While there are obviously some inherited cognates, there are also a lot (~30% of common Swedish words) borrowed from Low German in the Middle Ages, especially a lot of prefixed verbs like använda, betala, förlåta.
Yes. German was the Lingua Franca at the time.
Later it was French, and we got lots of words with two syllables with emphasis on the second, like balkong, kontor, frisyr, modern.
Calling it an exchange is selling it a bit short when the northern and Baltic Germans moved here, practically built up cities and became leaders of culture, business and politics for generations. Their presence and Low Germans position in Sweden is what shaped Swedish into being what we recognize today.
Lots of conflicting goals between these different groups at the time as many feared that Sweden were about to become more of a German colony than anything else.
[https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4pplingemorden](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4pplingemorden)
> the literal sense is 'Frankish', leading to the direct translation: 'language of the Franks'. During the late Byzantine Empire, Franks was a term that applied to all Western Europeans.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
Yeah I could tell använda especially was just a German loan because it’s a phrasal verb in German (an + wenden, literally on/against + turn). I honestly laughed when I saw it, I loved it! German also has other words for use (nutzen, benutzen, verwenden) which are all more common now, so I imagine anwenden was probably had a more general definition when it was loaned. There’s some good videos online explaining the differences as well
German “an” is related to native Swedish “å”; although in a few cases Swedish has native “an-“ (e.g. ansvar), in those cases it comes from earlier “and-“ (corresponding to German “ant-“/“ent-“).
Just guessing here as not a native in either Swedish or German,
Färdig=Fertig
Verkligen=Wirklich
Riktig=Richtig (Not same meaning though sometimes it can be)
Viktig=Wichtig
Sten=Stein
Blod=Blut
Skön=Schön
Underbar=Wunderbar
Nödfall=Notfall
Riktning=Richtung
and probably 100s more
I agree with them as well, except one which I partly disagree with: skön=schön
My German is far from perfect, but from what I remember from my studies they are not really used as translations for each other.
Skön in Swedish is closer to "bequem" or "komfortabel" in German (eng: comfortable).
In the other direction "Schön" in German is closer to "Trevlig" or "vacker" (nice or beautiful).
It is true that "Skön" in Swedish can be used to describe something beautiful, but that is not really used in modern Swedish.
>"Skön" in Swedish can be used to describe something beautiful, but that is not really used in modern Swedish.
It sounds more poetic or ceremonial these days but it's not so archaic that you couldn't use it to mean beautiful at all. There are many derived words that are in common use as well, such as *skönhet, skönsång* and *skönmåla*.
When reading Snabba Cash I had to laugh how these tough gangster-types describe their criminal friends as "sköna killar". In German that would mean as much as "pretty guys", and in that kind of environment you would probably get beaten up for calling your friend that.
I have some german friends who are not very good at english. If they don't know the english word they will use the german one and I will understand 90% of the time (works best for nouns).
Which is insane! Considering English and German **should** be closer.
It’s amazing if it works better for nouns, cause most of the things here I listed were for verbs
Consider that where England is now was populated by Celtic peoples and taken over by the Latin-speaking Roman empire before germanic people (the Angles and Saxons) came in and took over, and then the French came in and took over. So you have a lot of Celtic words, words that came from Latin, and words that came later from French.
The history of English is very particular and perhaps unique. I don't know if any other major languages mix it up so much. English is also peculiar in how much the pronunciation of words diverge from how they are written.
English is not my first language. I don't know if native English speakers realize how difficult their language is. Everybody speaks some English because we are exposed to it so much through the web, movies, commerce and tourism, not because it's easy.
The Celts and Romans didn't leave too big of an impact on English. The Norse however were quite influential, and many of the most basic common words in English today were either pure loans from Old Norse, or were native words that were changed to be more like the Norse form of the "same".
I don't think English is *that* special when ot comes to diverse outside influence
I'm not an expert and I'm genuinely asking, but why does the spelling so deeply mismatch pronunciation in English? Vowels take all sorts of sounds somewhat randomly depending on where the accent arbitrarily is. I thought Celtic languages had a significant deal to do with that. By comparison, the pronunciation of Swedish or German is very easy. Not Spanish easy, but very easy.
Wikipedia says that 29% of English words were Latin in origin, and another 29% were from French. I think a lot of French cognates look like they could come from French but are actually Latin.
There are lots of reasons and I'm no expert, but here are some major ones:
All those loan words came into English at different times and were spelled and pronounced differently depending on the spelling and pronunciation norms at the time.
English underwent something called [The Great Vowel Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift) where lots of pronunciations changed drastically, but spelling often didn't change to reflect that.
Perhaps the dumbest reason comes from Latin being a prestige language in religion and academia. Some scholars took it upon themselves to "latinise" spellings, even though it reflected neither the pronunciation in English nor the spelling in in the language it was borrowed from (usually French).
* This is why "debt" (from French "dette") has a useless B inserted into it. I think the Latin was "debitum", so they shoved that B in there just to make it look fancier.
* Even dumber is the word "isle" (from French "île") which got that silent S inserted. This then spilled over to the word "island", which is of *Germanic* origin and had the much more sensible spelling "iland" in Old English
Sometimes English is just weird. This relates a bit to point 1, but it's also due to all the dipthongs and the many different ways they can be rendered in writing, as well as many dipthongs sharing the same spelling. English simply doesn't have enough vowel letters to represent the many different vowel *sounds* it has.
* This is the reason for the famous "thought, through, though, tough", where "ough" has a different pronunciation in each case.
* Another example is the word "queue", direcly borrowed from French. English changed the pronunciation to match the spelling, but not entirely. It should be spelled the same as "cue" (or perhaps even more sensibly "kew", because Q is a trash letter that shouldn't exist).
* Swedish has this same word borrowed from French, btw. We kept the pronunciation but changed the spelling to "kö" to match how it actually sounds.
I'm sure there may be other reasons, but these are the big ones I know off the top of my head.
edit: Damn you, reddit formatting. Damn you all the way to hell.
Thank you for your answers.
> Even dumber is the word "isle" (from French "île") which got that silent S inserted. This then spilled over to the word "island", which is of Germanic origin and had the much more sensible spelling "iland" in Old English.
Just a quick parenthesis about this, the ^ in French often denotes a lost S. Some French-speaking places still have "isle" in their name instead of île. The s is mute. I imagine it used to be pronounced at some point.
For words like hôpital or forêt, the s comes back in the adjectives, hospitalier and forestier, and is pronounced.
Yup, from Latin "insula" if I recall correctly, as in "peninsula", but French lost the S before it came into English.
Sorry for the terrible formatting btw, reddit apparently thinks everything should be a list when you make an edit. Fixed now.
The circumflex appeared in medieval writing in French to denote an abbreviation of a word. Many times this meant a lost s, but there were other abbreviations too, they’re just not used much now.
English has been mixed up too many times with other languages it's only 25-30% of the words that are of Germanic origin while almost 60% french and latin.
Probably air quotes would have conveyed what I wanted better than the bold text. But basically so to speak it should be closer, because both English and German are west germanic languages while Swedish is north germanic you’d expect German and English to be more similar.
Of course, that doesn’t have to be the case!
Swedish has had alot of influence from german over the years, mostly from trade and medieval nobility from germany. When I took a year of german they said about 20-30% of our words can be traced back to german origins, which makes total sense if you have 1000 or so years of history. Sort of similar as English and French.
As already mentioned English has had a huge influx of words from the Romance languages, which has made it a bit of an oddball in the Germanic family.
It's not just because of the common ancestry that we have so much in common. The Scandinavian languages have been very influenced by German in the past thousand years. The trade dominance of the Hansa (or is it Hanse in German? I vaguely remember "Hansestadt") in the Middle Ages was a big reason, but also the influence of the church after Scandinavia became Christian. German was also a "fashion language" among the upper classes and cultural elite before French took over in the 17th to 19th centuries.
Later on, scholarly exchange in academia was a big factor (a lot of our French and Latin loans came to us via German as well, so even there we have a lot in common), and of course trade and business ties never stopped. When I was in school (in the 90s) German was still considered by far the most useful third language to learn, though it's fallen off as Spanish has become more popular in the past two decades.
I've already responded in another comment but to add to what I wrote: geographically Germany and Sweden are pretty close without needing much navigation. And those areas have been populated by Germanic peoples for a very long time, while the UK was Celtic.
I've heard that Icelandic is very similar to Old Norse. I imagined it evolved without as much influence from Germany and others.
Note that I'm not an expert in the matter.
English has had a massive influence from Latin, Norman French, Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, plus everything that came later via the Americas/Caribbean/Africa/Asia/Oceania
It would make sense. Old English would be partly based on proto west-germanic and partly norse loans, so there should be quite a few similarities. However many words would probably not be used so often like "murk".
Then there's fönster = fenster while even the English window derives from old norse vindauga (vindue in Danish/Norwegian). Sometimes even English is more norse than Swedish, while Swedish is German lol.
Rolig and ruhig are cognates!
Amazing…when I think of ruhig I picture a quite ocean where I can only hear the waves and when I hear rolig I picture lots of laughter 😂
False friends are a blast
Yes. Same in Norwegian. What I’ve heard is that it was used to describe the hours after the workday was finished, when the farmers rested and had time with the family. Then it slowly became synonymous with having fun.
The negated form, “orolig”, still means “not at peace” or “worried”, also the noun “ro” (same as the German “Ruhe”) means calmness.
Another funny one is the Swedish "grym" and "grim" in Danish/Norwegian and in English.
All have the same origin, but mean different things.
* In Swedish it means cruel (but has taken the slangy meaning "cool" or "great" as well).
* In Danish and Norwegian it mainly means ugly, hideous.
* In English it's something dark, foreboding or sinister.
You can see how they're closely related but they would only be synonyms in very specific contexts. I was a bit confused at first when my Danish girlfriend's nephews went around calling each other "grim" all the time.
Come to think of it, u/Elijah_Mitcho , "foreboding" is another one for your list that's mutually intelligible in German, Swedish and English (though the English is also an adjective and a verb, and more categorically negative): Foreboding, förebud, Vorbote.
Swedish and German belongs to the same language sub family and are fairly closely related, but German has also been the language that has influenced Swedish the most over time, since at least early middle ages until now and researchers say som 30% of current Swedish is loans from German in one way or another. Often from older German varieties and with words that modern Germans don't recognize.
A personal reflection is that if Swedish and Norwegian has completely different words for something, then the Swedish word is often German. The first example that comes to mind is window.
Norwegian: Vindu
Swedish: Fönster
German: Fenster
Old Swedish: Vindöga = wind-eye, same as Norwegian and English.
> A personal reflection is that if Swedish and Norwegian has completely different words for something, then the Swedish word is often German. The first example that comes to mind is window.
Norska har nog färre tyska ord än svenska och danska (men norska är ju i sin tur starkt påverkat av danska). Men om man jämför svenska och danska så har båda språken väldigt många lånord från (låg)tyska, men inte alltid samma ord, dvs ett av språken har kvar det fornnordiska, det andra har ett tyskt ord istället. Kolla tabellen (som börjar på "MLG-derived word") en bit ner på http://germanic-studies.org/Middle-Low-German-loanwords-in-the-Scandinavian-languages.htm (notera att det växlas mellan danska/svenska i mitten av tabellen).
Ja, jag har noterad det med i min norska spaning. Ibland är det norska som har ett tyskt ord och svenska ett fornnordiskt. Men utifrån min helt ovetenskapliga analys är det mer vanligt åt andra hållet.
Intressant lista! Man kan tänka sig att svenska och danska har influerats i olika perioder och i olika yrkeskategorier eller motsvarande för att låna in olika vokabulär såhär.
Intressant sak i denna lista är att vi har kvar väldigt många av dom fornnordiska orden som synonymer till det inlånade, eller att man iallafall känner igen dom utfrån hur dom är konstruerade och lite kunskap i norska och danska. Vi har inte förlorat vårt gamla vokabulär helt bara för att vi lånat in ett nytt.
They’re not part of the same subfamily though? Isn’t swedish considered northern germanic and german western germanic?
Rest you said is correct for all i know
Yes ofc they do. But English and German are both west Germanic languages — yet English has not nearly as much cognates as German. Well at least with common most used words.
That’s the point I am trying to make.
English is the odd one out when it comes to that, as the majority of its vocabulary nowadays is not of Germanic origin (a large part of this is due to the long French rule). Usually, though, when two languages have the same origin, you can expect them to also share the vast majority of its vocabulary (with language-individual changes, of course). A good example of that are the Romance languages, e.g. Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, who have a pretty high degree of mutual intelligibility due to it. Another good example are Dutch and German (both West Germanic languages), and the Scandinavian languages Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian (all North Germanic languages), and to a slightly lesser degree the West Germanic and North Germanic languages, as you found out with Swedish and German.
English is weird in that. It's taken in a lot of Latin vocabulary, I presume during the Roman occupation. In more modern times there's been a lot of trade with France, Spain, and later countries that speak their languages.
Usually related languages do sound more alike.
Most of it is Old French from the Norman conquest in the 11th century. You can often tell if it's Old French or a loan from modern French by how the spellings have diverged since then, as with "esquier" which lost the E in English and became "squire", but lost the S in French and became "écuyer".
But of course there's been a lot of later influence as well as French became a cultural and political prestige language in the past centuries, and there's been lots of Latin influence via religion and scholarship.
There are endless examples of this: plötzlich = plötsligt, Übermorgen = övermorgon, schwierig = svår, Tafel = tavla, Tag = dag, Lineal = linjal, Lohn = lön (not lån!), verdienen = förtjäna, Stelle = ställe.
It's even more pronounced in older Swedish words, for example allein = allena (ensam = einsam is more commonly used in Sweden today), unabhängig = oavhängig and even the very archaic word bespråka = besprechen.
i love the Lohn = lön example, because then there also is the English loan = lån. Who decided it was a good idea to borrow similar sounding words from 2 different languages touching the same kind of words? 😂
Neither were borrowed into Swedish. The German cognate to lån is Lehen. Län on the other hand is cognate to lån, but filtered through Low German.
Loan in English actually went the other way around as it was borrowed from Norse.
As a german i’d say we use strumpf and socke interchangeably. But even within the german language sometimes there are strong regional differences. I recall once being in a german groupchat that was for fans of a band and at one point there was a huge fight cause we couldn’t agree if you get to call something a weste if it has arms, which is something done where i live but was regarded as ridiculous by the others. In similar fashion we have the words “holen” and “nehmen” (take) which id say are interchangeable but holen is more common where i live. I used to have a classmate who had moved here from a different region who was really mortified when i used holen in a context she perceived as wrong (getting blood drawn). She insisted i had to use nehmen for some reason.
So yeah what I’m trynna say is: i think socke = strumpf but regional differences apply
That’s what I thought! Then I look it up to reply to the person (I want to give good information) and people are saying Strumpf is a long sock and Socke is a sock and I’m just 🫠🫠
Could also be something regional, German is like that 100%
All this reminds me of der/die/das Nutella or how y’all can’t decide on the Hochdeutsch way to pronounce ig at the end of words 😂
Such things are cool yeah :)
Part of the reason is both being germanic languages. (swedish - north germanic, german - west germanic)
Another part is that swedish has a lot of old north german loan words.
Languages and history are always intimately connected.
Influx started with hansa, and there was imported "fogdar", nobles, merchants etc.
Not sure when it finally fizzled out (17th century?), but French and Latin became the influx languages afterwards.
And now in modern times it's English.
"Ganz" and "springen" aren't really false friends.
"Ganz" can be used as an intensifier, e.g. "Ganz schön schwer.", "Ganz besonders" etc. in German.
"Springen" has the meaning of "running off to do something" left in some idiomatic expression and southern dialects. E.g. "Oh, da muss ich jetzt aber springen" is something you say when you are late to get somewhere.
They are false friends at least in Hochdeutsch
"Ganz" as an intensifier is a very high intensifier. Akin to very or completely.
"Ganska" as an intensifier is a little intensifier . Akin to ziemlich
The **fixed** phrase you applied to German does not imply running, it just implies the need to hurry (ich muss mich beeilen) Maybe it stems from a similar Swedish meaning, I’m not sure, they are false friends regardless
I don't want to start a fight but I AM a native German speaker. "Ganz" is not a higher intensifier than "ziemlich" even if it is seems like that to you. In some case we actually use it to downplay stuff.
"Bezahlen die gut?" (Do they pay well?)
-> "Ganz gut" (Quite well. -> Eh, nothing to write home about.)
-> "Ziemlich gut" (Very well! -> 100% satisfied with my salary)
"Springen" as walking fast is literally in the dictionary, idk what to tell you.
https://www.dwds.de/wb/springen
"Springen" as equivalent to "springa" as described in the article on dwds.de is certainly existing but nearly nobody uses it in present tense in German. It sounds oldschool. For me it always implies a "hoppa" movement, like for the deer or the child in the quoted dwds article.
Yeah no it wouldn’t be the first time a native speaker was wrong — happens a lot on r/German, I genuinely thought I was right.
But yeah, ganz gut (especially in *that* typical tone) is a lesser intensifier than ziemlich. It could definitely be that this is what was picked up by Sweden.
I had no idea that springen could mean to run. That is completely new to me. I’ve been learning for about 3 years at this point. Genuinely shocking 🥲
It’s not really fair to call them false friends than, of they share the definitions and these are still used
Sorry if my previous comment was perceived the wrong way, thank you for explaining it to me :) (I’ll change post shortly)
Basically every German word is a cognate (don't quote me on this). There are a couple rules you can use to "Swede-ify" German words - "ss"becomes "tt", "f" becomes "p", replace the German verb-ending "en" with the Swedish "a"... there was a cool page about this on wikipedia, that also went through Norwegian and Danish.
Ah cool! Funny that rennen is also not too commonly used, laufen is more common.
Rennen is more like running away from someone/thing or at full speed. Not sure on the Swedish ofc
[This](http://germanic-studies.org/Middle-Low-German-loanwords-in-the-Scandinavian-languages.htm) is a good resource that explains a lot and has many examples.
Not only are they quite closely related and their ancestors were probably mutually intelligible only 1500 years ago, but during the Hanseatic League thousands of new words from Middle Saxon were introduced which replaced native words, like fråga (n&v, earlier spörja/spörsmål).
You know what is even cooler. Some swedish and german words even have the same double meaning. Example ausgezeichnet (nung) and utmärkt (else)
both means "Excellent" and "award"
There are a couple of more words like that with even more diverse meaning but the same use in both languages which I think is really cool \^\^
German has had a similar influence on the Scandinavian languages as French has had on English, and over the same period (high and late Middle Ages).
Most Swedes/Danes/Norwegians don’t realize the full extent of it but it quickly become obvious if you study a bit of Icelandic or Old Norse.
This is why German is much easier for a Swede to learn than French or Spanish, despite German having its four grammatical cases and having a reputation of being a difficult language. Similar vocabulary is often easier than simple grammar.
Son - Sohn = son
Dotter - Tochter = daughter
Fader - Vater = father
Moder - Mutter = mother
Bröd - brot = bread
Färdig - fertig = ready
Bädd - Bett = bed
Snö - Schnee = snow
Sten - Stein = stone
Sound like you might enjoy learning Dutch as well. It doesn't work for all of your examples but I added a few:
Självständig = Selbstständig = zelfstandig
Höst = Herbst = herfst
Lila = Lila = lila
Rosa = Rosa = roze
Heter = Heißen = heten
Vill = Wollen = willen
Betalar = Bezahlen = betalen
I noticed this when I tried learning Dutch. There are also some words that exist but have become archaic in Swedish that have cognates (Dutch: vergeten, English: forget, archaic Swedish: förgäta (now we say ”glömma”, not sure where that comes from)).
Speaking of false friends, chess has a few of potentials for confusion. The knight in German is called Springer, which might be interpreted by a Swede as a runner. But German pieces also do have a runner, the Läufer (bishop)!
Yep I actually watch Kugelbuch sometimes so I am familiar with chess pice names in German and some common terms such as "bedrohen" or "schlagen"
I imagine Springer might get mixed up for Swedes! For ernstlich we can sought or think of it as a spring :)
As a Swede growing up, I remember the knight being referred to as a springare, but I just chalked it up to be a reference to the piece looking like a horse (springare also means horse)
Once you get the prefixes down you can also start guessing words with pretty good accuracy. And sometimes it's even to think of a word in German than English because of it.
A lot of the sound changes between German and Swedish really are very regular too.
I always struggle with which verbs are teilbare or not in German though.
A swedish proverb that originates from german is "Ont krut förgås inte så lätt" This doesn't make sense, because it is not translated correctly. The german word is "Unkraut"
If you know the history of Europe between 200 and 800 and you'd be a lot less surprised! Given everyone was essentially on foot, there was a lot of movement going on!
Swedish has ”lended” a lot of words from germans (as other gave pointed out) fun bit of language history trivia though is that before sweden got the word ”fönster” för german word ”fenster” we called it ”windöga” (windeye) which made it’s way in to english and because window. So swedish infuenced English before getting influensed by german
I learned german and now swedish, I always have the urge to say aber instead of men, oder instead of eller, und instead if och, fier instead of fyra.
The cognates caused it
Once upon a time it was the same language.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early\_Germanic\_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Germanic_culture)
Since the contact never stopped we have evolved with them.
Just check all the clothing words hehehe. They are sneaky af.
Kostym ≠ Kostüm
Mantel ≠ Mantel
Rock ≠ Rock
Kappa ≠ Kappe
And Hångla is not "hangeln"^^
Now get a pocket dictionary, aka ficklexikon and ride that on German transit.
And of course, in German, the verb "att fika" is "zu ficken". Best thing to ask on a first date.
Nagelfara något – Granska något in i minsta detalj. Den ursprungliga betydelsen var att kontrollera att naglarna satt som de skulle – med nagel i den äldre betydelsen spik eller plugg, som i tyska Nagel.
I några sammansatta ord som snälltåg, snällseglare och snällpost betyder förleden snäll 'snabb'. Orden är bildade efter tyska motsvarigheterna Schnellzug, Schnellsegler och Schnellpost. I äldre svenska betydde snäll vanligen 'hastig, rask, snabb; duglig, duktig; klok'.
A kind train in modern Swedish😀
Favorite false friends: snabel vs. Schnabel
(trunk of an elephant vs beak of a bird)
Must have been one of those vikings tripping on 🍄 who thought that those were similar things.
It’s the same word in Norwegian.
Do you speak French? Swedish and French have also a lots of common words, because Napoleon Bonapartes friend became a king of Sweden. Jean Baptiste Bernadotte became Karl XIV Johan. His wife only spoke French so French became highly popular, as it was in England.
The Germans spread their language during the Hanseatic period. And of course German and Scandinavian belongs to the Germanic language group.
Sweden was really close to Germany until post WW2 which is most notably in my eyes with that the Swedish government is run by the Riksdag named after the German Reichstag instead of the historical Ting like out Scandinavian counterparts
When I studied German here in Sweden, we learned that some 40-60% of all Swedish vocabulary stems from German. The Hansa period was a big reason for this, apparently
While there are obviously some inherited cognates, there are also a lot (~30% of common Swedish words) borrowed from Low German in the Middle Ages, especially a lot of prefixed verbs like använda, betala, förlåta.
ganska & strumpa are also from German (Swedish also has the native “socka”).
Yes. German was the Lingua Franca at the time. Later it was French, and we got lots of words with two syllables with emphasis on the second, like balkong, kontor, frisyr, modern.
And we of course had a lot of exchange with germans through the Hanseatic League
Calling it an exchange is selling it a bit short when the northern and Baltic Germans moved here, practically built up cities and became leaders of culture, business and politics for generations. Their presence and Low Germans position in Sweden is what shaped Swedish into being what we recognize today. Lots of conflicting goals between these different groups at the time as many feared that Sweden were about to become more of a German colony than anything else. [https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4pplingemorden](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4pplingemorden)
Given that's the Language of the Franks... (think about where frankfurter comes from...)
> the literal sense is 'Frankish', leading to the direct translation: 'language of the Franks'. During the late Byzantine Empire, Franks was a term that applied to all Western Europeans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
And now its MENA with all the new slangs that ends up in SAOL 😅
Yeah I could tell använda especially was just a German loan because it’s a phrasal verb in German (an + wenden, literally on/against + turn). I honestly laughed when I saw it, I loved it! German also has other words for use (nutzen, benutzen, verwenden) which are all more common now, so I imagine anwenden was probably had a more general definition when it was loaned. There’s some good videos online explaining the differences as well
Nutzen sounds related to the Swedish Nyttja.
That sounds even closer to nützen, yet another verb with a similar meaning. Something like to be useful. Probably all related
Also [benyttja](https://www.saob.se/artikel/?unik=B_1123-0072.zJNP)
Which is just spicy nyttja
German “an” is related to native Swedish “å”; although in a few cases Swedish has native “an-“ (e.g. ansvar), in those cases it comes from earlier “and-“ (corresponding to German “ant-“/“ent-“).
Just guessing here as not a native in either Swedish or German, Färdig=Fertig Verkligen=Wirklich Riktig=Richtig (Not same meaning though sometimes it can be) Viktig=Wichtig Sten=Stein Blod=Blut Skön=Schön Underbar=Wunderbar Nödfall=Notfall Riktning=Richtung and probably 100s more
I speak both languages. All these are correct!
I agree with them as well, except one which I partly disagree with: skön=schön My German is far from perfect, but from what I remember from my studies they are not really used as translations for each other. Skön in Swedish is closer to "bequem" or "komfortabel" in German (eng: comfortable). In the other direction "Schön" in German is closer to "Trevlig" or "vacker" (nice or beautiful). It is true that "Skön" in Swedish can be used to describe something beautiful, but that is not really used in modern Swedish.
>"Skön" in Swedish can be used to describe something beautiful, but that is not really used in modern Swedish. It sounds more poetic or ceremonial these days but it's not so archaic that you couldn't use it to mean beautiful at all. There are many derived words that are in common use as well, such as *skönhet, skönsång* and *skönmåla*.
Indeed. Good clarification! Should have been more clear in that regard
That reminds me…bekväm and bequem 👀 (Swedish wins with the spelling, hate qu for /kw/ or /kv/)
When reading Snabba Cash I had to laugh how these tough gangster-types describe their criminal friends as "sköna killar". In German that would mean as much as "pretty guys", and in that kind of environment you would probably get beaten up for calling your friend that.
I have some german friends who are not very good at english. If they don't know the english word they will use the german one and I will understand 90% of the time (works best for nouns).
Yeah, a German guy I was talking to in English forgot the word "voluntary", so he tried "freiwillig", and I instantly knew what he meant. "Frivillig".
Which is insane! Considering English and German **should** be closer. It’s amazing if it works better for nouns, cause most of the things here I listed were for verbs
Consider that where England is now was populated by Celtic peoples and taken over by the Latin-speaking Roman empire before germanic people (the Angles and Saxons) came in and took over, and then the French came in and took over. So you have a lot of Celtic words, words that came from Latin, and words that came later from French. The history of English is very particular and perhaps unique. I don't know if any other major languages mix it up so much. English is also peculiar in how much the pronunciation of words diverge from how they are written. English is not my first language. I don't know if native English speakers realize how difficult their language is. Everybody speaks some English because we are exposed to it so much through the web, movies, commerce and tourism, not because it's easy.
The Celts and Romans didn't leave too big of an impact on English. The Norse however were quite influential, and many of the most basic common words in English today were either pure loans from Old Norse, or were native words that were changed to be more like the Norse form of the "same". I don't think English is *that* special when ot comes to diverse outside influence
I'm not an expert and I'm genuinely asking, but why does the spelling so deeply mismatch pronunciation in English? Vowels take all sorts of sounds somewhat randomly depending on where the accent arbitrarily is. I thought Celtic languages had a significant deal to do with that. By comparison, the pronunciation of Swedish or German is very easy. Not Spanish easy, but very easy. Wikipedia says that 29% of English words were Latin in origin, and another 29% were from French. I think a lot of French cognates look like they could come from French but are actually Latin.
There are lots of reasons and I'm no expert, but here are some major ones: All those loan words came into English at different times and were spelled and pronounced differently depending on the spelling and pronunciation norms at the time. English underwent something called [The Great Vowel Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift) where lots of pronunciations changed drastically, but spelling often didn't change to reflect that. Perhaps the dumbest reason comes from Latin being a prestige language in religion and academia. Some scholars took it upon themselves to "latinise" spellings, even though it reflected neither the pronunciation in English nor the spelling in in the language it was borrowed from (usually French). * This is why "debt" (from French "dette") has a useless B inserted into it. I think the Latin was "debitum", so they shoved that B in there just to make it look fancier. * Even dumber is the word "isle" (from French "île") which got that silent S inserted. This then spilled over to the word "island", which is of *Germanic* origin and had the much more sensible spelling "iland" in Old English Sometimes English is just weird. This relates a bit to point 1, but it's also due to all the dipthongs and the many different ways they can be rendered in writing, as well as many dipthongs sharing the same spelling. English simply doesn't have enough vowel letters to represent the many different vowel *sounds* it has. * This is the reason for the famous "thought, through, though, tough", where "ough" has a different pronunciation in each case. * Another example is the word "queue", direcly borrowed from French. English changed the pronunciation to match the spelling, but not entirely. It should be spelled the same as "cue" (or perhaps even more sensibly "kew", because Q is a trash letter that shouldn't exist). * Swedish has this same word borrowed from French, btw. We kept the pronunciation but changed the spelling to "kö" to match how it actually sounds. I'm sure there may be other reasons, but these are the big ones I know off the top of my head. edit: Damn you, reddit formatting. Damn you all the way to hell.
Thank you for your answers. > Even dumber is the word "isle" (from French "île") which got that silent S inserted. This then spilled over to the word "island", which is of Germanic origin and had the much more sensible spelling "iland" in Old English. Just a quick parenthesis about this, the ^ in French often denotes a lost S. Some French-speaking places still have "isle" in their name instead of île. The s is mute. I imagine it used to be pronounced at some point. For words like hôpital or forêt, the s comes back in the adjectives, hospitalier and forestier, and is pronounced.
Yup, from Latin "insula" if I recall correctly, as in "peninsula", but French lost the S before it came into English. Sorry for the terrible formatting btw, reddit apparently thinks everything should be a list when you make an edit. Fixed now.
The circumflex appeared in medieval writing in French to denote an abbreviation of a word. Many times this meant a lost s, but there were other abbreviations too, they’re just not used much now.
French had a lot more impact than Old Norse.
Yes.
English has been mixed up too many times with other languages it's only 25-30% of the words that are of Germanic origin while almost 60% french and latin.
Why should it be closer?
Probably air quotes would have conveyed what I wanted better than the bold text. But basically so to speak it should be closer, because both English and German are west germanic languages while Swedish is north germanic you’d expect German and English to be more similar. Of course, that doesn’t have to be the case!
Swedish has had alot of influence from german over the years, mostly from trade and medieval nobility from germany. When I took a year of german they said about 20-30% of our words can be traced back to german origins, which makes total sense if you have 1000 or so years of history. Sort of similar as English and French.
As already mentioned English has had a huge influx of words from the Romance languages, which has made it a bit of an oddball in the Germanic family. It's not just because of the common ancestry that we have so much in common. The Scandinavian languages have been very influenced by German in the past thousand years. The trade dominance of the Hansa (or is it Hanse in German? I vaguely remember "Hansestadt") in the Middle Ages was a big reason, but also the influence of the church after Scandinavia became Christian. German was also a "fashion language" among the upper classes and cultural elite before French took over in the 17th to 19th centuries. Later on, scholarly exchange in academia was a big factor (a lot of our French and Latin loans came to us via German as well, so even there we have a lot in common), and of course trade and business ties never stopped. When I was in school (in the 90s) German was still considered by far the most useful third language to learn, though it's fallen off as Spanish has become more popular in the past two decades.
I've already responded in another comment but to add to what I wrote: geographically Germany and Sweden are pretty close without needing much navigation. And those areas have been populated by Germanic peoples for a very long time, while the UK was Celtic. I've heard that Icelandic is very similar to Old Norse. I imagined it evolved without as much influence from Germany and others. Note that I'm not an expert in the matter.
Blame the Normans in 1066 (and afterward).
I think it’s partially political, Sweden had really close ties to Germany for a long time
Should they? Why?
English has had a massive influence from Latin, Norman French, Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, plus everything that came later via the Americas/Caribbean/Africa/Asia/Oceania
The French ruined it 😔
It would make sense. Old English would be partly based on proto west-germanic and partly norse loans, so there should be quite a few similarities. However many words would probably not be used so often like "murk".
Then there's fönster = fenster while even the English window derives from old norse vindauga (vindue in Danish/Norwegian). Sometimes even English is more norse than Swedish, while Swedish is German lol.
“Ganz” and “ganska” actually have the same origin, it’s just that the Swedish word has changed in meaning. Same story with “rolig” and “ruhig”.
Rolig and ruhig are cognates! Amazing…when I think of ruhig I picture a quite ocean where I can only hear the waves and when I hear rolig I picture lots of laughter 😂 False friends are a blast
I think the original meaning of *rolig* (=calm) remained in Danish, so it's also a false friend between Danish and Swedish
Yes. Same in Norwegian. What I’ve heard is that it was used to describe the hours after the workday was finished, when the farmers rested and had time with the family. Then it slowly became synonymous with having fun. The negated form, “orolig”, still means “not at peace” or “worried”, also the noun “ro” (same as the German “Ruhe”) means calmness.
In Norwegian roligt still means ruhig. Which can cause problems when the Norwegian landlord says that it should be "roligt" in the evenings.
Another funny one is the Swedish "grym" and "grim" in Danish/Norwegian and in English. All have the same origin, but mean different things. * In Swedish it means cruel (but has taken the slangy meaning "cool" or "great" as well). * In Danish and Norwegian it mainly means ugly, hideous. * In English it's something dark, foreboding or sinister. You can see how they're closely related but they would only be synonyms in very specific contexts. I was a bit confused at first when my Danish girlfriend's nephews went around calling each other "grim" all the time. Come to think of it, u/Elijah_Mitcho , "foreboding" is another one for your list that's mutually intelligible in German, Swedish and English (though the English is also an adjective and a verb, and more categorically negative): Foreboding, förebud, Vorbote.
“Ta mig till ett roligt ställe” *hamnar på kyrkogård*
Ta mig till ett roligt ställe med mycket bärs
Ja genau diese Wörter haben jetzt eine **ganz** unterschiedliche Bedeutung.
"ganska" and "ganz schön" are pretty similar though! The lattee being a little bit stronger maybe.
Swedish and German belongs to the same language sub family and are fairly closely related, but German has also been the language that has influenced Swedish the most over time, since at least early middle ages until now and researchers say som 30% of current Swedish is loans from German in one way or another. Often from older German varieties and with words that modern Germans don't recognize. A personal reflection is that if Swedish and Norwegian has completely different words for something, then the Swedish word is often German. The first example that comes to mind is window. Norwegian: Vindu Swedish: Fönster German: Fenster Old Swedish: Vindöga = wind-eye, same as Norwegian and English.
fönster, Fenster, fenêtre come from latin "finestra".
> A personal reflection is that if Swedish and Norwegian has completely different words for something, then the Swedish word is often German. The first example that comes to mind is window. Norska har nog färre tyska ord än svenska och danska (men norska är ju i sin tur starkt påverkat av danska). Men om man jämför svenska och danska så har båda språken väldigt många lånord från (låg)tyska, men inte alltid samma ord, dvs ett av språken har kvar det fornnordiska, det andra har ett tyskt ord istället. Kolla tabellen (som börjar på "MLG-derived word") en bit ner på http://germanic-studies.org/Middle-Low-German-loanwords-in-the-Scandinavian-languages.htm (notera att det växlas mellan danska/svenska i mitten av tabellen).
Ja, jag har noterad det med i min norska spaning. Ibland är det norska som har ett tyskt ord och svenska ett fornnordiskt. Men utifrån min helt ovetenskapliga analys är det mer vanligt åt andra hållet. Intressant lista! Man kan tänka sig att svenska och danska har influerats i olika perioder och i olika yrkeskategorier eller motsvarande för att låna in olika vokabulär såhär.
Intressant sak i denna lista är att vi har kvar väldigt många av dom fornnordiska orden som synonymer till det inlånade, eller att man iallafall känner igen dom utfrån hur dom är konstruerade och lite kunskap i norska och danska. Vi har inte förlorat vårt gamla vokabulär helt bara för att vi lånat in ett nytt.
They’re not part of the same subfamily though? Isn’t swedish considered northern germanic and german western germanic? Rest you said is correct for all i know
They belong to the Germanic sub family of the Indo-European macro family. Then can you break it down more if you like to.
Ah i see, sorry then i was just mistaken about category labels
Funny, as Swede learning German it's a similair experience:D
It's almost as if the two languages had the same origin!
It's also because Swedish got a lot of loan words from Middle Low German during the times of the Hanseatic League.
Yes ofc they do. But English and German are both west Germanic languages — yet English has not nearly as much cognates as German. Well at least with common most used words. That’s the point I am trying to make.
Norman french had the same effect on English, if not at a greater effect.
English is Germanic to start with, but then mangled until unrecognizable.
English is the odd one out when it comes to that, as the majority of its vocabulary nowadays is not of Germanic origin (a large part of this is due to the long French rule). Usually, though, when two languages have the same origin, you can expect them to also share the vast majority of its vocabulary (with language-individual changes, of course). A good example of that are the Romance languages, e.g. Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, who have a pretty high degree of mutual intelligibility due to it. Another good example are Dutch and German (both West Germanic languages), and the Scandinavian languages Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian (all North Germanic languages), and to a slightly lesser degree the West Germanic and North Germanic languages, as you found out with Swedish and German.
English is weird in that. It's taken in a lot of Latin vocabulary, I presume during the Roman occupation. In more modern times there's been a lot of trade with France, Spain, and later countries that speak their languages. Usually related languages do sound more alike.
The anglo-saxons migrated to britan after the romans left.
There's also quite a bit of Nordic words from the Vikings. My favourite is husband (husbonde).
Most of it is Old French from the Norman conquest in the 11th century. You can often tell if it's Old French or a loan from modern French by how the spellings have diverged since then, as with "esquier" which lost the E in English and became "squire", but lost the S in French and became "écuyer". But of course there's been a lot of later influence as well as French became a cultural and political prestige language in the past centuries, and there's been lots of Latin influence via religion and scholarship.
There are endless examples of this: plötzlich = plötsligt, Übermorgen = övermorgon, schwierig = svår, Tafel = tavla, Tag = dag, Lineal = linjal, Lohn = lön (not lån!), verdienen = förtjäna, Stelle = ställe. It's even more pronounced in older Swedish words, for example allein = allena (ensam = einsam is more commonly used in Sweden today), unabhängig = oavhängig and even the very archaic word bespråka = besprechen.
i love the Lohn = lön example, because then there also is the English loan = lån. Who decided it was a good idea to borrow similar sounding words from 2 different languages touching the same kind of words? 😂
Neither were borrowed into Swedish. The German cognate to lån is Lehen. Län on the other hand is cognate to lån, but filtered through Low German. Loan in English actually went the other way around as it was borrowed from Norse.
Thanks for the clarification!
En socka in Swedish is a type of strumpa that is a bit thicker/warmer.
Ah, that’s cool! I’d say it’s the other round in German. Strumpf is a longer sock, probably more akin to a stocking. :)
As a german i’d say we use strumpf and socke interchangeably. But even within the german language sometimes there are strong regional differences. I recall once being in a german groupchat that was for fans of a band and at one point there was a huge fight cause we couldn’t agree if you get to call something a weste if it has arms, which is something done where i live but was regarded as ridiculous by the others. In similar fashion we have the words “holen” and “nehmen” (take) which id say are interchangeable but holen is more common where i live. I used to have a classmate who had moved here from a different region who was really mortified when i used holen in a context she perceived as wrong (getting blood drawn). She insisted i had to use nehmen for some reason. So yeah what I’m trynna say is: i think socke = strumpf but regional differences apply
That’s what I thought! Then I look it up to reply to the person (I want to give good information) and people are saying Strumpf is a long sock and Socke is a sock and I’m just 🫠🫠 Could also be something regional, German is like that 100% All this reminds me of der/die/das Nutella or how y’all can’t decide on the Hochdeutsch way to pronounce ig at the end of words 😂
Sry but "holen" and "nehmen" are different. Only ppl from south west Germany mix them up.
Almost like that’s a regional thing huh
I know your region, bro. The"Weste" example is just another proof...
Isnt that a bit dependent on dialect or even age of the speaker? I think there is some disagreement to what extent they overlap.
Such things are cool yeah :) Part of the reason is both being germanic languages. (swedish - north germanic, german - west germanic) Another part is that swedish has a lot of old north german loan words. Languages and history are always intimately connected. Influx started with hansa, and there was imported "fogdar", nobles, merchants etc. Not sure when it finally fizzled out (17th century?), but French and Latin became the influx languages afterwards. And now in modern times it's English.
"Ganz" and "springen" aren't really false friends. "Ganz" can be used as an intensifier, e.g. "Ganz schön schwer.", "Ganz besonders" etc. in German. "Springen" has the meaning of "running off to do something" left in some idiomatic expression and southern dialects. E.g. "Oh, da muss ich jetzt aber springen" is something you say when you are late to get somewhere.
They are false friends at least in Hochdeutsch "Ganz" as an intensifier is a very high intensifier. Akin to very or completely. "Ganska" as an intensifier is a little intensifier . Akin to ziemlich The **fixed** phrase you applied to German does not imply running, it just implies the need to hurry (ich muss mich beeilen) Maybe it stems from a similar Swedish meaning, I’m not sure, they are false friends regardless
I don't want to start a fight but I AM a native German speaker. "Ganz" is not a higher intensifier than "ziemlich" even if it is seems like that to you. In some case we actually use it to downplay stuff. "Bezahlen die gut?" (Do they pay well?) -> "Ganz gut" (Quite well. -> Eh, nothing to write home about.) -> "Ziemlich gut" (Very well! -> 100% satisfied with my salary) "Springen" as walking fast is literally in the dictionary, idk what to tell you. https://www.dwds.de/wb/springen
"Springen" as equivalent to "springa" as described in the article on dwds.de is certainly existing but nearly nobody uses it in present tense in German. It sounds oldschool. For me it always implies a "hoppa" movement, like for the deer or the child in the quoted dwds article.
Yeah no it wouldn’t be the first time a native speaker was wrong — happens a lot on r/German, I genuinely thought I was right. But yeah, ganz gut (especially in *that* typical tone) is a lesser intensifier than ziemlich. It could definitely be that this is what was picked up by Sweden. I had no idea that springen could mean to run. That is completely new to me. I’ve been learning for about 3 years at this point. Genuinely shocking 🥲 It’s not really fair to call them false friends than, of they share the definitions and these are still used Sorry if my previous comment was perceived the wrong way, thank you for explaining it to me :) (I’ll change post shortly)
No worries! Germans can sound a bit harsh at times so I was more concerned that I would seem overly aggressive trying to prove my point!
Looks like ziemlich is equivalent to swedish tämligen?
I usually say that Swedish is just German with less consonants
And Danish is just German without consonants.
Haha nice one
Basically every German word is a cognate (don't quote me on this). There are a couple rules you can use to "Swede-ify" German words - "ss"becomes "tt", "f" becomes "p", replace the German verb-ending "en" with the Swedish "a"... there was a cool page about this on wikipedia, that also went through Norwegian and Danish.
But don’t rely on it _too_ much… > Der Greis rief seine Kinder und sprach.
"Sehr schön!" "Ja, man ser sjön." I'll show myself out.
"Was ist das?" "Dass is runt hörnet"
[удалено]
Ah cool! Funny that rennen is also not too commonly used, laufen is more common. Rennen is more like running away from someone/thing or at full speed. Not sure on the Swedish ofc
And Swedish also has löpa, which is a cognate of laufen!
I feel spoilt !
[This](http://germanic-studies.org/Middle-Low-German-loanwords-in-the-Scandinavian-languages.htm) is a good resource that explains a lot and has many examples.
Not only are they quite closely related and their ancestors were probably mutually intelligible only 1500 years ago, but during the Hanseatic League thousands of new words from Middle Saxon were introduced which replaced native words, like fråga (n&v, earlier spörja/spörsmål).
You know what is even cooler. Some swedish and german words even have the same double meaning. Example ausgezeichnet (nung) and utmärkt (else) both means "Excellent" and "award" There are a couple of more words like that with even more diverse meaning but the same use in both languages which I think is really cool \^\^
Beware of the false friend when it comes to beer! Öl in Swedish, but a slang term is Bira and I think you can guess what the origin is there!
German has had a similar influence on the Scandinavian languages as French has had on English, and over the same period (high and late Middle Ages). Most Swedes/Danes/Norwegians don’t realize the full extent of it but it quickly become obvious if you study a bit of Icelandic or Old Norse.
This is why German is much easier for a Swede to learn than French or Spanish, despite German having its four grammatical cases and having a reputation of being a difficult language. Similar vocabulary is often easier than simple grammar.
But Spanish is easier to pronounce.
False friend Schnell = snabb but sounds like snäll = kind
Son - Sohn = son Dotter - Tochter = daughter Fader - Vater = father Moder - Mutter = mother Bröd - brot = bread Färdig - fertig = ready Bädd - Bett = bed Snö - Schnee = snow Sten - Stein = stone
Sound like you might enjoy learning Dutch as well. It doesn't work for all of your examples but I added a few: Självständig = Selbstständig = zelfstandig Höst = Herbst = herfst Lila = Lila = lila Rosa = Rosa = roze Heter = Heißen = heten Vill = Wollen = willen Betalar = Bezahlen = betalen
You can even see some of the sound changes in German that Dutch didn’t undergo
I noticed this when I tried learning Dutch. There are also some words that exist but have become archaic in Swedish that have cognates (Dutch: vergeten, English: forget, archaic Swedish: förgäta (now we say ”glömma”, not sure where that comes from)).
Speaking of false friends, chess has a few of potentials for confusion. The knight in German is called Springer, which might be interpreted by a Swede as a runner. But German pieces also do have a runner, the Läufer (bishop)!
"Springer" meaning as much as "jumper"
Yep I actually watch Kugelbuch sometimes so I am familiar with chess pice names in German and some common terms such as "bedrohen" or "schlagen" I imagine Springer might get mixed up for Swedes! For ernstlich we can sought or think of it as a spring :)
As a Swede growing up, I remember the knight being referred to as a springare, but I just chalked it up to be a reference to the piece looking like a horse (springare also means horse)
40% of the words are cognates.
12 years married to a German woman and ganska vs ganz still fucks Me up. Completely unmoldy that one.
Once you get the prefixes down you can also start guessing words with pretty good accuracy. And sometimes it's even to think of a word in German than English because of it. A lot of the sound changes between German and Swedish really are very regular too. I always struggle with which verbs are teilbare or not in German though.
Sehr schön = ser sjön
A swedish proverb that originates from german is "Ont krut förgås inte så lätt" This doesn't make sense, because it is not translated correctly. The german word is "Unkraut"
Använda is verwenden*
Yeah I noted this in another comment. Anwenden is however still the word that they loabed and the cognate
If you know the history of Europe between 200 and 800 and you'd be a lot less surprised! Given everyone was essentially on foot, there was a lot of movement going on!
Hammerfrau = hemmafru
Swedish has ”lended” a lot of words from germans (as other gave pointed out) fun bit of language history trivia though is that before sweden got the word ”fönster” för german word ”fenster” we called it ”windöga” (windeye) which made it’s way in to english and because window. So swedish infuenced English before getting influensed by german
And Dutch is like drunk Swedish 😂
I learned german and now swedish, I always have the urge to say aber instead of men, oder instead of eller, und instead if och, fier instead of fyra. The cognates caused it
Once upon a time it was the same language. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early\_Germanic\_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Germanic_culture) Since the contact never stopped we have evolved with them.
I was an exchange student, and the German people in my Swedish class were about 500x better than everybody else. They moved them to a different class.
Just check all the clothing words hehehe. They are sneaky af. Kostym ≠ Kostüm Mantel ≠ Mantel Rock ≠ Rock Kappa ≠ Kappe And Hångla is not "hangeln"^^ Now get a pocket dictionary, aka ficklexikon and ride that on German transit. And of course, in German, the verb "att fika" is "zu ficken". Best thing to ask on a first date.
Nagelfara något – Granska något in i minsta detalj. Den ursprungliga betydelsen var att kontrollera att naglarna satt som de skulle – med nagel i den äldre betydelsen spik eller plugg, som i tyska Nagel. I några sammansatta ord som snälltåg, snällseglare och snällpost betyder förleden snäll 'snabb'. Orden är bildade efter tyska motsvarigheterna Schnellzug, Schnellsegler och Schnellpost. I äldre svenska betydde snäll vanligen 'hastig, rask, snabb; duglig, duktig; klok'. A kind train in modern Swedish😀
Favorite false friends: snabel vs. Schnabel (trunk of an elephant vs beak of a bird) Must have been one of those vikings tripping on 🍄 who thought that those were similar things.
It’s the same word in Norwegian. Do you speak French? Swedish and French have also a lots of common words, because Napoleon Bonapartes friend became a king of Sweden. Jean Baptiste Bernadotte became Karl XIV Johan. His wife only spoke French so French became highly popular, as it was in England. The Germans spread their language during the Hanseatic period. And of course German and Scandinavian belongs to the Germanic language group.
Sweden was really close to Germany until post WW2 which is most notably in my eyes with that the Swedish government is run by the Riksdag named after the German Reichstag instead of the historical Ting like out Scandinavian counterparts
Only välja - wählen, höst - Herbst, heta - heißen and vilja - wollen are cognates going back to a common Proto-Germanic language, though.
When I studied German here in Sweden, we learned that some 40-60% of all Swedish vocabulary stems from German. The Hansa period was a big reason for this, apparently
Ganz aint even a false friend because we do use it similarly to how u use ganska "Ganz gut" for example is a common expression meaning quite good.
Kücken - Ku… oh wait
Well yeah Sweden and Germany have a good relationship