoken Swedish, 80% spoken Danish and the percentage just switch in the written form. There isn’t a single Norwegian language, you speak your dialect and it’s Norwegian as much as others, it’s normal for Danes or Swedish people to just speak their language in Norway even if they’ve been living here for 50 years it’s culturally normal for us, no others nations have been united and at war as much as we Scandinavians, happy that today we see each other as the brothers and sisters we are! (The Finns to of course, but we don’t understand anything except Perkele Satan)
@@jonasbro9562 In Swedish, yes. And this language would be called "skandinaviska" in Swedish. However it would be "skandinavisk" in Norwegian and Danish, just like how their languages are called "norsk" and "dansk" in both their languages but "norska" and "danska" in Swedish.
@@Greksalladsimilar to interlingua to the romance languages skadinaviska woyld be for the Scandinavian languages (not counting Finnish) its a uralic language.
"Skandinavisk" happens when the 3 of us are in the same room, and Norwegians start screaming STOP SPEAKING ENGLISH! Seriously, especially you Danes need to make an effort. You are erasing our beautiful Scandi languages. We all know about the bad words. Either just dont use them in conversation, or assume the others know about them, and stop the giggling.
As a norwegian, bokmål and nynorsk are only standard written forms. We officially don't have a standard spoken dialect. There are several dialects that are close to the two forms, but that's where it stops. We don't have "standard norwegian".
@@ivilivo Which isn't neither bokmål nor nynorsk. There is a group in Oslo that more resently has begun talking something resembling bokmål, but they are really a minority. That said, Oslo is closer than people further north.
@@TullaRask Yeah, but I was referring to Bokmål and the fact it's not really a spoken language or dialect, not even in Oslo. But as I said, Oslo is closer, as in they have more people talking in a way more resembling the written Bokmål, and even a smaller group that has begun talking bokmål...
As a Norwegian, i can understand all of those languages but they are very different from each other. If you know one of those languages it’s very easy to learn the rest.
Theyre not very different though, the tone and way of speech is different but the words and the general language system is basically identical, danish is easy to understand on paper, its the «potato in the throath» that makes it hard
Same here. I'm a native German speaker currently on vacation in Denmark. I can read and understand most Danish texts with a little effort and imagination, but I have zero chances of understanding any spoken Danish.
@@ronin667 That's Impressive, TV channel I was watching mistakenly switched to Norwegian me not knowing I read and understood everything. I'll manage to pick out some German words but i can't read it.
No-one expects you to actually speak Danish ( as a Swede 😂 ), but you could learn to understand most of it in a few months - for instance by watching Danish TV with easily understandable subtitles in Danish that are available for most programmes, Just speak slowly, clearly and "danify" it a bit in tone and pronounciation - and then most Danes will understand you, especially if you adopt a few Danish words and expressions here and there. 😉
@@ronin667 danish does sound more similar to german than Norwegian and Swedish. In fact many danes speak some level of german because it's close to Hamburg. I think you could learn Danish or dutch pretty easily seeing as many pronunciations are similar.
As a Swede and English speaker, the difference between Norwegian and Swedish is like the difference between standard British and a scottish accent. I can understand when a Scottish person speaks but I have to think a little extra when listening. The difference between Swedish and Danish is like standard English and a heavy Irish accent, idk what the hell they’re saying besides a few words here and there that I can piece together. Funnily enuf, there are Swedish dialects that I understand less of than Norwegian. A language is really just a dialect with a government and an army, I would like to see our governments get together and create a common language. We would still use different words, like the Danes call it “kartoffel” and we call it “potatis”, but I would like our spellings of common words to be the same and to try to being our languages closer together.
I believe you're right. As a side note, people from North-Eastern Scotland and North-Western Jutland can also understand each other. I guess it's due to the fishermen fishing together on the North Sea. As another side note I know from family that the dialect from the islands of Karlskrona skärgård still have a number of old Danish words for plants, fruits and vegetables, like "kartofler" (potatis), "hindbär" (hallon) etc. It's my impression that only old people still use these words so it might go lost within a few generations.
There was a thing about Moldovan being a separate language from Romanian, but luckily no one in Moldova actually agreed to it lol as there was no nationalist movement to be distinct from Romania, there was the opposite actually!
The only difference in the official language is that they still use î in some words, while Romanian prefers â after the 1990s, those letters are pronounced exactly the same. Unofficially they use some Black Speech in their Jargon because it was the official communication language while under Mordor.
Im danish and i can read Norwegian without any problems, its so similar to danish🔥 Swedish is a little bit harder for me but still understandable🇩🇰🇧🇻🇸🇪
As a Swede, it’s funny how a Norwegian could tell me one sentence and I would understand every word, but the next sentence that’s just as long would leave me completely lost. Same goes for danish.
I'm from Greenland and I speak danish fluently and I've lived in Oslo for 11 months. The first 2-3 months I kinda had to adjust my ears to norwegian. I've always been kinda be able to understand norwegian, but(!) some dialects man... I've always said that swedish was something I simply cannot understand, until a few weeks ago, when I was watching a television program and the person whom I thought spoke a norwegian dialect turned out to be swedish! I guess once I was able to understand norwegian more and more the swedish kinda just followed suit. But still, some dialects are just hard man💀😂
Kind of like American English and a strong, rural British English where they can understand each other but have different words for different things (e.g. "trunk" in USA and "boot" in UK)
If arabs were able to make up a standard lanfuage throughout the arabic world, I think. Scanfidavian would exist or even merge with dutch or even german
Dutch/Frisian/Afrikaans yes, but not German, its very different and thers no mutually intelligibility, in some ways I feel its more distant from Swedish then Bulgarian/Macedonian/Serbian are
Local Arab dialects can be separate enough that they don't understand each other. Arab speakers from different countries often have to switch from their local variant to some kind of "standard" Arabic to understand each other.
That's an absolutely ridiculous statement. Yes, of course standard German, which is High German (Elbe Germanic), is much different from North Germanic. And sure, North Sea Germanic languages like Frisian and Low Saxon, and even Rhine Germanic languages like Dutch (which has a strong North Sea Germanic substrate), are a lot more similar to North Germanic than High German. But High German and Scandinavian languages are still closely related as they come from the same language in the Nordic Bronze Age, and were still pretty much mutually intelligible around 2kya. Whereas those other languages you mentioned are Slavic and have a much more ancient common origin with Scandinavian languages and much less in common. @@simontollin2004
Even as a non-native Swedish speaker who learned the language In adulthood, I would confidently venture to say these three barely qualify as different languages; for I understand nearly 100% of all of their written forms and can make out their spoken forms pretty well if the speakers talk slowly. The same analysis I would impute to different dialects in my native language.
Hey random question, but how did you learn Swedish? (If you don’t mind my asking) I feel like it’s so hard to learn in adulthood so what was your method?
@@Nekotaku_TV well I mean all the north Germanic langues are modern Norse. Swedish, danish and elfdalian are modern east Norse and came from old east Norse Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and Greenlandic Norse are all modern (if we can even call Icelandic modern ) west Norse since they come from old west Norse
I wish Slavic (or South Slavic, because I'm South Slavic) had this. Keep the different languages, now Dialects, but have a "standard universal form" similar to Arabic, so we can understand. I've been to the Western Balkans (I'm Bulgarian), and depending where I am, I could understand the different languages but not enough... like the languages are obviously similar, but I can't understand the stuff I don't because s different word is use... If there was a "Universal Standard Form", where we can switch to a "universal word" or way of saying something, life would be so much better!
There’s a constructed language called Interslavic which is made for Slavic language speakers to be able to communicate with each other. But it has no official support or widespread adoption.
@@langfocusclips Currently waiting for your Bulgaria video, so I wanted to add Not that long ago I asked in the comment section for Bulgaria (and the things he can include); not sure if he is doing it because of my comment, or if he at all saw it... but I am thankful either way - from a Bulgarian :)
@@thematthew761 tones and prononciation are different. Also different wording is used in some cases. They are all mandarin because they share the same writing. I believe that if Norwegian, Swedish and danish have a united writing standard, they will be considered the same language
@@thematthew761 give you an example. For the phrase “what are you looking”,in written Chinese it’s “你看什么”. People from Harbin say “ní chǒu shá zi”, people from Beijing say “nǐ kàn shén me” (which is standard Chinese) and people from Chongqing say “ni kan sa zei” I’m not adding tones to this one cuz I’m not familiar with the tones from Chongqing
Norway used to write danish while speaking norwegian until around 1920. Also: in Iceland they speak almost as they did in Norway 1000 years ago as Iceland eas poupalted by norwegian Vikings back then and was isolated after that.
Fun fact! Did you know that there's a Swedish considered dialect that no Swedes understand except around 3000 speakers? It's called 'Älvdalska' and it's related to English and Old norse more than the scandinavian languages!
Lol as a Norwegian, my mom is a Norwegian language teacher, I can say no we are very much three different languages. Sure it’s similar because they are related and historically always been close, but I know ton of Norwegians who doesn’t understand neither Swedish nor Danish, and either has to speak in English, or they just don’t converse all together. And even though the written form of Danish is the easiest to understand, the spoken version is for many the hardest. And because Swedish and Danish is so similar, it’s also confusing because even though we understand, they use either other words than we would use in that particular context or sentence, or they stock around with the order of which the words are put. And many words which are the same when written has completely different meaning in either languages… then again we are kinda lucky because besides English, we’re fluent in Swedish and Danish by default, but usually it’s either one or the other. This also stems down to something as simple as which one you like more, and many of us has relatives in either countries as well.
Yes, it's for a large part a matter of exposure too. Swedes/Danes/Norwegians can learn to understand the other two languages in like two weeks if they move there or just seriously focus on it, whereas something like German would take multiple months at least..
If someone can't understand then it's 100% a question of exposure, if a swede can't understand danish or norwigian, then he/she would probably also struggle with a divergent dialects like orsamål to
@@ikbintomYeah when growing up in the 90’s and 2000’s the majority of all the kids TV shows, movies etc. was Swedish, Danish, tony portion Finnish, and the rest German and from the UK. With subs or dubbing. I actually knew English before I started elementary school as I had to be able to read the subs to understand🤣🤣🤣 I also have a lot of relatives who are Swedes. So yes exposure is crucial. I’m always shocked when I met Norwegians who doesn’t understand Swedish or Swedes who doesn’t understand Norwegian😝
According to Weinreich, since they have separate armies they are separate languages. Here is some fun. My Grandfather (morfar) spoke Norwegian, my roommate spoke Norwegian and my Norwegian friend spoke Norwegian (duh). The roommate and friend could both speak to my grandfather, but my friend and roommate could not understand each others dialect
Interesting, It really just depends on the exposure. I’m from Värmland bordering Norway and think Norwegian mostly is easier to understand than Skånska, the dialect in Southern Sweden close to Denmark. I speak the dialect Värmländska wich is close to Norwegian and many swedes agree that värmländska is almost a mix of Swedish and Norwegian.
Pretty sure that if all 3 languages pronounced the words the same way, it could absolutely be the same language. As a dane, I have no problem reading swedish and norwegian while understanding about 95% of the content, but when one of the two starts speaking to me, I comprehend very little of the spoken words.
I’m from the Faroe Islands but I’ve been living in Sweden for 12 years now and I speak all 5 Scandinavian languages fluently (plus Finnish and Estonian). While Norwegians and Swedish are very similar, Danish is not always mutually intelligible. It is a different class and written and spoken Danish is very different
Not mutually intelligible with D/N/S at all. I think they are partially intelligible with each other though, but not sure. Icelandic is basically Old Norse (albeit pronounced differently than it was 1000 years ago) whereas the continental Scandinavian languages have all changed a lot more and have been more heavily influenced by other languages (notably Low German).
If anything they are closer to Nynorsk as they are both derived from west Norse, unlike the rest which all belong to east Norse. It's doesn't necessarily mean they understand each other. I would like to know from Icelandic, Faroise and speakers of Nynorsk, how much they understand of the other language (spoken and written).
@@stoissdk I think the fact that Norwegian speakers (a West Norse language) understand Swedish speakers (an East Norse language) very well, whereas they don't understand Icelandic (another West Norse language) at all, kind of shows that the West/East Norse classification is only useful for historical studies. Personally I prefer the Continental Scandinavian (D/N/S) vs Insular Scandinavian (I/F) categorization instead, at least when talking about the contemporary languages.
I'm an American and when I visited Norway while growing up I thought my father's family in Oslo spoke a different language from my mother's family in Oppdal (south of Trondheim).
The fact the end result is "danish dialect" really gets on my nerves especially when Norway is the catalyst since Danes and Swedes can't exactly understand eachother but everyone can understand Norwegians... Why does Denmark get the credit?
In Denmark there isn’t quite a standardized form of danish as in Norway and Sweden, what we call standard danish is just the language in the region of Copenhagen which got to main dialects called Højkøbenhavnsk (High Copenhagen) and Lavkøbenhavnsk (Low Copenhagen), these two dialects differ in pronunciation and vocabulary and both of them have a ton of sub dialects.
In my opinion, having lived in both Norway and Denmark, it's the complete opposite. Danish actually has a standard form (rigsdansk), while no standard form exists in Norwegian. A town approximately an hours drive away has a dialect wildly different from the ones from my hometown in Norway. Honestly, the sub-dialects in my hometown are in some ways more varied than a lot of the towns surrounding the area I lived in Sjælland.
In Norway we don't actually have any form of standardised spoken language. Although some people consider the dialect spoken in Oslo (which has a lot of varieties even there) to be "true norwegian" this doesn't really exist
As an outsider with an interest in languages, my impression is that Swedes and Norwegians have far less difficulty speaking/understanding each other than both of them have with Danish, which, to my ear, sounds very very different, even if the written form does not. Yes? No? I have Swedish and Danish ancestry but no language skills there.
As a Dane I can attest to that. Danes are generally able to understand Swedish and Norwegian with some effort (though some people don't make that effort and prefer to use English instead). However, Swedes and Norwegians tend to have trouble understanding Danish, even though they can understand each other quite well. Personally, I can understand written and spoken Swedish without much effort. Spoken Norwegian is a bit harder, but still doable.
I'm Swedish and you're pretty spot on, as a general rule. But it depends entirely on where the speakers are from. In general, I understand Norwegian way batter than Danish but there are so many exceptions. I understand people from Bornholm or Aarhus in Denmark better than I understand speakers of west Norwegian dialects, for example. Intelligibility is also very asymmetrical. For instance, I used to play video games with a guy from Bergen in western Norway, and he could understand my Swedish without too much effort but I found myself not understanding him quite often - to the point where he had to clarify in English or his best attempt at Swedish (or 'svorsk'). I live on the east coast of Sweden so we're basically from opposite sides of the Scandinavian peninsula. People from the southernmost part of Sweden usually understand Danish and west Norwegian dialects a lot better than most other Swedes. East Norwegian dialects, which includes Oslo, is extremely similar to standard Swedish and the vast majority of Swedes can understand it almost perfectly. For me personally it's pretty much 100% intelligible, like any other major Swedish dialect.
Yeah, there are some so-called “dialects” that are entirely different languages, but they are not spoken much anymore. Actual dialects of Japanese aren’t as different as some of the continental North Germanic dialects can be. At least not anymore, because Standard Japanese has influenced them and caused them to converge. Maybe before the Meiji period it was more like Swedish-Norwegian-Danish.
Well we have hundreds if not thousands of dialects here in Norway, they are very diverse in both how they are written to how they sound when spoken. So much so that we don’t always understand each other. They too have dialects in Danish and Sweden just not to the same extent.
I just started studying Norwegian over the last month or so, and I'm really amazed at the similarities I've encountered with Swedish, which I just barely "flirt-studied" several years ago.
Coming from norway I understand a huge variety of norwegian dialects, also including the two standard languages "nynorsk" and "bokmål". Therefore i don't have a hard time understanding swedish or danish. Might take sometime to fully understand but I think after a couple months of living with a swedish/danish we would understand each other fully no problem.
It already exists. It's called English, and it enables easy communication between the Nordic countries (including even Iceland and Finland) far better than any artifical standardised Scandinavian language ever could. Also, English really is the hidden "fourth Scandinavian" language. It's the easiest language to learn for people in Scandinavia because it is so similar to their own languages.
Well, we sort of have that already unofficially. Many Scandinavians will actively adjust their speech and choice of words as well as speaking clearer and slower to make it easier for their neighbours to understand - for instance Danes using "Scandinavian" numbers instead of their own weird and a very old base 20 system ( 50 - 99) , which drives the Swedes and Norwegians nuts (😂), as well as pronouncing all consonants and even substituting our soft -d's ( c. ð) and -g's ( c. -gh, as in "sigh") with - d or - t and -k respectivly - and pronouncing mute d's ( mainly after l, n & r ).
@@dalubwikaan161No, but it has many "Scandinavian" elements with respect to basic vocabulary and the grammar ( word order, lack of cases for nouns and their articles, same or very similar ways of forming tenses and many parallel strong verbs etc. ), and some linguists are even proposing now that Modern & Middle English should actually be considered as a North Germanic language with a large West Germanic substrate, since the fusion between the WG Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and the NG Old Norse over some generations resulted in a completely restructured and much simplified sort of Germanic creole language, which over time became Middle English, and which is to a large degree much more similar to its NG Scandinavian cousin languages at the basic level than to its original WG sibling languages - quite the opposite of what one would have expected. This is the main reason why most Scandinavians find that English is a very easy language to learn and speak it pretty well or better, since we already by magic sort of "know" half of the basics of the language in advance and therefore don't have to think very much most of the time. 😊 Vi [ve] kan allerede tal(k)e en sort af Engelsk fra(m) dag [daygh] en, for vi ha(ve)r [hAr] mange (many, OE monege!) af de samme simple (w)ord(s) her(e) [heir] i(n) Danmark, så det er [air] ("are", is) en naturlig ting for os [us]. Du (you, thou) kan se i(n) en hast, hvad mening {v}ore ( our, OE ure ! ) Danske (w)ord(s) haver.
Is the difficulty in hearing the language or reading it? I could read Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Aromanian, as a Romanian, but I can't understand them spoken as well.
@@nicolayrowe7351the vocabulary is a lot closer, but the main difference is probably the tonal/pitch accent, which only few Danish dialects have retained just a little of.
German has a lot of dialects too, but although it is also spread over three different countries, both Austrians and Swiss people never said, that they would use a different language - a lot of French seeped into the Swiss-German and they even use some letters differently, but the dialect is still considered German (even if more northern native speakers struggle in understanding it properly)
Was just thinking of this and as a Swede I say: yes. If Old Norse is regarded as 1 language with 3 main dialects, then modern Scandinavian surely is also 1 language with 3 main dialects (Icelandic being something in between due to the tiny exposure to other languages). It goes without saying that this is the case because they're so damn similar. I guess the constant brother wars and rise of separate and clearly distinguished kingdoms made the foundation for this idea of each dialect being it's own unique language. Hell, even the people here are basically the same with minor variations depending on which country you are in (only including ethnic Scandinavian people of course).
Dane here. I think that it depends a bit on the context actually. The normal term used is not "dialect" as is most common in other parts of the world, but rather terms like "neighboring language" or "brother language" are used. It's an acknowledgement that the two other languages/dialects are not exactly the same, while at the same time not truly foreign languages like German or English are.
In the country side of Norway one can drive for 15 minutes to a neighbouring community, and there is a different accent) Walking in Paris, hearing another Norwegian tourist speaking in the back ground, I can usually within seconds register what region/'state' of Norway he/she origins from, and sometimes the exact city. Not that it's of any use)
As a person who is from the Swedish speaking parts of Finland I can say there’s a noticeable difference in how the language is spoken and there’s many different dialects. The most confusing one is Närpesiska, it should be it’s own language
I would definitely not use his channel as a source of information. He talks nonsense constantly! Here's my message to him: Hello man from the Valley of the Uninformed. ;) Your statement is, as always, incorrect! Fun Fact No. 1: There is no such thing as a modern Scandinavian language! No. 2: It does not depend on the country in which the speakers are located. The best example is the speakers from Jämtland! They are in Sweden but speak a Norwegian dialect! No 3: Linguistically speaking, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are three different languages, although they all belong to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic language family. These languages share many common roots due to their historical, cultural, and geographical proximity, but they are independent languages with different dialects, grammar rules, and pronunciation. Question: Why do you enjoy misleading people over and over again?
Want to know something cool My friends speaks danish and Swedish and the funny thing is that we are a trio, but we can still understand what we’re saying because the languages are so similar
My impression is that three written languages are very similar, but the pronunciation is different. Of the three languages, Norwegian 🇳🇴 seems to be the easiest for native English speakers to speak, while Danish 🇩🇰 language is the most difficult. Icelandic 🇮🇸 language is like the distant cousin of the three languages. 😍🇵🇭
Sometimes this is what happens, you might be actually speaking one language but because of political division, suddenly you know two or more languages, maybe not speak but understand. In my case, Malay and Indonesian since I'm Malaysian, while I can't speak Indonesian, I can understand quite a bit without learning it, more if I do learn it. In songs, they're almost identical in accent, we can only tell by the word choice. They're much closer than the so-called Chinese dialects are to each other.
In the end, categories are simply human constructs to fit our human conveniences. For example, Standard Indonesian and Standard Malaysian Malay are objectively the same languages but with slightly different standardisations but they are categorised as different languages due to politics. Meanwhile, Cantonese, Fujianese etc. are completely different to Mandarin and have a completely different cultures and traditions behind them but they are called dialects of Chinese.
Yes they are. Some local elder languages might be their own languages, ex forrn gotllans language. Despite danes counts in 2*40/ounces they be way more similar than finnish vs estonian.
Danish if you want to understand but not be understood and Norwegian if you want to be understood and understand and Swedish if you want to be understood but not understand but be able to speak with Finns
The way people explain this to me as a native English speaker is funny because it made me realise. If someone from the deep South of the United States met someone from the Scottish highlands they'd probably struggle to understand each other despite both being native English speakers.
As a Dane i consider it all as the same language, with different dialects. I find some Danish dialects harder to understand, than typical Swedish or Norwegian.
I'm Swedish, lived most of my adult life in Norway, and have many Danish friends. Most Norwegians have watched a fair amount of Swedish TV and to a lesser extent Danish TV and can usually understand the other languages quite well. Danes and Swedes rarely watch anything from our neighbor countries. If Danes and Swedes were more like Norwegians, then we could probably all speak to one another without any great difficulty, instead of usually switching to English like most Danes and Swedes do when talking to one another.
Excuse me (swedish) you are mental if you think I can understand a Danish without reflecting on every sentence. Man I know one Danish song and the only word I understand is whisky
When you understand one of these dialects you essentially understand all the dialects just that they sound like they ate a bag of pennies whilst drunk!😂
well its more of phonics and speed tha tcreate a barrier because you could have 'a norwegian phrase that looks the same in swedish written down, or similar but hwen said it may be much quicker or said differently
This is so interesting- why does it sound so similar to Newfoundland dialects I wonder? If I met someone in Newfoundland who spoke like this I would just assume they were from here
As a swede, no. What will be the standard Scandinavian then? Is it not better to have 3 different languages than to have on language and 3 very different dialects? I’d say that it’s much easier to preserve the already existing dialects if we don’t create more.
Eh, to say it’s largely a geographical distinction isn’t quite hitting the mark. Even if you’re just across the border you’ll still have to deal with false friends (like rar meaning sweet or nice in Swedish, but weird in Norwegian) And I’ll echo others that are confused that you bring bokmål and nynorsk into it, those are solely applicable to the written language. Btw, nynorsk is closer to Swedish, despite it being largely a west coast form of written Norwegian, so that would undermine the proximity argument if you were to include nynorsk and bokmål into your assessment.
I am Swedish and I understod both Norwegian and Danish. I think it’s harder for younger to understand Danish since their lack of knowledge of old words and dialectical forms.
Yes, agree, younger person have harder time with the other languages. Usually most people gets better at it as time goes by and they get more used to hear to other languages in media and so on
So, ironically, the reason why Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are not one single language, is because they're too close to really need a common standard code, and the reason why Maghrebi and Levantine are not separate languages, is because they're too different not to need a common standard code. Shows how the concept of what is language is actually a pretty arbitrary idea
I didn't understand the maghrebi and levantine example. How can they be the same language if they're too different?
Doesn't work for Chinese
@@gamermapper Sinitic Chinese is normal word for linguistics you called out the whole branch and pick the daughter languages, for more sensible categories check sociolinguistics
@@gamermapper Cantonese, Minnanese, Hakka, Wu and Mandarin can be classified as different languages of the Chinese branch of Sino-Tibetan.
@@samgyeopsal569 yeah
Dane here. In my opinion understanding and communicating with Swedes and Norwegians really comes down to exposure and the will and persistence to understand the other part. That and slowing down and speaking clearly (yes, spit out the "potato" I know :P). This was also easier back when TV was limited to Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (and German) channels. It was easier back then, to build up a "passive vocabulary" of differences you needed to be aware of as well as "tune in" to dialects. We were kind of forced to it. Now it's all English. On a side note, I have a really easy time with Bokmål. I sometimes initially mistake written Bokmål for Danish with spelling errors, but then it's understandably as it stems from an old Danish dialect.
Ni får gärna ta det lugnt när ni snackar asså fyfan, tittade på ett danskt program häromdan och jag skratta som in i helvete
Swedes talk slower. They literally use more time to get the same message across on average. This is one of the reason why talking slower to them helps.
@@fastertove I think that depends on dialect too. Most of the people from my hometown (a small town in northern Västergötland) speak faster than most stockholmers and people from dalarna, for example.
Listen i can’t understand danish at all😅 I’m Norwegian btw
@@turistan2387how Im Norwegian and understand danish or if they talk a little slower
As a norwegian, yes, these are all the same language imo. In Norway we are especially good at adjusting our ears because of our many dialects, and because of that, we have an easy time reading danish and hearing swedish. It really just comes down to exposure. I remember this kid I met who grew up with one danish parent and one norwegian parent, and growing up, he thought that danish was just a dialect of norwegian, despite what people say that danish is so hard to understand. My parents understand swedish better than some western norwegian dialects because the only TV-channels for kids that they had while growing up, were swedish ones. If we only give more exposure to each other's lanugages more often, there would be no discussion about this, and the answer would be obvious: they are the same language. It really wouldn't be hard to unite them all into one single written form as these languages are very similar to the point where they could be percieved as different dialects of the same language.
The man himself
Spot on, at the same time, if we all wrote phonetically in our own dialect, then its quite possible it would diverge more from any of the 4 standards then there's differeces between the 4 of them
Heiiii
I did NOT expect to see you here! Love the folk songs and anthems!
I as a swedish person (who grew up in Malmö meaning that I have a bit more danish influence than most) have a really hard time understanding spoken danish. If it’s spoken relatively unslurred, and with a closely related dialect, like Copenhagen, then I can, with some difficulty, have a conversation with a Dane. I can read it almost perfectly, but hearing it is hard. Norwegians, however, especially the ones that speak the dialects that have been closest to Sweden, I can easily have a conversation with.
It does come down to exposure, but Norwegian and Swedish are closer than Danish, and Swedish. I don’t know how danish, and Norwegians hear each other’s languages, though.
It is also the issue between Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.
Yes, but those ones are much more similar and mutually intelligible.
Bulgarian and Macedonian too
@@HeroManNick132 Really? Wow. I get surprised of your information.
I wish there was a thing like this in Slavic (or just South Slavic, because I am South Slav) languages as well.
As a Bulgarian, I have travelled across the West Balkans and I could have an understandable conversation with the people, but not understand enough.
The languages were obviously similar, but one language will use a different word or so.
If there was a "Universal Standard Form", like Arabic does, where we can speak our own languages, but switch a word with a "universal word" so we can communicate, life would be so much cooler.
@@cerebrummaximus3762 То затова има междуславянски език, който е с цел всички славяноговорящи народи да го разбират този език. Ама не се учи за жалост.
My impression is that that 3 written languages are very similar, but the pronunciation is different. Of the three languages, Norwegian seems to be the easiest for native English speakers to speak, while Danish is the most difficult. Icelandic is like the distant cousin of the 3 languages.
The pronunciation differences are just as big within the languages as the difference between the languages
Nobody understands Icelandic because it’s too distant, as the other there has evolved separately from a Icelandic, due to the latter being isolated on an island far out in the Atlantic ocean. Icelandic is after all the closest to you get to Old Norse, besides Ol English. Tho it’s easier for certain dialects on the Norwegian west coast, or at least for the Icelanders, to understand as its closer to each other and the fact that the Vikings who settled Iceland and Greenland came from those parts of the country.
@@kilipaki87oritahiti the main hurdle is pronancation and grammer, other then that Icelandic is mostly understandable
Danish sounds like they have a potato stuck in their throat- Everyone I know
@@fairyonYT Some Danish dialects don't sound like you're choking on a potato. Danish dialects can sound very different from each other.
As a Norwegian coming from Oslo I can tell you that first time I heard Swedish I tough that was Bergenser 😂. But yeah the rule goes that we Norwegians understand 99% of spoken Swedish, 80% spoken Danish and the percentage just switch in the written form. There isn’t a single Norwegian language, you speak your dialect and it’s Norwegian as much as others, it’s normal for Danes or Swedish people to just speak their language in Norway even if they’ve been living here for 50 years it’s culturally normal for us, no others nations have been united and at war as much as we Scandinavians, happy that today we see each other as the brothers and sisters we are! (The Finns to of course, but we don’t understand anything except Perkele Satan)
..and 'Ei saa peittaa'
What about the contrast, do swedish and danish understand norwegian ?
People from Oslo barely understand Norwegian
There is an informal verbal mix of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. I think it's called "Skandinavisk" or Scandinavian
Skandinavisk is something you are. Like being American
Thats not a thing…
@@jonasbro9562 In Swedish, yes. And this language would be called "skandinaviska" in Swedish. However it would be "skandinavisk" in Norwegian and Danish, just like how their languages are called "norsk" and "dansk" in both their languages but "norska" and "danska" in Swedish.
@@Greksalladsimilar to interlingua to the romance languages skadinaviska woyld be for the Scandinavian languages (not counting Finnish) its a uralic language.
"Skandinavisk" happens when the 3 of us are in the same room, and Norwegians start screaming STOP SPEAKING ENGLISH! Seriously, especially you Danes need to make an effort. You are erasing our beautiful Scandi languages. We all know about the bad words. Either just dont use them in conversation, or assume the others know about them, and stop the giggling.
As a norwegian, bokmål and nynorsk are only standard written forms. We officially don't have a standard spoken dialect. There are several dialects that are close to the two forms, but that's where it stops. We don't have "standard norwegian".
Standard- dialect of the capital.
@@ivilivo Which isn't neither bokmål nor nynorsk. There is a group in Oslo that more resently has begun talking something resembling bokmål, but they are really a minority. That said, Oslo is closer than people further north.
@@ivilivoNope. Don't say that to the proud people from Trondheim or Bergen. Bergen wants to get out already.
@@KjetilBalstadEven Oslo has dialects, or sociolects, do Oslodialect makes no sense.
@@TullaRask Yeah, but I was referring to Bokmål and the fact it's not really a spoken language or dialect, not even in Oslo. But as I said, Oslo is closer, as in they have more people talking in a way more resembling the written Bokmål, and even a smaller group that has begun talking bokmål...
As a Norwegian, i can understand all of those languages but they are very different from each other. If you know one of those languages it’s very easy to learn the rest.
Theyre not very different though, the tone and way of speech is different but the words and the general language system is basically identical, danish is easy to understand on paper, its the «potato in the throath» that makes it hard
@@grandicus Yeah
Im danish 😊
I speak Swedish I can manage to read Norwegian and Danish but its almost impossible to speak Danish.
Same here. I'm a native German speaker currently on vacation in Denmark. I can read and understand most Danish texts with a little effort and imagination, but I have zero chances of understanding any spoken Danish.
@@ronin667 That's Impressive, TV channel I was watching mistakenly switched to Norwegian me not knowing I read and understood everything.
I'll manage to pick out some German words but i can't read it.
No-one expects you to actually speak Danish ( as a Swede 😂 ), but you could learn to understand most of it in a few months - for instance by watching Danish TV with easily understandable subtitles in Danish that are available for most programmes,
Just speak slowly, clearly and "danify" it a bit in tone and pronounciation - and then most Danes will understand you, especially if you adopt a few Danish words and expressions here and there. 😉
@@ronin667 danish does sound more similar to german than Norwegian and Swedish.
In fact many danes speak some level of german because it's close to Hamburg.
I think you could learn Danish or dutch pretty easily seeing as many pronunciations are similar.
@@bobaGogo What are you on about? Danish is nothing like German.
As a Swede and English speaker, the difference between Norwegian and Swedish is like the difference between standard British and a scottish accent.
I can understand when a Scottish person speaks but I have to think a little extra when listening.
The difference between Swedish and Danish is like standard English and a heavy Irish accent, idk what the hell they’re saying besides a few words here and there that I can piece together.
Funnily enuf, there are Swedish dialects that I understand less of than Norwegian.
A language is really just a dialect with a government and an army, I would like to see our governments get together and create a common language. We would still use different words, like the Danes call it “kartoffel” and we call it “potatis”, but I would like our spellings of common words to be the same and to try to being our languages closer together.
I believe you're right. As a side note, people from North-Eastern Scotland and North-Western Jutland can also understand each other. I guess it's due to the fishermen fishing together on the North Sea.
As another side note I know from family that the dialect from the islands of Karlskrona skärgård still have a number of old Danish words for plants, fruits and vegetables, like "kartofler" (potatis), "hindbär" (hallon) etc. It's my impression that only old people still use these words so it might go lost within a few generations.
👑🇩🇰🤝🇳🇴🤝🇸🇪🤝🇮🇸🤝🇫🇮👑
There was a thing about Moldovan being a separate language from Romanian, but luckily no one in Moldova actually agreed to it lol as there was no nationalist movement to be distinct from Romania, there was the opposite actually!
The only difference in the official language is that they still use î in some words, while Romanian prefers â after the 1990s, those letters are pronounced exactly the same. Unofficially they use some Black Speech in their Jargon because it was the official communication language while under Mordor.
@@mihair2854.. Moldova is quite far from Scandinavia...
LOTR @@mihair2854
It used to be same near the Dutch-German border and low German is closer to Dutch than it is to standard German which is based off high German.
True. when I go to the west German border area the place names there are (almost) like Dutch.
What do you mean used to? It's still like that. Millions of people still speak Low Saxon dialects.
@@ingwiafraujaz3126 yeah
Norwegian here🙋♂️🇳🇴 let's merge guys 🇩🇰🇸🇪
Im danish and i can read Norwegian without any problems, its so similar to danish🔥 Swedish is a little bit harder for me but still understandable🇩🇰🇧🇻🇸🇪
its because Bokmål is literally Danish with small adjustments to be closer to Norwegian
Ja låt oss nu begynnde at tale eit fälles panskandinavisk språg, det är nok forskillnader mellom våre länder
If everyone re-learned Old Norse, we'd be in good shape. Hell, Icelanders wouldn't even have to change anything lol.
@@Holmesson both could be better. The icelandic and the scandinavian koine.
Vi ville have 20 million scandinavian speakers, hvis vi gjorde det, og folk ville faktisk lære vores sprog
As a Norwegian I say with help from Chatgpt and other AI´s we can revive the Old norse language and use runes again! Caveman times here we come
@@Le_Yatsu sånn sirka 21.5/22 millioner språktalende folk. Det hadde sannelig hvert noe
As a Swede, it’s funny how a Norwegian could tell me one sentence and I would understand every word, but the next sentence that’s just as long would leave me completely lost. Same goes for danish.
I'm from Greenland and I speak danish fluently and I've lived in Oslo for 11 months. The first 2-3 months I kinda had to adjust my ears to norwegian. I've always been kinda be able to understand norwegian, but(!) some dialects man...
I've always said that swedish was something I simply cannot understand, until a few weeks ago, when I was watching a television program and the person whom I thought spoke a norwegian dialect turned out to be swedish!
I guess once I was able to understand norwegian more and more the swedish kinda just followed suit.
But still, some dialects are just hard man💀😂
When we meet we talk each orhers language but adapt the words that is used with all three languages to understand each other.
Kind of like American English and a strong, rural British English where they can understand each other but have different words for different things (e.g. "trunk" in USA and "boot" in UK)
If arabs were able to make up a standard lanfuage throughout the arabic world, I think. Scanfidavian would exist or even merge with dutch or even german
Dutch/Frisian/Afrikaans yes, but not German, its very different and thers no mutually intelligibility, in some ways I feel its more distant from Swedish then Bulgarian/Macedonian/Serbian are
Local Arab dialects can be separate enough that they don't understand each other. Arab speakers from different countries often have to switch from their local variant to some kind of "standard" Arabic to understand each other.
That's an absolutely ridiculous statement. Yes, of course standard German, which is High German (Elbe Germanic), is much different from North Germanic. And sure, North Sea Germanic languages like Frisian and Low Saxon, and even Rhine Germanic languages like Dutch (which has a strong North Sea Germanic substrate), are a lot more similar to North Germanic than High German. But High German and Scandinavian languages are still closely related as they come from the same language in the Nordic Bronze Age, and were still pretty much mutually intelligible around 2kya. Whereas those other languages you mentioned are Slavic and have a much more ancient common origin with Scandinavian languages and much less in common. @@simontollin2004
Let's return to Norse
That would be cool. :)
Even as a non-native Swedish speaker who learned the language In adulthood, I would confidently venture to say these three barely qualify as different languages; for I understand nearly 100% of all of their written forms and can make out their spoken forms pretty well if the speakers talk slowly.
The same analysis I would impute to different dialects in my native language.
Hey random question, but how did you learn Swedish? (If you don’t mind my asking) I feel like it’s so hard to learn in adulthood so what was your method?
As a native swedish speaker, i can understand alot german if spoken slowly, does that make swedish and german the same language?
@@lilldavid6903 Det bleknar ju i jämförelse med Svenska/Danska/Norska
Modern Norse 🇳🇴🇩🇰🇸🇪
Won't that be ny norsk 😂 which is Norwegian?
@@chaosofagoosenynorsk is a stupid language used by old people and rednecks. Bokmål is standard
That would be Icelandic.
@@Nekotaku_TV well I mean all the north Germanic langues are modern Norse. Swedish, danish and elfdalian are modern east Norse and came from old east Norse
Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and Greenlandic Norse are all modern (if we can even call Icelandic modern ) west Norse since they come from old west Norse
I wish Slavic (or South Slavic, because I'm South Slavic) had this. Keep the different languages, now Dialects, but have a "standard universal form" similar to Arabic, so we can understand.
I've been to the Western Balkans (I'm Bulgarian), and depending where I am, I could understand the different languages but not enough... like the languages are obviously similar, but I can't understand the stuff I don't because s different word is use... If there was a "Universal Standard Form", where we can switch to a "universal word" or way of saying something, life would be so much better!
There’s a constructed language called Interslavic which is made for Slavic language speakers to be able to communicate with each other. But it has no official support or widespread adoption.
@@langfocusclips
Currently waiting for your Bulgaria video, so I wanted to add
Not that long ago I asked in the comment section for Bulgaria (and the things he can include); not sure if he is doing it because of my comment, or if he at all saw it... but I am thankful either way - from a Bulgarian :)
It does. Macedonian and bulgarian
Croatian Serbian bosnian
Not south slavic but also belarusian and ukrainian
Also Czech and Slovak
@@langfocusclips please talk to us about interslavic!
My half sister has a Swedish mom, a Danish dad and live in Norway.😊
Nowadays when most swedes, danes and norwegians meet, they communicate using english
Was this always the case?. How did they communicate before?
So you made a shorts channel years ago but I encountered it just now😮
If the languages of Chongqing, Beijing, and Harbin all count as Mandarin, then Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish can be one language
How different are they?
@@thematthew761 tones and prononciation are different. Also different wording is used in some cases. They are all mandarin because they share the same writing. I believe that if Norwegian, Swedish and danish have a united writing standard, they will be considered the same language
What would be an equivalent for European languages for different Mandarin dialects?@@alexlegendes7730
@@thematthew761 give you an example. For the phrase “what are you looking”,in written Chinese it’s “你看什么”. People from Harbin say “ní chǒu shá zi”, people from Beijing say “nǐ kàn shén me” (which is standard Chinese) and people from Chongqing say “ni kan sa zei” I’m not adding tones to this one cuz I’m not familiar with the tones from Chongqing
I see, I'm an ABC@@alexlegendes7730
on italian "dialects" continuum please
Norway used to write danish while speaking norwegian until around 1920.
Also: in Iceland they speak almost as they did in Norway 1000 years ago as Iceland eas poupalted by norwegian Vikings back then and was isolated after that.
As an American, I had a (fairly) embarrassing time at the airport when I tried to help a Danish woman by speaking in Swedish 😅
How come you learned swedish?
@@hyperion3135 Parents or grandparents are immigrants from Sweden?
Fun fact! Did you know that there's a Swedish considered dialect that no Swedes understand except around 3000 speakers? It's called 'Älvdalska' and it's related to English and Old norse more than the scandinavian languages!
Bondska is also pretty impenetrable
I talk swedish, and Danish,Norwegian and swedish is not the same language 💀
Då har du fan ingen aning om vad du pratar om. Jag kommer från Sverige och kan lätt ha konversationer med folk från Norige
@@ndsshotgunnose5028Fortfarande inte samma språk
I ain't learning some language if the word for soap is "tvål"😭😭🗣️🗣️🔥🔥‼️
Lol as a Norwegian, my mom is a Norwegian language teacher, I can say no we are very much three different languages. Sure it’s similar because they are related and historically always been close, but I know ton of Norwegians who doesn’t understand neither Swedish nor Danish, and either has to speak in English, or they just don’t converse all together. And even though the written form of Danish is the easiest to understand, the spoken version is for many the hardest. And because Swedish and Danish is so similar, it’s also confusing because even though we understand, they use either other words than we would use in that particular context or sentence, or they stock around with the order of which the words are put. And many words which are the same when written has completely different meaning in either languages… then again we are kinda lucky because besides English, we’re fluent in Swedish and Danish by default, but usually it’s either one or the other. This also stems down to something as simple as which one you like more, and many of us has relatives in either countries as well.
Yes, it's for a large part a matter of exposure too. Swedes/Danes/Norwegians can learn to understand the other two languages in like two weeks if they move there or just seriously focus on it, whereas something like German would take multiple months at least..
If someone can't understand then it's 100% a question of exposure, if a swede can't understand danish or norwigian, then he/she would probably also struggle with a divergent dialects like orsamål to
o.o
@@ikbintomYeah when growing up in the 90’s and 2000’s the majority of all the kids TV shows, movies etc. was Swedish, Danish, tony portion Finnish, and the rest German and from the UK. With subs or dubbing. I actually knew English before I started elementary school as I had to be able to read the subs to understand🤣🤣🤣 I also have a lot of relatives who are Swedes. So yes exposure is crucial. I’m always shocked when I met Norwegians who doesn’t understand Swedish or Swedes who doesn’t understand Norwegian😝
According to Weinreich, since they have separate armies they are separate languages.
Here is some fun. My Grandfather (morfar) spoke Norwegian, my roommate spoke Norwegian and my Norwegian friend spoke Norwegian (duh). The roommate and friend could both speak to my grandfather, but my friend and roommate could not understand each others dialect
Interesting, It really just depends on the exposure. I’m from Värmland bordering Norway and think Norwegian mostly is easier to understand than Skånska, the dialect in Southern Sweden close to Denmark. I speak the dialect Värmländska wich is close to Norwegian and many swedes agree that värmländska is almost a mix of Swedish and Norwegian.
Pretty sure that if all 3 languages pronounced the words the same way, it could absolutely be the same language.
As a dane, I have no problem reading swedish and norwegian while understanding about 95% of the content, but when one of the two starts speaking to me, I comprehend very little of the spoken words.
how dare you compare that demon sounding sausage stuck in throat ahh danish to our fine and clear sounding swedish and norwegian?!
lol.
That was a nasty thing to say. 👎
As a Dane I feel like I should disagree, but our language is weird at
@@Ettibridget Nah, that's our internal banter
Are you telling me my potato spawned a demon sausage now?!
I’m from the Faroe Islands but I’ve been living in Sweden for 12 years now and I speak all 5 Scandinavian languages fluently (plus Finnish and Estonian). While Norwegians and Swedish are very similar, Danish is not always mutually intelligible. It is a different class and written and spoken Danish is very different
How do Icelandic and Faeroese fit into this continuum of Scandinavian languages?
They are a lot more different. Like German and Swedish.
Not mutually intelligible with D/N/S at all. I think they are partially intelligible with each other though, but not sure.
Icelandic is basically Old Norse (albeit pronounced differently than it was 1000 years ago) whereas the continental Scandinavian languages have all changed a lot more and have been more heavily influenced by other languages (notably Low German).
they are old norse its a lot diffrent
If anything they are closer to Nynorsk as they are both derived from west Norse, unlike the rest which all belong to east Norse. It's doesn't necessarily mean they understand each other. I would like to know from Icelandic, Faroise and speakers of Nynorsk, how much they understand of the other language (spoken and written).
@@stoissdk I think the fact that Norwegian speakers (a West Norse language) understand Swedish speakers (an East Norse language) very well, whereas they don't understand Icelandic (another West Norse language) at all, kind of shows that the West/East Norse classification is only useful for historical studies.
Personally I prefer the Continental Scandinavian (D/N/S) vs Insular Scandinavian (I/F) categorization instead, at least when talking about the contemporary languages.
I'm an American and when I visited Norway while growing up I thought my father's family in Oslo spoke a different language from my mother's family in Oppdal (south of Trondheim).
Your father's family did speak another language: (sober)danish
It's a great idea to make a Modern Standard Scandinavian
They certainly coordinated on the design of their national flags.
they aren’t the same (coming from someone with half of my family being swedish) they are similar though.
Very curious to see what Scandinavians think of the whole Modern Standard Scandinavian idea
The fact the end result is "danish dialect" really gets on my nerves especially when Norway is the catalyst since Danes and Swedes can't exactly understand eachother but everyone can understand Norwegians... Why does Denmark get the credit?
Norwegian is also the prettiest
But they’re not really a real country
that’s why it’s so troublesome
@@yesplatinum7956wdym not a real country?
In Denmark there isn’t quite a standardized form of danish as in Norway and Sweden, what we call standard danish is just the language in the region of Copenhagen which got to main dialects called Højkøbenhavnsk (High Copenhagen) and Lavkøbenhavnsk (Low Copenhagen), these two dialects differ in pronunciation and vocabulary and both of them have a ton of sub dialects.
In my opinion, having lived in both Norway and Denmark, it's the complete opposite. Danish actually has a standard form (rigsdansk), while no standard form exists in Norwegian.
A town approximately an hours drive away has a dialect wildly different from the ones from my hometown in Norway.
Honestly, the sub-dialects in my hometown are in some ways more varied than a lot of the towns surrounding the area I lived in Sjælland.
In Norway we don't actually have any form of standardised spoken language. Although some people consider the dialect spoken in Oslo (which has a lot of varieties even there) to be "true norwegian" this doesn't really exist
As a Dane I speak both languages because it’s alike but up here we just call it Scandinavian
As an outsider with an interest in languages, my impression is that Swedes and Norwegians have far less difficulty speaking/understanding each other than both of them have with Danish, which, to my ear, sounds very very different, even if the written form does not. Yes? No?
I have Swedish and Danish ancestry but no language skills there.
Pretty accurate AFAIK as a Dane from Jutland.
@@HiImLerazzo thanks
Depends of where u live. We here in the south of Sweden doesn’t understand norwegians at all basically but we understands danes very well
As a Dane I can attest to that. Danes are generally able to understand Swedish and Norwegian with some effort (though some people don't make that effort and prefer to use English instead). However, Swedes and Norwegians tend to have trouble understanding Danish, even though they can understand each other quite well.
Personally, I can understand written and spoken Swedish without much effort. Spoken Norwegian is a bit harder, but still doable.
I'm Swedish and you're pretty spot on, as a general rule. But it depends entirely on where the speakers are from. In general, I understand Norwegian way batter than Danish but there are so many exceptions. I understand people from Bornholm or Aarhus in Denmark better than I understand speakers of west Norwegian dialects, for example.
Intelligibility is also very asymmetrical. For instance, I used to play video games with a guy from Bergen in western Norway, and he could understand my Swedish without too much effort but I found myself not understanding him quite often - to the point where he had to clarify in English or his best attempt at Swedish (or 'svorsk'). I live on the east coast of Sweden so we're basically from opposite sides of the Scandinavian peninsula.
People from the southernmost part of Sweden usually understand Danish and west Norwegian dialects a lot better than most other Swedes. East Norwegian dialects, which includes Oslo, is extremely similar to standard Swedish and the vast majority of Swedes can understand it almost perfectly. For me personally it's pretty much 100% intelligible, like any other major Swedish dialect.
Yes of course :) dialects of Japan much more diverse that these languages.
Ryukyuan languages: SAVE US GOD DAMMIT
Kagoshima,Tsugaru and ryukian languages(so called dialects 方言）are definitely different language
Yeah, there are some so-called “dialects” that are entirely different languages, but they are not spoken much anymore. Actual dialects of Japanese aren’t as different as some of the continental North Germanic dialects can be. At least not anymore, because Standard Japanese has influenced them and caused them to converge. Maybe before the Meiji period it was more like Swedish-Norwegian-Danish.
Well we have hundreds if not thousands of dialects here in Norway, they are very diverse in both how they are written to how they sound when spoken. So much so that we don’t always understand each other. They too have dialects in Danish and Sweden just not to the same extent.
o.o
As an Norwegian person, I can’t understand nynorsk😭
The dialect map is a little off. The 14 should stretch all the way to the east coast
They should do that so people learn their language more often
There is an informal verbal mix of Swedish 🇸🇪, Norwegian 🇳🇴 and Danish 🇩🇰. I think it's called "Skandinavisk" or Scandinavian. ❤😍🇵🇭
I just started studying Norwegian over the last month or so, and I'm really amazed at the similarities I've encountered with Swedish, which I just barely "flirt-studied" several years ago.
Flörtstuderade is not a Word in Swedish
So no, not the same language. And yes, close enough.
I do like clarity.
Let's do that then
Coming from norway I understand a huge variety of norwegian dialects, also including the two standard languages "nynorsk" and "bokmål". Therefore i don't have a hard time understanding swedish or danish. Might take sometime to fully understand but I think after a couple months of living with a swedish/danish we would understand each other fully no problem.
Sounds like why Indonesian ans Malaysia are not one single language
Wow, you are a brave guy, Paul 😂
I agree, people should make Standard Scandinavian Languages
It already exists. It's called English, and it enables easy communication between the Nordic countries (including even Iceland and Finland) far better than any artifical standardised Scandinavian language ever could.
Also, English really is the hidden "fourth Scandinavian" language. It's the easiest language to learn for people in Scandinavia because it is so similar to their own languages.
@@Jonassoe
English is NOT scandinavian.
@@dalubwikaan161 its similar, because they are both germanic
Well, we sort of have that already unofficially. Many Scandinavians will actively adjust their speech and choice of words as well as speaking clearer and slower to make it easier for their neighbours to understand - for instance Danes using "Scandinavian" numbers instead of their own weird and a very old base 20 system ( 50 - 99) , which drives the Swedes and Norwegians nuts (😂), as well as pronouncing all consonants and even substituting our soft -d's ( c. ð) and -g's ( c. -gh, as in "sigh") with - d or - t and -k respectivly - and pronouncing mute d's ( mainly after l, n & r ).
@@dalubwikaan161No, but it has many "Scandinavian" elements with respect to basic vocabulary and the grammar ( word order, lack of cases for nouns and their articles, same or very similar ways of forming tenses and many parallel strong verbs etc. ), and some linguists are even proposing now that Modern & Middle English should actually be considered as a North Germanic language with a large West Germanic substrate, since the fusion between the WG Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and the NG Old Norse over some generations resulted in a completely restructured and much simplified sort of Germanic creole language, which over time became Middle English, and which is to a large degree much more similar to its NG Scandinavian cousin languages at the basic level than to its original WG sibling languages - quite the opposite of what one would have expected.
This is the main reason why most Scandinavians find that English is a very easy language to learn and speak it pretty well or better, since we already by magic sort of "know" half of the basics of the language in advance and therefore don't have to think very much most of the time. 😊
Vi [ve] kan allerede tal(k)e en sort af Engelsk fra(m) dag [daygh] en, for vi ha(ve)r [hAr] mange (many, OE monege!) af de samme simple (w)ord(s) her(e) [heir] i(n) Danmark, så det er [air] ("are", is) en naturlig ting for os [us]. Du (you, thou) kan se i(n) en hast, hvad mening {v}ore ( our, OE ure ! ) Danske (w)ord(s) haver.
I as a norwegian understand easily swedish but danish is difficult
Is the difficulty in hearing the language or reading it? I could read Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Aromanian, as a Romanian, but I can't understand them spoken as well.
@@mihair2854 When you read swedish it is more difficult than danish but it sounds nearer norwegian than Danish, danish sounds like gibberish.
It’s a matter of exposure. As a Norwegian, it took me three weeks with a danish friend going from understanding 60-70% of what he said to 99%.
@@nicolayrowe7351the vocabulary is a lot closer, but the main difference is probably the tonal/pitch accent, which only few Danish dialects have retained just a little of.
If Swedish, Danish and Norwegian was all the same language it would essentially be Swedish.
To all my danish bros: kamelåså.
To my Norwegian bros: DÆÆÆÅÅ!
German has a lot of dialects too, but although it is also spread over three different countries, both Austrians and Swiss people never said, that they would use a different language - a lot of French seeped into the Swiss-German and they even use some letters differently, but the dialect is still considered German (even if more northern native speakers struggle in understanding it properly)
Was just thinking of this and as a Swede I say: yes. If Old Norse is regarded as 1 language with 3 main dialects, then modern Scandinavian surely is also 1 language with 3 main dialects (Icelandic being something in between due to the tiny exposure to other languages). It goes without saying that this is the case because they're so damn similar. I guess the constant brother wars and rise of separate and clearly distinguished kingdoms made the foundation for this idea of each dialect being it's own unique language. Hell, even the people here are basically the same with minor variations depending on which country you are in (only including ethnic Scandinavian people of course).
Dane here. I think that it depends a bit on the context actually. The normal term used is not "dialect" as is most common in other parts of the world, but rather terms like "neighboring language" or "brother language" are used. It's an acknowledgement that the two other languages/dialects are not exactly the same, while at the same time not truly foreign languages like German or English are.
It always baffles me how Europe can have so many different dialects and languages within a few hours drive from each other
In the country side of Norway one can drive for 15 minutes to a neighbouring community, and there is a different accent) Walking in Paris, hearing another Norwegian tourist speaking in the back ground, I can usually within seconds register what region/'state' of Norway he/she origins from, and sometimes the exact city. Not that it's of any use)
And then there's Finland...
💙Perkele🤍
The dialect continuum is slowly disappearing. At least in Denmark young people are losing their dialects.
As a person who is from the Swedish speaking parts of Finland I can say there’s a noticeable difference in how the language is spoken and there’s many different dialects. The most confusing one is Närpesiska, it should be it’s own language
I would definitely not use his channel as a source of information. He talks nonsense constantly! Here's my message to him: Hello man from the Valley of the Uninformed. ;) Your statement is, as always, incorrect!
Fun Fact No. 1: There is no such thing as a modern Scandinavian language! No. 2: It does not depend on the country in which the speakers are located. The best example is the speakers from Jämtland! They are in Sweden but speak a Norwegian dialect! No 3: Linguistically speaking, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are three different languages, although they all belong to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic language family. These languages share many common roots due to their historical, cultural, and geographical proximity, but they are independent languages with different dialects, grammar rules, and pronunciation.
Question: Why do you enjoy misleading people over and over again?
Alright but remember to sleep and drink water
as a Dane, Swedish is very difficult but I can read Norweigian for like a solid minute before realising its a different language
I do all three on duolingo but a part of that is because I have hyperlexia which makes it not so difficult.
Want to know something cool
My friends speaks danish and Swedish and the funny thing is that we are a trio, but we can still understand what we’re saying because the languages are so similar
Since norweagian is pretty close to swedish and im norweagian i understand a lot of swedish
All three languages use ”s” as a cognate for the soft “c” sound unlike other language families in Europe.
As Swedish speaking Finn I can understand Norwegian, danish, Icelandic and almost German
My impression is that three written languages are very similar, but the pronunciation is different. Of the three languages, Norwegian 🇳🇴 seems to be the easiest for native English speakers to speak, while Danish 🇩🇰 language is the most difficult. Icelandic 🇮🇸 language is like the distant cousin of the three languages. 😍🇵🇭
Sometimes this is what happens, you might be actually speaking one language but because of political division, suddenly you know two or more languages, maybe not speak but understand.
In my case, Malay and Indonesian since I'm Malaysian, while I can't speak Indonesian, I can understand quite a bit without learning it, more if I do learn it. In songs, they're almost identical in accent, we can only tell by the word choice. They're much closer than the so-called Chinese dialects are to each other.
In the end, categories are simply human constructs to fit our human conveniences.
For example, Standard Indonesian and Standard Malaysian Malay are objectively the same languages but with slightly different standardisations but they are categorised as different languages due to politics.
Meanwhile, Cantonese, Fujianese etc. are completely different to Mandarin and have a completely different cultures and traditions behind them but they are called dialects of Chinese.
Yes they are. Some local elder languages might be their own languages, ex forrn gotllans language. Despite danes counts in 2*40/ounces they be way more similar than finnish vs estonian.
Which language should I start learning just to be able to understand three of these languages?
Danish if you want to understand but not be understood and Norwegian if you want to be understood and understand and Swedish if you want to be understood but not understand but be able to speak with Finns
For norweigan you need to learn almost almost 2 languages tho or so I heard
But as a swede I think Norwegian is the prettiest Nordic language
I think norwegian is the best, although i may be biased
The way people explain this to me as a native English speaker is funny because it made me realise. If someone from the deep South of the United States met someone from the Scottish highlands they'd probably struggle to understand each other despite both being native English speakers.
As a Dane i consider it all as the same language, with different dialects. I find some Danish dialects harder to understand, than typical Swedish or Norwegian.
I'm Swedish, lived most of my adult life in Norway, and have many Danish friends. Most Norwegians have watched a fair amount of Swedish TV and to a lesser extent Danish TV and can usually understand the other languages quite well. Danes and Swedes rarely watch anything from our neighbor countries. If Danes and Swedes were more like Norwegians, then we could probably all speak to one another without any great difficulty, instead of usually switching to English like most Danes and Swedes do when talking to one another.
Excuse me (swedish) you are mental if you think I can understand a Danish without reflecting on every sentence. Man I know one Danish song and the only word I understand is whisky
They have the same language and same flag damn
As an American in Norrland, I can understand the Norwegians around here better than I can understand someone from Skåne.
When you understand one of these dialects you essentially understand all the dialects just that they sound like they ate a bag of pennies whilst drunk!😂
you mean danish, northern danish and north-western danish?
lol
@@langfocusclips I'm not danish, but danish sounds like speaking with a potato in your throat and I like potatoes
There is the problem of the potato in the throat however
😂😂😂
well its more of phonics and speed tha tcreate a barrier because you could have 'a norwegian phrase that looks the same in swedish written down, or similar but hwen said it may be much quicker or said differently
As a Swedish speaker, I understand Norwegian perfectly and a tiny bit of icelandic but I can’t understand any danish.
Then how do one explain the suomi?
This is so interesting- why does it sound so similar to Newfoundland dialects I wonder? If I met someone in Newfoundland who spoke like this I would just assume they were from here
Maybe because the Vikings ”visited” Newfoundland.
As a swede, no. What will be the standard Scandinavian then? Is it not better to have 3 different languages than to have on language and 3 very different dialects? I’d say that it’s much easier to preserve the already existing dialects if we don’t create more.
Eh, to say it’s largely a geographical distinction isn’t quite hitting the mark. Even if you’re just across the border you’ll still have to deal with false friends (like rar meaning sweet or nice in Swedish, but weird in Norwegian)
And I’ll echo others that are confused that you bring bokmål and nynorsk into it, those are solely applicable to the written language. Btw, nynorsk is closer to Swedish, despite it being largely a west coast form of written Norwegian, so that would undermine the proximity argument if you were to include nynorsk and bokmål into your assessment.
Agree but rar means both nice and rare in Swedish. 😊
I am Swedish and I understod both Norwegian and Danish. I think it’s harder for younger to understand Danish since their lack of knowledge of old words and dialectical forms.
Yes, agree, younger person have harder time with the other languages. Usually most people gets better at it as time goes by and they get more used to hear to other languages in media and so on