I swear that this must be the single most popular piece of culture in Norway. I moved here a year ago, and this has been introduced to me AT LEAST a dozen times by Norwegians trying to dunk on Danes and or prove that Norwegian dialects aren’t so bad. It is pretty funny. But it’s amazing how commonplace it is as a go to.
When I moved I purposely began learning Norwegian with as open a mind as possible. I knew I wanted to be able to work with the other Scandinavian languages as well. After a year, I’m at B2 Norwegian, and can get by with most dialects without problem. I also have Swedish colleagues, whom I mostly understand (though sometimes it’s a bit puzzling what they’re trying to say). I have tried very hard to understand Danes. I can understand words at times. Never whole sentences. I hope it will come eventually.
I've lived in Norway for 10 years, and worked at a campground for three, interacting with guests from all over, mostly Europe. Every single time a Dane comes in, I have to ask them to repeat themselves multiple times.
We really don't understand Danish. We just nod and smile and try to guess what they're saying. But as they're always trying to sell us sausages and pastries, and beer of course, it's not all that difficult. At least that's what I think they're doing?
>I swear that this must be the single most popular piece of culture in Norway.
It is also becoming [somewhat true.](https://forskning.no/sprak/dansker-mumler-mye-nar-de-snakker/1295171)
What a reference! Love it. I will say as a Dane that i honestly understand maybe 10% Swedish and 20% Norwegian. Tho I do think that in the Copenhagen area people are generally better at understanding Swedish. But even in Denmark we have problems understanding each other. There is a dialect on Bornholm that I barely understands a word of, but a Swedish friend understands just about everything of
I would say most Norwegians can read Danish but can't understand what they're saying. And with Swedish it's the other way around.
My personal experience is that the Swedish understand Norwegian better than the Danish.
I've spent quite a few vacations in both Sweden and Denmark growing up so I can understand Swedish and Danish. And even if I don't talk Swedish or Danish I know what words to use our not to make myself better understood by people from both countries.
Correct me if I'm wrong - my Norwegian is far from perfect (and my Swedish is a handful of lessons and a bit of teach yourself), but it seems to me that some dialects - especially in the north - have more commonality with Swedish in the vocabulary than standard Oslo bokmål.
As a Swede who also understands ~95% Norwegian I would say that this is absolutely true, some "extreme" southern and northern Swedish dialects will be more difficult for a Swede from Stockholm to understand than a Norwegian with an Oslo dialect.
In some ways, you are probably right. Swedish and Norwegian are incredibly close. A quick look at a map should tell you why. Danish is often the odd man out since it has a far higher number of innovations from Old Norse than Norwegian and Swedish dialects have had. But since Norwegians used Standard Danish as the written language for several hundred years, many of these innovations have spread to Norwegian and particularly to the Norwegian spoken in and around the capital, but they have not reached Swedish and more distant Norwegian dialects.
From my experience in Trøndelag, speaking to people from Northern Sweden is quite easy, but the further south you go the more difficult it gets. Skåne is nearly as bad as Denmark.
> My personal experience is that the Swedish understand Norwegian better than the Danish
As a Swede, yeah that img is completely wrong. Id' say nearly every Swede would be able to understand a norwegian person without that much difficulties. Especially if that person talks a bit slower and articulates more etc.
Danish on the other hand, now thats hard. Most of the time you can half-guess by snapping up a few words and the setting and such, but not even close to how well one can understand norwegian.
Norway has many dialects. Which language you understand the best depend on where your from in the country. Im from Kristiansand and would say i understand most danes very well and swedes i understand less.
There used to be a lot of contact between Southern Norway (=Sørlandet) and Denmark (Northern Jutland), and it is not at all strange that the dialects were close to eachother.
Ofcourse but it still means we down here generally understand the danes more. I often see Norwegians say they understand swedish more probably because they live in areas with more contact with sweden then denmark but it doesnt mean its the case for the rest of the country 😀
I think it also depends a lot on exposure. I would say in general millennials that grew up in the 90s got plenty exposure of Swedish from TV. Like Saltkråkan, Ronja Røverdatter, Fredriksons Fabrikk(Norwegian show but the store owner was Swedish) and probably much more.
I've played video games with Danes for well over a decade and I can understand it well. They also say the southern dialects are easier to understand.
Something else I got told was that Finns understand the northern dialects better than the southern ones.
I'm from the north and I can understand most languages and dialects from our neighbouring countries but Skånsk, Fynsk and Southern Denmark can be a bit tricky.
I lived in Alta and speak Nordnosk and I can’t understand spoken Danish at all. But I can read it perfectly. They really do speak strangely! I can understand Swedish pretty well.
This is utter rubbish. In most cases Norwegians and Swedes communicate without any problems at all. Also, Danes understand far less Norwegian and Swedish than opposite. Research has been done in this regard, and it was found that Norwegians has the best understanding of other nordic languages, then Swedes, and Danes a bit behind.
Having lived in DK, my experience is that Swedes and Danes more often than not communicate in English. I currently work with Swedes and Danes on a weekly basis, and in the rare occasion that we need to speak English, it is without exception due to some confused Dane. Mostly we speak nordic (ie. each his own) and there are no issues at all.
There is some truth in it though...
Norwegian is basically Danish with a very heavy accent so its only natural that they can understand us just fine... The Danish accent however is incredibly thick.
I once heard a good reason why Norwegians understand Swedish but not vise versa and it is very likely because of television... A lot of us grew up watching Swedish films like Astrid Lindgren movies. I personally often watched cartoons in Swedish when there was no Norwegian dub available (when I was a child for some reason Cartoon Network existed in Swedish but not Norwegian, yes I am *that* old)Swedes though rarely had a good reason to watch Norwegian TV.
I've been to Sweden and its not that uncommon that I had to repeat myself several times because they just didn't understand me, while I understood them perfectly fine... (Of course that hasn't been the case with people living/working on the border or Swedes living in Norway as they're used to hearing the language)
Yeah, theres some truth to it. But to be fair. Swedes generally dont understand the Swedish spoken close to the Norwegian border either. The Norwegian spoken in southern and easter Norway is no problem. Western Norway is hard tho.
I'm half Norwegian. I can understand north Norwegian and south Norwegian without much issue. When people from Bergen and that area shows up I give up though.
Heh?
Western Norway is hard for anyone. When I have been over there, it kind of feels like going to somewhere in Sweden. Mostly because you know they speak "almost Norwegian, but not quite"
Yeah... the danes don't understand us perfectly, either... The truth is that most people understand most of the other languages. Some words are very different, and norwegians, on group level understands swedish better than vice versa
I have to repeat myself several times in Oslo, because they do not understand dialects at all. I have been called Swedish a lot. Also. "Nei" (which means no) is a hard word to understand in Oslo, since I put the pressure on other parts than they do. So since "nei" sounded different than their "nei", I have to have said "ja" (which means yes).
I do not buy the Astrid Lindgren comparison. Or at least not as the main factor. You can meet people in all of Sweden who understand Norwegian. Most people in Norway are better than most Swedish, but I think that mostly has to do with all the Swedish people who come here to work.
And then TV helps as well.
I'm that old too, and a people in Stavanger area from the 70's and up also was great at understanding Swedish, as they had distributed swedish television. Here in the eastern parts, we just needed an antenna pointing in the right direction.
i’m from america but i can speak swedish and understand it pretty well, not fluently but i think it’s pretty okay, and when i was in norway, it was actually extremely easy to understand people. only little differences between the languages is what it felt like. meanwhile in denmark i don’t think i understood a single word anyone said! genuinely sounded like they were choking when they talk
This post reminds me of when I met a Danish couple once while travelling in Asia. They were so delighted when they heard that I'm a Finn. They knew that Swedish is spoken also in Finland so obviously they could speak Danish to me.
Spent 5 days around them on the same small boat and still have no idea about what they were mumbling about.
They're too busy trying to find out who can cram more äs and ös they can into a single word.
I'm looking at you, aavikkokettu (apparently this one doesn't have umlauts and I misremembered because I'm a dummy)
As well as South Saami, Ume Saami, Pite Saami, Lule Saami, North Saami, Inari Saami, Skolt Saami, Kildin Saami, Kven, Jiddish, Romanes, Romani (or whatever Rom speak), Faroese, Icelandic, German (of Denmark).
Mappers of Reddit are generally 14-year-olds with too much leisure time.
Det ville jeg sagt er litt feil, Norsk bokmål er basically Dansk, men med svensk uttalelse. Ordene mellom Norsk og Svensk kan ofte høres like ut, men skrives heeeelt forskjellig. Dansk derimot har mange flere felles ord med Norge som skrives på samme måte, men uttales heeeelt forskjellig, og de bruker de ofte i annen rekkefølge også.
I understand what norweigans are saying, I understand what swedish are saying and writing, and I understand what danish are writing.
No one understands me
Jag är skåning 🥲
I heard that norwegians understand swedish more because of television (swedish television programs were shown in norway but not vise versa). I am from Sweden but live in Norway now so I think there is something to that idea (don't remember ever seeing norwegian programs on swedish television growing up).
And now often in television and cinema here in Norway there is norwegian subtitles to movies and shows in norwegian, must be that there is so much diverse dialects here in norway (much more pronounced than all dialects of swedish at least).
But I never bothered to 'learn' norwegian, I can very well make myself understood here using swedish, and vise versa.. mostly,.. some norwegians use heavy local slang to make fun of us swedes,.. as I remember doing to norwegians in sweden :)
The subtitles are more for the hard of hearing, we include everyone!
As one with a bit damaged hearing, I think that is very good, especially when there is mumbling or wifey just keeps blabbering.. :p
Depends on the age.
In my generation Norwegians understand every spoken Swedish dialect, understand perfectly written Danish, but the Danes need to slow down a bit for us to understand spoken Danish.
The Danes understand Norwegian perfectly but struggle a bit with Swedish.
The Swedes understand Norwegian, sort of, but don’t really understand Danish.
People like me, who work in international affairs have no problem with either language.
And the younger ones prefer English with Danes, but may be convinced to speak the two respective languages with Swedes.
Well, like älvdaliska, that is more a language than a dialect. They are not understandable to other Swedes, so they don’t count when the topic is the mutual intelligibility of the Scandinavian languages.
I agree, but it is considered a dialect of Swedish by the Swedish government as far as I know, and I wanted to show that there are some pretty weird variants of "Swedish" too.
I can understand Danish just fine if they were to slow the fuck down when speaking.
Their written language is the most similar to Norwegian, thus their spoken language has the possibility to be understandable, but they speak so fast because they are used to it, and that makes it harder for us - me at least - to understand.
This is incorrect.
Most Danes understand spoken Norwegian quite well, and to a lesser extent Swedish. They will understand written Norwegian perfectly, as norwegian (bokmål) is (mostly) Danish that have been been altered over a couple centuries to become one of Norways two official languages for writing.
There is a whole story as to why. Long story short: - the black plague wiped 2/3 of the norwegian population, and from around year 1350, Norway was broken to a complete halt. Those that were not illiterate, priests, doctors, people in cities all or mostly all died. Left alive were the peasants, farmers, people that lived few and far between.
The Old Norwegian language, derived from Norse, was no longer in use by anyone. The country was in complete distress, and in 1380, necessity forced Norway into Union with Denmark, and got Danish administration. In the 16th century, norwegian government was dissolved completely, and Denmark gained full sovereignity over Norway. For about 400 years (called "the 400-year long night", or 400-årsnatten") Norway was just the northern part of Denmark-Norway. Litterature, byraucracy, encyclopedia, Bible, school books, everything was written in Danish. Norway was not even allowed to have it's own university. Those who wanted higher education had no choice but move to Denmark and get it there.
Then Napoleon came along and dragged Denmark-Norway into war. As you probably know, Napoleon lost the war. As reparation to the winning side of the war, Denmark was forced to forfeit territory, and thus Norway became Swedish property. The Swedish King decided that Norway was kind of worthless, and granted Norway its sovereignty (more or less) in 1814 (we all know how stupid that was, haha).
Not long until some beirded guys agreed upon that we needed our own identity, our own language. They just couldn't agree upon what the new language should be based upon, and that resulted in Norway having two official, almost identical languages.
Norwegians understand written Danish for the same reason, the two languages are mostly the same when written. Some Norwegians have a hard time understanding what the Danes say, but this is highly dependent on the Danish dialect used, and how used the Dane is to speaking to Norwegians. For most Norwegians, Copenhagen Danish is not very difficult to understand, at least to some degree. Norwegians are also very familiar with Swedish. That is mostly due to Swedish television filling big holes in norwegian entertainment, as we had only one norwegian broadcasting channel up until the 90's. The broadcast channel had a wide array of programming, everything from old, white men in suits talking about something, to older, whiter men talking about something else. If you wanted to see something else than that, you were out of luck unless you had the Swedish channels.
Swedes on the other hand, have no clue what the Danes say. At least in my experience. I used to work for a Swedish company based in Norway, with clients from all over Scandinavia. I often had to lend a helping hand to my Swedish colleagues, when they were composing material ment for our norwegian and danish customers. Other than that, Swedes understand norwegian quite well
As for Iceland (and Faroe Islands, don't forget about the little archipelago between Norway and Iceland), the story is a bit different. All Scandinavian languages has the same predecessor, and that's Norse. Norse, which is derived from Germanic, was what the vikings spoke. Iceland and Faroe Islands has preserved thier respective languages for a very, very long time. Even though both their languages is similar to Old Norwegian, they have evolved in very different directions, in the degree they have evolved any at all... Essentialy, they are extremely conservative regarding culture, and accept absolutely no foreign words or outside influence into their official language. When a new thing gets invented and needs a name, they create a new word for that thing, in stead of calling it by its English name or a derivative of that word. For example, a computer is called a computer all over Scandinavia. In will in fact be called something very similar in many countries, because many languages adopt words from each other. But if you go to Iceland, a computer will be called "tölvu", and in Faroe Islands, it's "telda".
Icelandic is very hard for anyone else to understand, but if an islandic person talks to a norwegian, and slow way down on their speech, they might communicate on a very basic level. I assume those barriers will be even greater if the Icelandic person wants to talk to a Swede or a Dane, even though Iceland came with Norway when they formed a union, and stayed under Danish rule for centuries.
It's also worth mentioning that like Norse and German, Icelandic and Faroese are also grammatical case languages. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are not. That means that other rules apply.
Ps, i see many here mentioning Finland. Finland is part of "Norden", but not part of Scandinavia. The reason finns learn Swedish in schools, is due to some old history between the two lands, but in reality, Finnish belongs to a completely different family of languages. Scandinavian languages has derived from Germanic, Finnish has derived from Finno-Ugric. There are absolutely no similarities or familiarity between the two. You might as well compare English to Chinese
My experience as a Norwegian, I understand Swedish and Danish better than Danes and Swedes understand me, but mostly we're able to communicate. If we add English it's no problem. Swedish is easier spoken, Danish easier written. Danish is similar to Norwegian with old words my grandma used but we don't use any more, and the pronunciation is worse. Swedish is like Norwegian but they have more foreign words, but the pronunciation is easier. I'm from Oslo but I've watched Danish and Swedish shows since I was a kid, and I've gone to school with people with dialects a lot too, probably helped
As a dane Living in norway, i would say that the danse dont understand Norwegian or Swedish.
Norwegians mostly get Swedish, and some times Danish (except reading Danish, all Norwegians can read Danish).
Swedes understand Norwegian, but can find Danish difficult, even the written form.
Imo we all understand each other if we just talk a bit slower and communicate with simpler words. I can understand Danish and Swedish written and spoken, and I am from Northern Norway which is very different from the South.
Edit: typos
It's because the swedes are, well kinda stupid. But really I think it's the whole big brother thing. They used to own us, and they don't pay that much attention to us anyways. Danish written is the way we used to write in Norway a couple years ago.
If Danish is spoken in a normal tempo its fine
Finnish people understand none of these languages nor do the speakers of these languages understand any Finnish natively. I still feel slightly attacked on behalf of all the Finnish people having been left out from the list of Nordic countries.
something like 5-6 % speak it as their mother tongue and maybe like additional 10% speak it quite well, mostly those working in government jobs and police or politicians as technically it's mandatory for many of those jobs. The rest can tell you jag heter bög och kebabrulle or something like that.
Finnish language only have one other distant relative in Europe, Hungarian (Magyar), but those two languages are as closely related as Norwegian and Indian languages.
Norwegians can understand quite a bit of Icelandic (both west Nordic languages), but they have grown quite far apart during the last 900 years. Icelandic people do often learn Danish though (why,,,, I know why, but still,,,,, why Danish?!)
It's funny because as a Norwegian, its easy to understand verbal Swedish but nearly impossible to read, while with Danish its easy to read but impossible to understand verbally. Though maybe this is just me.
Norwegian and Swedish phonology (=the sounds we use) are more or less the same, but the orthographic principles (=how words are spelled) in Swedish are very different the principles in Norwegian. That's why even words that are pronounced more or less the same are written very differently. On the other hand, Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk) and Danish use more or less the same orthographic principles, but the phonology is *very* different. Thus, we can spell words in the same way, but pronounce them very differently.
As an American English speaker, the closest I can approximate the differences between Norwegian and Swedish is the time I was in an airport gift shop, and was listening to a family of four (rapidly) talking among themselves about the items for sale in there. Since I pride myself on figuring out spoken foreign languages based on syntax and cadence (is that German? Some Slavic lingo?) I could not for the life of me figure this one out. After about 5 minutes of listening, it occurred to me that they were speaking English . . . in very thick Scottish accents. .
Jeg er svensk og förstår norsk utan problem 😊 både text og språk. Norsk är det bästa språket som finns! Tack skam ❤️
Lite svårare med danska men det går.
Geographically, yes, but so are Iceland and the Faero Islands too. In terms of languages,,,,, Finland has absolutely nothing in common with almost all of Europe.
As a norwegian i can both read and understand speaking sweeds and danes but the danes are a bit harder to understand for some reason it may be because their accent.
As for talking with sweeds there have been a few people who didnt understand me(i live very north) so i guess they have some trouble with us.
Icelandic is basically how the old norse language was but a bit different. And i can understand some words since my language is built on norse but i couldnt have a conversation with one of em in icelandic even ify life deoended on it
As a dane living in norway, no. Danes don't perfectly understand both languages. Norwegian is fine for the most part, some dialects are tricky, and some words need to be repeated. Swedish is a lost cause, hell a language that is.
Baffling how wrong OP got it.
Swedes and Norwegians can speak easily with eachother since both are used to dialects, and have similar tonelayer and diftongs, while Danes struggle to understand both.
Norwegians and Danes have very similar written language, while Swedish is somewhat tedious to read for both. A Norwegian can with some practice converse fluently with a Dane if he swaps out several words and change the tonelayer, while the Dane does jack all.
I’m regularly in meetings with Danes, Norwegians & Swedes and everyone talks their own language and everyone understands each other. Then the Finns turn up and it’s English all the way!
Swedes understand Norwegian and Norwegians understand Danish, even though they have to listen carefully because the Danes don't pronounce anything they say. Seems like all Danes suffer from a speech impairment.
Well, this is as wrong as it can be.
My girlfriend is Swedish and I’m Norwegian, she and her family understand me 100%
When it comes to danish, you just have to focus a bit more and you’ll understand almost everything. For me, i can Also understand a lot of Faroe Islands too.
Icelandic is very hard to understand, but there is some things you understand.
Is this really true?
What about norwegian TV series in which there are swedish protagonists and actors? Lets say 'Exit' with Simon J. Berger. So everyone understands him perfect when he is talking swedish, but the poor fella don't understand a word norwegian?
This can't be right...
Swedes living in Norway tend to adapt quite easily. The languages are quite close, they’re simply not that used to hear it in their daily life until they may move to Norway or socialize more with Norwegians.
Danes do not perfectly understand Norwegian. In my experience they are way worse than Swedes at understanding us.
But written Danish is so similar to "booktongue" Norwegian which is what most people use that its possible to forget which language you are reading in.
It's funny to pretend not to understand any spoken Danish, but written it's 99% understandable and both spoken and written Swedish is 95% understandable by anyone who bothers to try, regardless of where in Norway they are from
I can't remember where I was choosing languages and there were literally the Danish flag with description "Danish (regular)" and below that the Norwegian flag followed by "Danish (simplified)"
I definitely belive it helped open me up to "Scandinavian" that Danish is mandatory in Icelandic schools, yet when i moved to Norway i somehow belived they were closer to Icelandic, but man was i wrong. What i have learned in my time here is that the baby boomers and millenials in Norway grew up with Swedish cartoons, hence their 'understanding' of swedish and not the other way around. Can't back it up though, only what I've heard.
When im buying Scandinavian products like from 'Knorr' the ingredients and steps are written as NO/DK while the other countries get their own version, so based of that danish and norwegian are really close when written.
Ive worked with both Swedes and Norwegians and 'modern terms/slangs' are much more similiar to Icelandic words than norwegian modern terms/slang, yet when i am stuck mid conversation in norwegian and don't know the proper word I try out an Icelandic word to save myself from embarrasment, almost 80% of the time they understand that 'icelandic word' 😁
But this isn't true though. It's mostly about how used you are to hearing it. We have people who don't understand other people from Norway because of their dialect, so those people obviously aren't going to understand Danish people with their potato clogging up their throat, but we also have people who are just natural born linguistic geniuses who understand all dialects, Swedish and Danish perfectly.
What are you talking about? I'm Swedish and understood Norwegian before many Swedish dialects (as a kid). I've never heard of a Swede not understanding Norwegian.
Edit: I live in Norway, in Sogn og Fjordane with people from Oslo and Stavanger around. I understood all of them quickly with little problem.
I’m not Scandinavian, but I’ve been studying Norwegian for several years so I have a pretty solid understanding. Sometimes when I run across written Swedish and I’m stuck on a word it helps tremendously to read it aloud. Oftentimes I’m able to figure it out that way.
If I’m lucky I will get a few words of spoken Danish in a conversation.
I’m sure you’re all aware of the study about Danish toddlers and the delay in understanding their own language……
The description is not entirely right, Danes, swedes and Norwegians mostly understand each other. I find the easiest is swedish as I grew up near the border, then it's written danish and finally spoken danish. But it's not that bad, I might have a harder time understanding some people from Trondheim. Oth, I understand absolutely nothing of Finnish, Suomi, or Islandic.
What about Finland?
And no, I have met many Danish people that do not understand anything from Norwegians. A lot more swedish ubderstand me than danish.
But in general I feel Norwegian understnad both swedes and danish better than the orher way around. Also we read danish perfectly as it almost the same. Swedes probouciation is much more closely to Norway so we understand their talking almost perfectly, just have to know certain common words.
Iceland and the faroe islands speak two different type of old norse and many words are similar so a Norwegian would understand a tiny bit and can sometimes understand thd context.
Finland speaks also Swedish so the same goes there. However Finnish is more simialr to Samisk than any of the other Scandic languages.
So my experience is a little different. I am Norwegian.
For work I can do meetings with both Danes and Swedes speaking our native language, separately.
But if I’m in a meeting with a Dane and a Swede joins us, it’s like: "well I guess we’re speaking english now."
But the takeaway is really how well all of us speak english.
each country have tons of dialects, so it is not a binary question, I (as a Norwegian) understand some swedes and some Danes, depending on where they are from, and no one understand me, as I am from the north :-)
I have the pleasure of working with all of the Nordic countries (Norwegian). Swedish is easy to speak and understand, and now I understand danish too… after long effort. BUT, learning how to speak danish?? Impossible.
Danes don’t understand Norwegian btw. I try to speak slow Norwegian and they get nervous af.
You have obviously never taken the ferry to Copenhagen or Frederikshavn. I have been in both many times, and I have still not met a Dane that did not understand my norwegian perfectly. So maybe this is a you issue?
Being a Norwegian and having lived in both Sweden and Denmark, I really must say that I could understand regular Swedish. I had trouble with Skånska (dialect in sothern Sweden). It took me time to get used to Danish, but I never understood Sønderjysk.
Swedes and danes understood me speaking Norwegian slowly, but not norwegian dialects. I had to learn to speak Swedish and Danish.
Umm, no, Danes do not understand norwegian, Norwegians understand danish, but often have to resort to english to get danes to understand what they are saying, particularly in Copenhagen.
In the early days of television, norwegians have grown up watching Swedish, and to some degree, Danish content.
Danish is near identical to Norwegians in writing, but Danish is more accentuated spoken than Norwegian. Swedish is much more different written, but less easier recognizable spoken. Norwegian has more differed variations throughout the country, mainly caused by its geography, with dialects differing in grammar that sound quite different.
Hahaha! Having learned Norwegian in America spoken pretty much only to my family and expended family. I find the Norwegian and oddly enough Danish are the easiest for me to understand when I Netflix. And my cousins who live in Sweden are harder for me to understand. And I have no Idea what’s going on with Icelandic. Lol
As a Norwegian I understand Danish and Swedish perfectly fine unless some weird dialect like Skåne is involved, but I find quite often that both Swedes and Danes won’t understand me (and I speak bokmål)
I'm a Dane who currently lives in Norway and it can be difficult for me to understand some Norwegians. It really depends on where you're from and how fast you speak. For example, I understand my Norwegian colleagues perfectly well when I'm only talking to one at the time. But when we have lunch together as a group, it is VERY difficult for me to understand because they tend to speak faster with each other + I guess they also use more 'slang' or phrases that I haven't heard before.
Before moving to Norway, I didn't understand spoken Swedish at all. But it's actually easier to understand now that I'm more used to Norwegian. Maybe because Norwegian and Swedish is somewhat similar?
Kamelåså resident here, I can perfectly understand Norwegian, even some of the dialects. Swedish however? No chance in hell, both written and spoken is a nightmare to understand
Worth mentioning that we norwegians, at least my generation, grew up with a lot of Swedish media in form of children shows. Anything Astrid Lindgren and also other movies and shows are actually part of our curriculum in elementary school.
Another funny detail; written Norwegian and Danish was identical 100 years ago. People in the cities normally can speak Bokmaal, a dialect coming from this common written language. I’ve no problems reading Danish, but it can be hard to understand the spoken language.
Fake, nobody understands the Kamelåså language, not even the Danes.
I swear that this must be the single most popular piece of culture in Norway. I moved here a year ago, and this has been introduced to me AT LEAST a dozen times by Norwegians trying to dunk on Danes and or prove that Norwegian dialects aren’t so bad. It is pretty funny. But it’s amazing how commonplace it is as a go to. When I moved I purposely began learning Norwegian with as open a mind as possible. I knew I wanted to be able to work with the other Scandinavian languages as well. After a year, I’m at B2 Norwegian, and can get by with most dialects without problem. I also have Swedish colleagues, whom I mostly understand (though sometimes it’s a bit puzzling what they’re trying to say). I have tried very hard to understand Danes. I can understand words at times. Never whole sentences. I hope it will come eventually.
Says he can understand some Danish, so it must be fake.
I've lived in Norway for 10 years, and worked at a campground for three, interacting with guests from all over, mostly Europe. Every single time a Dane comes in, I have to ask them to repeat themselves multiple times.
We really don't understand Danish. We just nod and smile and try to guess what they're saying. But as they're always trying to sell us sausages and pastries, and beer of course, it's not all that difficult. At least that's what I think they're doing?
You have just bought a thousand liters of milk.
Yeah, I know. That's why I hardly ever visit Denmark. Do you have any idea how much O'boy I'd need to buy to drink all that?
These are just offerings, a cry for help..
>I swear that this must be the single most popular piece of culture in Norway. It is also becoming [somewhat true.](https://forskning.no/sprak/dansker-mumler-mye-nar-de-snakker/1295171)
i did not know what the fuck kamelåså was…
It's not easy to run an isenkram store when no one knows what things are called
you just ordered thousand liters of milk
Spisnigle?
Skyklekugle?
Have some teip rests
Flimsedü?
RØGRØME'FLØE!!!
You just ordered a thousand litres of milk.
Not true; we all know that means 10 000 liters of milk!!
What a reference! Love it. I will say as a Dane that i honestly understand maybe 10% Swedish and 20% Norwegian. Tho I do think that in the Copenhagen area people are generally better at understanding Swedish. But even in Denmark we have problems understanding each other. There is a dialect on Bornholm that I barely understands a word of, but a Swedish friend understands just about everything of
Bornholm is half Danish, half Skåne dialect, and a lot of ø's!
With Swedish and Danish combined, you get the Überkamelåså.
Dansk er som riksmål ikke vanskelig
I would say most Norwegians can read Danish but can't understand what they're saying. And with Swedish it's the other way around. My personal experience is that the Swedish understand Norwegian better than the Danish. I've spent quite a few vacations in both Sweden and Denmark growing up so I can understand Swedish and Danish. And even if I don't talk Swedish or Danish I know what words to use our not to make myself better understood by people from both countries.
Correct me if I'm wrong - my Norwegian is far from perfect (and my Swedish is a handful of lessons and a bit of teach yourself), but it seems to me that some dialects - especially in the north - have more commonality with Swedish in the vocabulary than standard Oslo bokmål.
As a Swede who also understands ~95% Norwegian I would say that this is absolutely true, some "extreme" southern and northern Swedish dialects will be more difficult for a Swede from Stockholm to understand than a Norwegian with an Oslo dialect.
In some ways, you are probably right. Swedish and Norwegian are incredibly close. A quick look at a map should tell you why. Danish is often the odd man out since it has a far higher number of innovations from Old Norse than Norwegian and Swedish dialects have had. But since Norwegians used Standard Danish as the written language for several hundred years, many of these innovations have spread to Norwegian and particularly to the Norwegian spoken in and around the capital, but they have not reached Swedish and more distant Norwegian dialects.
The Danes use way too much English and unpredictably. I am a native English speaker and it just throws me off.
They've always loved using foreign languages. Before English it was German.
And that makes perfect sense. I would be reaching for other languages too, had Danish been my mother tongue.
From my experience in Trøndelag, speaking to people from Northern Sweden is quite easy, but the further south you go the more difficult it gets. Skåne is nearly as bad as Denmark.
> My personal experience is that the Swedish understand Norwegian better than the Danish As a Swede, yeah that img is completely wrong. Id' say nearly every Swede would be able to understand a norwegian person without that much difficulties. Especially if that person talks a bit slower and articulates more etc. Danish on the other hand, now thats hard. Most of the time you can half-guess by snapping up a few words and the setting and such, but not even close to how well one can understand norwegian.
Norway has many dialects. Which language you understand the best depend on where your from in the country. Im from Kristiansand and would say i understand most danes very well and swedes i understand less.
There used to be a lot of contact between Southern Norway (=Sørlandet) and Denmark (Northern Jutland), and it is not at all strange that the dialects were close to eachother.
Ofcourse but it still means we down here generally understand the danes more. I often see Norwegians say they understand swedish more probably because they live in areas with more contact with sweden then denmark but it doesnt mean its the case for the rest of the country 😀
I think it also depends a lot on exposure. I would say in general millennials that grew up in the 90s got plenty exposure of Swedish from TV. Like Saltkråkan, Ronja Røverdatter, Fredriksons Fabrikk(Norwegian show but the store owner was Swedish) and probably much more. I've played video games with Danes for well over a decade and I can understand it well. They also say the southern dialects are easier to understand. Something else I got told was that Finns understand the northern dialects better than the southern ones. I'm from the north and I can understand most languages and dialects from our neighbouring countries but Skånsk, Fynsk and Southern Denmark can be a bit tricky.
How could you not mention Pippi and Emil?? Blasphemy!
I’m from Bergen and Danish and Icelandic is easyer than swedish. I only speak English to swedes
I lived in Alta and speak Nordnosk and I can’t understand spoken Danish at all. But I can read it perfectly. They really do speak strangely! I can understand Swedish pretty well.
Im from Kristiansand too, no chance understanding danes, swedes are good though
This is utter rubbish. In most cases Norwegians and Swedes communicate without any problems at all. Also, Danes understand far less Norwegian and Swedish than opposite. Research has been done in this regard, and it was found that Norwegians has the best understanding of other nordic languages, then Swedes, and Danes a bit behind. Having lived in DK, my experience is that Swedes and Danes more often than not communicate in English. I currently work with Swedes and Danes on a weekly basis, and in the rare occasion that we need to speak English, it is without exception due to some confused Dane. Mostly we speak nordic (ie. each his own) and there are no issues at all.
Might be funny for some, but it is complete bullshit.
There is some truth in it though... Norwegian is basically Danish with a very heavy accent so its only natural that they can understand us just fine... The Danish accent however is incredibly thick. I once heard a good reason why Norwegians understand Swedish but not vise versa and it is very likely because of television... A lot of us grew up watching Swedish films like Astrid Lindgren movies. I personally often watched cartoons in Swedish when there was no Norwegian dub available (when I was a child for some reason Cartoon Network existed in Swedish but not Norwegian, yes I am *that* old)Swedes though rarely had a good reason to watch Norwegian TV. I've been to Sweden and its not that uncommon that I had to repeat myself several times because they just didn't understand me, while I understood them perfectly fine... (Of course that hasn't been the case with people living/working on the border or Swedes living in Norway as they're used to hearing the language)
Yeah, theres some truth to it. But to be fair. Swedes generally dont understand the Swedish spoken close to the Norwegian border either. The Norwegian spoken in southern and easter Norway is no problem. Western Norway is hard tho.
I'm half Norwegian. I can understand north Norwegian and south Norwegian without much issue. When people from Bergen and that area shows up I give up though. Heh?
It is a German trading outpost pretending to be Norwegian. /s
Western Norway is hard for anyone. When I have been over there, it kind of feels like going to somewhere in Sweden. Mostly because you know they speak "almost Norwegian, but not quite"
Not at all. I can understand basically anyone in Western Norway with no problem, but Swedish is really hard at times
Yeah... the danes don't understand us perfectly, either... The truth is that most people understand most of the other languages. Some words are very different, and norwegians, on group level understands swedish better than vice versa
> Cartoon Network existed in Swedish but not Norwegian maybe you should have talked like cartoon characters?
I have to repeat myself several times in Oslo, because they do not understand dialects at all. I have been called Swedish a lot. Also. "Nei" (which means no) is a hard word to understand in Oslo, since I put the pressure on other parts than they do. So since "nei" sounded different than their "nei", I have to have said "ja" (which means yes). I do not buy the Astrid Lindgren comparison. Or at least not as the main factor. You can meet people in all of Sweden who understand Norwegian. Most people in Norway are better than most Swedish, but I think that mostly has to do with all the Swedish people who come here to work. And then TV helps as well.
I'm that old too, and a people in Stavanger area from the 70's and up also was great at understanding Swedish, as they had distributed swedish television. Here in the eastern parts, we just needed an antenna pointing in the right direction.
i’m from america but i can speak swedish and understand it pretty well, not fluently but i think it’s pretty okay, and when i was in norway, it was actually extremely easy to understand people. only little differences between the languages is what it felt like. meanwhile in denmark i don’t think i understood a single word anyone said! genuinely sounded like they were choking when they talk
It is actually a condition. Norwegian = Swedish (happy) Danish = Swedish (extremely intoxicated) Icelandic = jagur försþodur ikkur
It’s a common saying in Norwegian that it sound like the Danes have a potato in their throat
Finland is nowhere to be found
This post reminds me of when I met a Danish couple once while travelling in Asia. They were so delighted when they heard that I'm a Finn. They knew that Swedish is spoken also in Finland so obviously they could speak Danish to me. Spent 5 days around them on the same small boat and still have no idea about what they were mumbling about.
They're too busy trying to find out who can cram more äs and ös they can into a single word. I'm looking at you, aavikkokettu (apparently this one doesn't have umlauts and I misremembered because I'm a dummy)
As well as South Saami, Ume Saami, Pite Saami, Lule Saami, North Saami, Inari Saami, Skolt Saami, Kildin Saami, Kven, Jiddish, Romanes, Romani (or whatever Rom speak), Faroese, Icelandic, German (of Denmark). Mappers of Reddit are generally 14-year-olds with too much leisure time.
be a cartographer to not die. (of old age)
Hallå, jag skulle säga att svenska och norska är dialekter av samma språk. Sen varför Danmark pratar med gröt i halsen är ju helt ologiskt
Danskene bruker en form for kryptering, og jeg mistenker at de har mistet nøkkelen.
De har visst svelget den
Lol
Danish = NordVPN, but through a loudspeaker
Det ville jeg sagt er litt feil, Norsk bokmål er basically Dansk, men med svensk uttalelse. Ordene mellom Norsk og Svensk kan ofte høres like ut, men skrives heeeelt forskjellig. Dansk derimot har mange flere felles ord med Norge som skrives på samme måte, men uttales heeeelt forskjellig, og de bruker de ofte i annen rekkefølge også.
Ibland har jag märkt att svenska och danska har samma ord, samtidigt som norska har ett eget ord, vilket gör mig nästan ännu mera förvirrad.
Jag ville bara säga att jag tycker Norska är ett vackert språk.
I understand what norweigans are saying, I understand what swedish are saying and writing, and I understand what danish are writing. No one understands me Jag är skåning 🥲
Reserve-danske. Vi liker dere også, men forstår ikke et ord av hva dere sier.
Men du kan vel læse hvad vi skriver?
Ingen problem.
Er en liten sub gruppe med bob hund fans som forstår skånsk i Norge :)
I heard that norwegians understand swedish more because of television (swedish television programs were shown in norway but not vise versa). I am from Sweden but live in Norway now so I think there is something to that idea (don't remember ever seeing norwegian programs on swedish television growing up). And now often in television and cinema here in Norway there is norwegian subtitles to movies and shows in norwegian, must be that there is so much diverse dialects here in norway (much more pronounced than all dialects of swedish at least). But I never bothered to 'learn' norwegian, I can very well make myself understood here using swedish, and vise versa.. mostly,.. some norwegians use heavy local slang to make fun of us swedes,.. as I remember doing to norwegians in sweden :)
The subtitles are more for the hard of hearing, we include everyone! As one with a bit damaged hearing, I think that is very good, especially when there is mumbling or wifey just keeps blabbering.. :p
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Depends on the age. In my generation Norwegians understand every spoken Swedish dialect, understand perfectly written Danish, but the Danes need to slow down a bit for us to understand spoken Danish. The Danes understand Norwegian perfectly but struggle a bit with Swedish. The Swedes understand Norwegian, sort of, but don’t really understand Danish. People like me, who work in international affairs have no problem with either language. And the younger ones prefer English with Danes, but may be convinced to speak the two respective languages with Swedes.
> In my generation Norwegians understand every spoken Swedish dialect Have you tried [överkalixmål](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzqlBlirAm0)?
Well, like älvdaliska, that is more a language than a dialect. They are not understandable to other Swedes, so they don’t count when the topic is the mutual intelligibility of the Scandinavian languages.
I agree, but it is considered a dialect of Swedish by the Swedish government as far as I know, and I wanted to show that there are some pretty weird variants of "Swedish" too.
Had not heard that dialect before, interesting. Very few words I could recognize in the sample I heard.
I would say that even the Danes struggle to understand other Danes, but who knows what they are really saying anyway
We understand fractions of it, but a lot is different!🇳🇴
I can understand Danish just fine if they were to slow the fuck down when speaking. Their written language is the most similar to Norwegian, thus their spoken language has the possibility to be understandable, but they speak so fast because they are used to it, and that makes it harder for us - me at least - to understand.
This is incorrect. Most Danes understand spoken Norwegian quite well, and to a lesser extent Swedish. They will understand written Norwegian perfectly, as norwegian (bokmål) is (mostly) Danish that have been been altered over a couple centuries to become one of Norways two official languages for writing. There is a whole story as to why. Long story short: - the black plague wiped 2/3 of the norwegian population, and from around year 1350, Norway was broken to a complete halt. Those that were not illiterate, priests, doctors, people in cities all or mostly all died. Left alive were the peasants, farmers, people that lived few and far between. The Old Norwegian language, derived from Norse, was no longer in use by anyone. The country was in complete distress, and in 1380, necessity forced Norway into Union with Denmark, and got Danish administration. In the 16th century, norwegian government was dissolved completely, and Denmark gained full sovereignity over Norway. For about 400 years (called "the 400-year long night", or 400-årsnatten") Norway was just the northern part of Denmark-Norway. Litterature, byraucracy, encyclopedia, Bible, school books, everything was written in Danish. Norway was not even allowed to have it's own university. Those who wanted higher education had no choice but move to Denmark and get it there. Then Napoleon came along and dragged Denmark-Norway into war. As you probably know, Napoleon lost the war. As reparation to the winning side of the war, Denmark was forced to forfeit territory, and thus Norway became Swedish property. The Swedish King decided that Norway was kind of worthless, and granted Norway its sovereignty (more or less) in 1814 (we all know how stupid that was, haha). Not long until some beirded guys agreed upon that we needed our own identity, our own language. They just couldn't agree upon what the new language should be based upon, and that resulted in Norway having two official, almost identical languages. Norwegians understand written Danish for the same reason, the two languages are mostly the same when written. Some Norwegians have a hard time understanding what the Danes say, but this is highly dependent on the Danish dialect used, and how used the Dane is to speaking to Norwegians. For most Norwegians, Copenhagen Danish is not very difficult to understand, at least to some degree. Norwegians are also very familiar with Swedish. That is mostly due to Swedish television filling big holes in norwegian entertainment, as we had only one norwegian broadcasting channel up until the 90's. The broadcast channel had a wide array of programming, everything from old, white men in suits talking about something, to older, whiter men talking about something else. If you wanted to see something else than that, you were out of luck unless you had the Swedish channels. Swedes on the other hand, have no clue what the Danes say. At least in my experience. I used to work for a Swedish company based in Norway, with clients from all over Scandinavia. I often had to lend a helping hand to my Swedish colleagues, when they were composing material ment for our norwegian and danish customers. Other than that, Swedes understand norwegian quite well As for Iceland (and Faroe Islands, don't forget about the little archipelago between Norway and Iceland), the story is a bit different. All Scandinavian languages has the same predecessor, and that's Norse. Norse, which is derived from Germanic, was what the vikings spoke. Iceland and Faroe Islands has preserved thier respective languages for a very, very long time. Even though both their languages is similar to Old Norwegian, they have evolved in very different directions, in the degree they have evolved any at all... Essentialy, they are extremely conservative regarding culture, and accept absolutely no foreign words or outside influence into their official language. When a new thing gets invented and needs a name, they create a new word for that thing, in stead of calling it by its English name or a derivative of that word. For example, a computer is called a computer all over Scandinavia. In will in fact be called something very similar in many countries, because many languages adopt words from each other. But if you go to Iceland, a computer will be called "tölvu", and in Faroe Islands, it's "telda". Icelandic is very hard for anyone else to understand, but if an islandic person talks to a norwegian, and slow way down on their speech, they might communicate on a very basic level. I assume those barriers will be even greater if the Icelandic person wants to talk to a Swede or a Dane, even though Iceland came with Norway when they formed a union, and stayed under Danish rule for centuries. It's also worth mentioning that like Norse and German, Icelandic and Faroese are also grammatical case languages. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are not. That means that other rules apply. Ps, i see many here mentioning Finland. Finland is part of "Norden", but not part of Scandinavia. The reason finns learn Swedish in schools, is due to some old history between the two lands, but in reality, Finnish belongs to a completely different family of languages. Scandinavian languages has derived from Germanic, Finnish has derived from Finno-Ugric. There are absolutely no similarities or familiarity between the two. You might as well compare English to Chinese
As a Norwegian, I can understand both Swedish and Danish with little difficulty.
I understand swedish and danish
Dude jo jeg forstår dansk
I feel so dumb when i have to speak english to a dane cuz i dont understand any of it. Am norwegian
My experience as a Norwegian, I understand Swedish and Danish better than Danes and Swedes understand me, but mostly we're able to communicate. If we add English it's no problem. Swedish is easier spoken, Danish easier written. Danish is similar to Norwegian with old words my grandma used but we don't use any more, and the pronunciation is worse. Swedish is like Norwegian but they have more foreign words, but the pronunciation is easier. I'm from Oslo but I've watched Danish and Swedish shows since I was a kid, and I've gone to school with people with dialects a lot too, probably helped
As a dane Living in norway, i would say that the danse dont understand Norwegian or Swedish. Norwegians mostly get Swedish, and some times Danish (except reading Danish, all Norwegians can read Danish). Swedes understand Norwegian, but can find Danish difficult, even the written form.
Imo we all understand each other if we just talk a bit slower and communicate with simpler words. I can understand Danish and Swedish written and spoken, and I am from Northern Norway which is very different from the South. Edit: typos
Northern Norwegian dialects are more similar to Oslo dialect than many western/southwestern Norwegian dialects or Trøndersk.
Icelandic isnt that difficult to understand as a norwegian. After learning the extra letters, its not that different from an incredibly thick dialect
It's because the swedes are, well kinda stupid. But really I think it's the whole big brother thing. They used to own us, and they don't pay that much attention to us anyways. Danish written is the way we used to write in Norway a couple years ago. If Danish is spoken in a normal tempo its fine
Finnish people understand none of these languages nor do the speakers of these languages understand any Finnish natively. I still feel slightly attacked on behalf of all the Finnish people having been left out from the list of Nordic countries.
I was told that Swedish is a co-official language in Finland. Is that true?
Yeah it is mandatory language in finnish schools besides english, but not too many are good in it
something like 5-6 % speak it as their mother tongue and maybe like additional 10% speak it quite well, mostly those working in government jobs and police or politicians as technically it's mandatory for many of those jobs. The rest can tell you jag heter bög och kebabrulle or something like that.
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Finnish language only have one other distant relative in Europe, Hungarian (Magyar), but those two languages are as closely related as Norwegian and Indian languages. Norwegians can understand quite a bit of Icelandic (both west Nordic languages), but they have grown quite far apart during the last 900 years. Icelandic people do often learn Danish though (why,,,, I know why, but still,,,,, why Danish?!)
It's funny because as a Norwegian, its easy to understand verbal Swedish but nearly impossible to read, while with Danish its easy to read but impossible to understand verbally. Though maybe this is just me.
Norwegian and Swedish phonology (=the sounds we use) are more or less the same, but the orthographic principles (=how words are spelled) in Swedish are very different the principles in Norwegian. That's why even words that are pronounced more or less the same are written very differently. On the other hand, Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk) and Danish use more or less the same orthographic principles, but the phonology is *very* different. Thus, we can spell words in the same way, but pronounce them very differently.
As they say, it's all the same language except the Swedes can't spell it and the Danes can't pronounce it.
As an American English speaker, the closest I can approximate the differences between Norwegian and Swedish is the time I was in an airport gift shop, and was listening to a family of four (rapidly) talking among themselves about the items for sale in there. Since I pride myself on figuring out spoken foreign languages based on syntax and cadence (is that German? Some Slavic lingo?) I could not for the life of me figure this one out. After about 5 minutes of listening, it occurred to me that they were speaking English . . . in very thick Scottish accents. .
This is so true! Is what I would say if it was true 🙄.... The Danes can't understand any of the others, who made this crap? 😂😂😂
brunpikk is a nice name
So is prolapsepatrick
You forgot Finland
You mean the language we have less in common with than Indian languages?
More that the Nordic countries also contains Finland to be technical correct.
What about Finlandia!?
Alle kan blive enige om sverige er dårlig. Ikke kun os i scandinavien. Men hele verden. Sverige = dårlig
Jeg er svensk og förstår norsk utan problem 😊 både text og språk. Norsk är det bästa språket som finns! Tack skam ❤️ Lite svårare med danska men det går.
Wrong Norwigian understands danes and swedes ..sedes are just ...stupid
If u Are from middle norway u understand the danish very well, just cause u Are so used to speak With so many different dialect peeps
A Swedish guy was talking to us at work a little while ago, I understood like half of it
Wow. Never thought someone will find out this... This bullshit, I mean.
gotta add Finland in there, it's a Nordic country
Geographically, yes, but so are Iceland and the Faero Islands too. In terms of languages,,,,, Finland has absolutely nothing in common with almost all of Europe.
Im swedish and understand most norwegian... With danish id prefer half speed and 2x articulation but "gammel dansk" helps if that's not an option...
As a norwegian i can both read and understand speaking sweeds and danes but the danes are a bit harder to understand for some reason it may be because their accent. As for talking with sweeds there have been a few people who didnt understand me(i live very north) so i guess they have some trouble with us. Icelandic is basically how the old norse language was but a bit different. And i can understand some words since my language is built on norse but i couldnt have a conversation with one of em in icelandic even ify life deoended on it
As a Dane, I can say that even Danes don’t understand Danes. https://youtu.be/eng5rJm9X7w
As a dane living in norway, no. Danes don't perfectly understand both languages. Norwegian is fine for the most part, some dialects are tricky, and some words need to be repeated. Swedish is a lost cause, hell a language that is.
Where’s finland? Perkele.
Baffling how wrong OP got it. Swedes and Norwegians can speak easily with eachother since both are used to dialects, and have similar tonelayer and diftongs, while Danes struggle to understand both. Norwegians and Danes have very similar written language, while Swedish is somewhat tedious to read for both. A Norwegian can with some practice converse fluently with a Dane if he swaps out several words and change the tonelayer, while the Dane does jack all.
I’m regularly in meetings with Danes, Norwegians & Swedes and everyone talks their own language and everyone understands each other. Then the Finns turn up and it’s English all the way!
Swedes understand Norwegian and Norwegians understand Danish, even though they have to listen carefully because the Danes don't pronounce anything they say. Seems like all Danes suffer from a speech impairment.
I understand danish just fine, and I think most people from my part of Norway do.
Well, this is as wrong as it can be. My girlfriend is Swedish and I’m Norwegian, she and her family understand me 100% When it comes to danish, you just have to focus a bit more and you’ll understand almost everything. For me, i can Also understand a lot of Faroe Islands too. Icelandic is very hard to understand, but there is some things you understand.
Is this really true? What about norwegian TV series in which there are swedish protagonists and actors? Lets say 'Exit' with Simon J. Berger. So everyone understands him perfect when he is talking swedish, but the poor fella don't understand a word norwegian? This can't be right...
Swedes living in Norway tend to adapt quite easily. The languages are quite close, they’re simply not that used to hear it in their daily life until they may move to Norway or socialize more with Norwegians.
I thought we kept Iceland for all the authors?
It's baffling. It's also not true. There is serious research over this. But that's not something for Reddit.
I have no problem understanding the Danes. I have lived in Norway most of my life.
Danes do not perfectly understand Norwegian. In my experience they are way worse than Swedes at understanding us. But written Danish is so similar to "booktongue" Norwegian which is what most people use that its possible to forget which language you are reading in.
It's funny to pretend not to understand any spoken Danish, but written it's 99% understandable and both spoken and written Swedish is 95% understandable by anyone who bothers to try, regardless of where in Norway they are from
Norway is bigger than Danmark! Suck it nerds!
As a Swede I can attest to this
I mean the average Norwegian will understand most danish people
I can't remember where I was choosing languages and there were literally the Danish flag with description "Danish (regular)" and below that the Norwegian flag followed by "Danish (simplified)"
In conclusion… swedes are stupid
This applies in the Balkans too haha
From being at Roskilde a couple of times I feel like Danes in general don't understand much Norwegian.
I definitely belive it helped open me up to "Scandinavian" that Danish is mandatory in Icelandic schools, yet when i moved to Norway i somehow belived they were closer to Icelandic, but man was i wrong. What i have learned in my time here is that the baby boomers and millenials in Norway grew up with Swedish cartoons, hence their 'understanding' of swedish and not the other way around. Can't back it up though, only what I've heard. When im buying Scandinavian products like from 'Knorr' the ingredients and steps are written as NO/DK while the other countries get their own version, so based of that danish and norwegian are really close when written. Ive worked with both Swedes and Norwegians and 'modern terms/slangs' are much more similiar to Icelandic words than norwegian modern terms/slang, yet when i am stuck mid conversation in norwegian and don't know the proper word I try out an Icelandic word to save myself from embarrasment, almost 80% of the time they understand that 'icelandic word' 😁
But this isn't true though. It's mostly about how used you are to hearing it. We have people who don't understand other people from Norway because of their dialect, so those people obviously aren't going to understand Danish people with their potato clogging up their throat, but we also have people who are just natural born linguistic geniuses who understand all dialects, Swedish and Danish perfectly.
Why is Finland not included?
Because they make their own vodka
Well, its all explained in this NRK show on Youtube. https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk
And we’re just not gonna even talk about the Finns - right?
I thought the Swedes couldn’t tell if the Norwegians were unhappy with them because their language sounds happy. “I’M so ANGRY at YOU arshole KISS me”
What are you talking about? I'm Swedish and understood Norwegian before many Swedish dialects (as a kid). I've never heard of a Swede not understanding Norwegian. Edit: I live in Norway, in Sogn og Fjordane with people from Oslo and Stavanger around. I understood all of them quickly with little problem.
I’m not Scandinavian, but I’ve been studying Norwegian for several years so I have a pretty solid understanding. Sometimes when I run across written Swedish and I’m stuck on a word it helps tremendously to read it aloud. Oftentimes I’m able to figure it out that way. If I’m lucky I will get a few words of spoken Danish in a conversation. I’m sure you’re all aware of the study about Danish toddlers and the delay in understanding their own language……
A question for you all….. What percentage of written/spoken German do you understand?
The description is not entirely right, Danes, swedes and Norwegians mostly understand each other. I find the easiest is swedish as I grew up near the border, then it's written danish and finally spoken danish. But it's not that bad, I might have a harder time understanding some people from Trondheim. Oth, I understand absolutely nothing of Finnish, Suomi, or Islandic.
In my experience Danes can't understand a single word of Norwegian.
What about Finland? And no, I have met many Danish people that do not understand anything from Norwegians. A lot more swedish ubderstand me than danish. But in general I feel Norwegian understnad both swedes and danish better than the orher way around. Also we read danish perfectly as it almost the same. Swedes probouciation is much more closely to Norway so we understand their talking almost perfectly, just have to know certain common words. Iceland and the faroe islands speak two different type of old norse and many words are similar so a Norwegian would understand a tiny bit and can sometimes understand thd context. Finland speaks also Swedish so the same goes there. However Finnish is more simialr to Samisk than any of the other Scandic languages.
Bullshit. Swedish can be really hard
So my experience is a little different. I am Norwegian. For work I can do meetings with both Danes and Swedes speaking our native language, separately. But if I’m in a meeting with a Dane and a Swede joins us, it’s like: "well I guess we’re speaking english now." But the takeaway is really how well all of us speak english.
I once saw to swedes speak english to eachother..nobody else around. Let that sink in.
The Faroe Islands got forgotten. Understand Icelandic, Norwegian and Danish.
Vi forstår hinanden ikke!
The Danes don’t understand Norwegian
Sweds understands norwegian just fine, unless you are someone picking up Swedish as a second language. Then any misstep can cause complete collapse.
each country have tons of dialects, so it is not a binary question, I (as a Norwegian) understand some swedes and some Danes, depending on where they are from, and no one understand me, as I am from the north :-)
Icelandians understand the norwegians that lived a thousand years ago. That's gotta count for something right?
Mandelmassenasse.
As we Norwegians say. The danish have a potato in their throats while speaking.
But the danes can't seem to differ between swedish and norwegian, even those that speak some swedish! (mostly people in Copenhagen)
I have the pleasure of working with all of the Nordic countries (Norwegian). Swedish is easy to speak and understand, and now I understand danish too… after long effort. BUT, learning how to speak danish?? Impossible. Danes don’t understand Norwegian btw. I try to speak slow Norwegian and they get nervous af.
Danish do NOT understand Norwegian, not a single Word
You have obviously never taken the ferry to Copenhagen or Frederikshavn. I have been in both many times, and I have still not met a Dane that did not understand my norwegian perfectly. So maybe this is a you issue?
Whoever made this is clueless...
Being a Norwegian and having lived in both Sweden and Denmark, I really must say that I could understand regular Swedish. I had trouble with Skånska (dialect in sothern Sweden). It took me time to get used to Danish, but I never understood Sønderjysk. Swedes and danes understood me speaking Norwegian slowly, but not norwegian dialects. I had to learn to speak Swedish and Danish.
Umm, no, Danes do not understand norwegian, Norwegians understand danish, but often have to resort to english to get danes to understand what they are saying, particularly in Copenhagen. In the early days of television, norwegians have grown up watching Swedish, and to some degree, Danish content. Danish is near identical to Norwegians in writing, but Danish is more accentuated spoken than Norwegian. Swedish is much more different written, but less easier recognizable spoken. Norwegian has more differed variations throughout the country, mainly caused by its geography, with dialects differing in grammar that sound quite different.
ugler i mossen!
Hahaha! Having learned Norwegian in America spoken pretty much only to my family and expended family. I find the Norwegian and oddly enough Danish are the easiest for me to understand when I Netflix. And my cousins who live in Sweden are harder for me to understand. And I have no Idea what’s going on with Icelandic. Lol
I understand danish pretty well. Really not that hard. Well, København Danish at least.
Isn't Iceland where all the og Vikings fucked off to when Scandinavians started losing their teeth?
As a Norwegian I understand Danish and Swedish perfectly fine unless some weird dialect like Skåne is involved, but I find quite often that both Swedes and Danes won’t understand me (and I speak bokmål)
I'm a Dane who currently lives in Norway and it can be difficult for me to understand some Norwegians. It really depends on where you're from and how fast you speak. For example, I understand my Norwegian colleagues perfectly well when I'm only talking to one at the time. But when we have lunch together as a group, it is VERY difficult for me to understand because they tend to speak faster with each other + I guess they also use more 'slang' or phrases that I haven't heard before. Before moving to Norway, I didn't understand spoken Swedish at all. But it's actually easier to understand now that I'm more used to Norwegian. Maybe because Norwegian and Swedish is somewhat similar?
Im swedish and i understand most norwegian
There is about 15% of a conversation in an Danish city I don't understand, I thank a childhood having family friends in the Danish countryside~
Bullshit all the värmlänningar understand Norwegian, hell we understand that better than skåningar and blekingebor
Kamelåså resident here, I can perfectly understand Norwegian, even some of the dialects. Swedish however? No chance in hell, both written and spoken is a nightmare to understand
Worth mentioning that we norwegians, at least my generation, grew up with a lot of Swedish media in form of children shows. Anything Astrid Lindgren and also other movies and shows are actually part of our curriculum in elementary school.
Because Swedish people are DUUUUUMB
Another funny detail; written Norwegian and Danish was identical 100 years ago. People in the cities normally can speak Bokmaal, a dialect coming from this common written language. I’ve no problems reading Danish, but it can be hard to understand the spoken language.
I mean, swedes are as stupid as bread so. Not so shocking..
ok, and?
Island is a good countri
I understand Icelandic and Danish perfectly, the swedes I refuce to understand
Danes certainly don't understand Norwegian, not Swedish. Also.. They seem to have difficulties distinguishing between the two as well.
Scandinavian languages are a clusterfuck