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So I guess Swedish and Norwegian are pretty much like Czech and Slovak. Is it so? Czech and Slovak are also separate languages and further away then American and British enlgish. Yet, we can mostly understand each other. I can't speak or write Slovakian, but could probably mostly understand spoken Slovakian and even a bit written. Slovak really sounds like if you spoke Czech with lots of spelling mistakes
I guess the comparison is fine though I'm guessing Czech and slovak are even closer. Norway has been thrown back and forth between Sweden and Denmark Slovakia has been constantly under Bohemia/Czechia (or IN the same country at the very least) for a lot longer.
For some reason I came to think of this child show I was growing up with, and saw there was different versions for it. I grew up with the Swedish version, thats how I mostly know my swedish.
Swedish:
Norwegian:
Danish:
Swedish:
Norwegian:
Danish:
Good point. So maybe more like Dutch and German. Like written is hard to read, but you can understand not allspoken dutch, but some definitely while only knowing German. Such as Goede morgen, which in German is Gute morgen. Though also weren't both Sweden and Norway in the Kalmar Union for a time and then didn't Sweden have some parts of Norway. So they are close too and Czech and Slovak were even originally in the HRE and Hungary respectively
Well they're all Germanic, so it does make sense that they have it similar. Pretty much every germanic language has a variation of gut morgen. Good morning, goede morgen, god morgen, god morgon, gute morgen all mean the same
The breakdown is this. Norway end up in a union with Sweden after Håkon V dies in 1319.
Norway is alone in a union with Sweden for 70 years.
Then Denmark joins the union and they are in the kalmar union for 134 years.
Then Sweden goes independent and Norway and Denmark is in a union for 294 years
And Norway is in a union under Sweden for 91 years.
You can't really compare the 134 years Sweden was under danish rule or the collective (if broken up) 161 years Norway has been under a union with Sweden to the 428 years Norway as under a union with Denmark.
Meh, politics is not *that* influential. Sweden and Finland were more integrated as one country and for a longer period. I'd also argue that they are culturally closer than Denmark and Norway are, but that doesn't really change the language. Sure, bokmål is essentially written Danish but the languages have developed quite differently.
If you hear a dane speak, its just sounds comming at you really really fast. Rest of us, there are words you dont understand.
granted, none of it make sense to the stranger.
sorry Denmark
granted, none of it make sense to the stranger.
sorry Denmark
Yes. They both speak English...
If a swede a dane and a norwegian meets they usually end up speaking in English.
Northern Sweden and Finland share many cultural elements too, many northern Swedes speak Finnish and manny Finns speak Swedish. Finland was a Swedish protectorate for 800 years. Finnish is though very difrent from other Scandinavian languages, so unless you’ve grown up with Finnish speakers, you would nit understand it. But I have heard that Estonian ad Finnish is really close
Well, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are all finno-ugric languages, like Russian, polish, Ukrainian are all slavic languages, or danish, german are both germanic languages.
Finland was an integrated part of Sweden, it was more Swedish than the areas Sweden took from Denmark and Norway.
Finnish and Estonian are as close to Hungarian as Czech is to Persian, Albanian to English, Celtic to Sanskrit, Spanish to Armenian, Lithuanian to Kurdish, etc.
In much the same way Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are finno-ugric, the abovementioned languages are all indo-european.
But then where do you include the Uralic language group? I think the Uralic Language group of which they are part is like Indo-European. And then Finnish-Ugric being subdivisions of Uralic are like Slavic, Romance, etc. . Thus they're more like the difference between Czech and Macedonian, Romanian and Spanish etc.
Uralic is more or less only a synonym to finno-ugric.
I speak Finnish, in addition to several indo-European languages, and only a handful words are distantly similar between it and Hungarian (f.ex fish). Comparable to how most if not all -European languages have e.g. similar variations of basic words including family members such as mother, father, brother and sister. This is not present between Finnish and Hungarian.
My Russian is far worse than my Finnish, but I can read a menu in Bulgarian or Slovenian and get most of it, due to how close Slavic languages are. Finnish skills are useless in front of an Hungarian menu.
Not really. Finno-Ugric excludes the Samoyedic language sub-group (spoken in communities near the Ural mouintnas).
Yeah, that might've been a wrong comparison. They're probably further away. However Uralic includes samoyedic, which Finno-Ugric does not
This distinction is, however, disputed.
Finnic languages could be comparable to Slavic, Latin, Germanic etc. Finnic and Sami groups are sort of akin to Baltic and Slavic.
Heck the indo european languages are more linked than that, I'm Swedish and had had several Iranian friends growing up and there are several words that when you know what they mean realize how they are related. So the swedish iranian analogy seems to fit rather well.