Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages. I do know that, from a linguistichistoric perspective rather than a mutual intelligibility perspective, norwegian is more closely related to icelandic and faroese than swedish or danish. They are subdivided into east danish, swedish and westscandinavian norwegian, icelandic languages. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from. Norwegians are generally better at understanding swedish than vice versa. Nov 30, 2010 the finnish woman piped up in swedish most finns can speak swedish because there is an area of finland that is swedish speaking, so we were having a mutually intelligble conversation in norwegian, swedish, and danish. This paper reports on an investigation of the mutual intelligibility of the three mainland scandinavian languages danish, swedish and norwegian.
Today i want compare swedish, danish and norwegian with each other. Recordings by native speakers from southern sweden, norway, and denmark. Like between the slavic languages, there is also many similarities and in some also mutual intelligibility between germanic languages. Between sources, you might find some claiming that two languages are mutually intelligible, while other sources claim those same languages arent. It is a north germanic language and quite similar to its sister scandinavian languages, danish and norwegian, with which it maintains partial mutual intelligibility and forming a dialect continuum. But again, this is a separate discussion from mutual intelligibility. Understanding of spoken language will vary greatly from per. As such, spoken danish and swedish normally have low mutual intelligibility, but swedes in the oresund region including malmo and helsingborg.
Faroese, icelandic faculty of arts university of groningen mutual intelligibility for the mainland scandinavian languages, mutual intelligibility is in. The finnish woman piped up in swedish most finns can speak swedish because there is an area of finland that is swedish speaking, so we were having a mutually intelligble conversation in norwegian, swedish, and danish. Determinants of mutual intelligibility between closely. Pdf conditional entropy measures intelligibility among related. Mutual intelligibility wikipedia republished wiki 2. Delsing and lundina u kesson, 2005 who determined mutual intelligibility among scandinavian languages danish, norwegian and swedish using a comprehension test with just. Are danish, norwegian, and swedish mutually intelligible. May 31, 2009 norwegian sounds like swedish and looks like danish, due to a complex history. Mutual intelligibility may also not be equal in both directions. What factors play a role in mutual intelligibility. The contribution of linguistic factors to the intelligibility. Kajkavian has higher mutual intelligibility with slovene than the national varieties of shtokavian, while chakavian has a low mutual intelligibility with either, in part due to large number of loanwords from venetian.
Othman, 2017 looked at mutual intelligibility between malaysianaccented english and swedish accented english. An intriguing case of nonreciprocal intelligibility is found in northern europe. Mutual intelligibility wikimili, the best wikipedia reader. Also, there is an article on wikipedia called mutual intelligibility, and it has a nice list of mutually intelligible languages. Reading tends to be significantly easier in my experience. Pdf the languages danish and swedish are so similar to each other that they are partially mutually intelligible. The study looks at the intelligibility of auditory and written material and concludes that. The languages spoken in scandinavia are called north germanic languages and include danish, swedish, norwegian, icelandic, and faroese. Closely related languages a and b have lower mutual.
Danish is a language you need to be exposed to to understand, because of the pronunciation. The article states that mutual intelligibility means mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without intentional study or special effort. Unfortunately, the mutualintelligibility test does not always lead to clearcut results. Swedish and norwegian, are more readily understood by danish listeners. Swedish is the official language of sweden and is spoken by the vast majority of the 10 million inhabitants of the country. On the other hand, speakers of closely related languages can often communicate with each other to a fair degree. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. There are a lot of swedes here, so swedish is a language i understand very well. Its a graphical representation of how close european languages are. Scandinavian countries, swedish, danish and norwegian, which are mutually intelligible. My question relates to language mutual intelligibility, specifically for norwegian, swedish, and danish. Here danish has the reputation of being poorly intelligible to other scandinavian listeners, whilst the other scandinavian languages, i.
To what degree do neighbouring languages share mutual. It is a north germanic language and quite similar to its sister scandinavian languages, danish and norwegian, with which it maintains partial mutual intelligibility and forming. As such, spoken danish and swedish normally have low mutual intelligibility, but swedes in the oresund region including malmo and helsingborg, across a strait from the danish capital copenhagen, understand danish somewhat better, largely due to. I am aware of the mutual intelligibility of the languages.
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which. English scots frisian german luxembourgish yiddish dutch afrikaans north germanic. Icelandic is related all are north germanic languages, but if icelanders and swedes, danes, norwegians want to talk, they need to use a language they have studied nowadays it is often english. For those who speak at least one of the three, is there a particular order to learn these languages. This strategy is widely used for communication among speakers of the three mainland scandinavian languages, i.
All of those are germanic except finnish which belongs to the uralic language family and is therefore more related to hungarian and estonian. Other languages consist of dialects which are in fact so different that. The similarity and mutual intelligibility between amharic. Why some speakers cant understand speakers who understand. If compared with other languages, are german and swedish closer to each other than french and spanish are to each other. I have read some discussions about the mutual intelligibility between the two languages, but people seem to have different opinions. True, given enough time and goodwill, mutual intelligibility can be achieved without too much effort. Yes, but like others in the thread have already pointed out, the mutual intelligibility is mostly restricted to writing. Can native german and swedish speakers understand each other without learning.
The clearest linguistic criteria that we have mutual intelligibility is ruled out by your question, because that would make the question selfcontradictory. How close is the norwegian language to the swedish language. Swedish and norwegian languages versus chinese dialects. It should be realized that the amount of work involved in establishing mutual intelligibility among a set of.
The present study investigates the crosslinguistic intelligibility of malayaccented english and swedishaccented english, regarding the three phonetic features word stress pattern, consonant. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in europe charlotte gooskens. Are norwegian, finnish, danish, icelandic and swedish. I understand these three are, to an extent, mutually intelligible. In internordic contexts, texts are today often presented in three versions. Swedish and norwegian have higher mutual intelligibility than swedish and danish. It is largely mutually intelligible with norwegian and danish, although the degree of mutual intelligibility is largely dependent on the dialect and accent of the. Danish, swedish and norwegian are said to have very high mutual intelligibility to the point that everyone just speaks in their own language in the scandinavian countries, with icelandic and faroese constituting another branch which is not as much as mutually intelligible. Observed semicommunication zeevaert 2004 danish norwegian swedish haugen 1966, maurud 1976.
Generally, speakers of the three largest scandinavian languages danish, norwegian and swedish can read each others languages without great difficulty. Finnish, icelandic, and one of the three languages danish, norwegian and swedish. The language intelligibility problem is also mentioned in the report published in 2007 at the european commission by the high level group on multilingualism hlgm, which emphasizes a lack of knowledge about mutual intelligibility between closely re. Pdf some scientific intelligibility studies robert lindsay.
Sep 23, 2009 are german and swedish mutually intelligible. Lets talk about the mutual intelligibility and similarities of the germanic languages. These languages are so closely related that the speakers mostly use their own lan. Pdf the influence of extralinguistic factors on mutual intelligibility. How can the mutual intelligibility between closely related languages be measured. Dialects of english not mutually intelligible with standard english. Pdf mutual intelligibility of malay and swedishaccented. Anecdotally, norwegians tell me swedish is more easily intelligible than danish but the standard account seems to be that danish and swedish are equally intelligible to norwegians. Duolingo is annoying because 99% of the time it is just slightly altered swedish, so i was hoping there was something geared more towards people who speak swedish. However, more recent analyses divide the north germanic languages into two groups. Linguistic determinants of mutual intelligibility in. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in europe pdf.
Just that words that are the same in finland swedish are also spelled the same as in. A result of swedens cultural influence in scandinavia and that tv shows and movies tend to flow out of sweden and into neighboring denmark and norway more than the opposite. How mutually intelligible are the finnish language and the. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages introduction. Are scandinavian languages mutually understandable. The similarity and mutual intelligibility between amharic and. Linguistic and extralinguistic predictors of inter. Its important to note that mutual intelligibility is highly subjective.
The north germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the germanic languages, a subfamily of the indoeuropean languages, along with the west germanic languages and the extinct east. Danish swedish mutual intelligibility black lake series 1 episode 2. Thus on grounds of mutual intelligibility, we might consider some of these languages to be dialects of a single language. It may be orthography, morphologylexicon, or phonetics. They are so closely related that they are sometimes considered dialects of a common, nonexistent, language maurud 1976, braunmuller 2002.
But you might like this map, its one of my favourites and i find it oddly fascinating. Dialects of english not mutually intelligible with. Germanic language mutual intelligibility people, england. Conditional entropy measures intelligibility among related. In the present investigation, results from intelligibility. It is often said, for instance, that danes understand norwegians better than norwegians understand danes. The muchdiscussed mutual intelligibility between the scandinavian languages. How well do speakers of closely related european languages understand each other in nonnative english compared to semicommunication. Germanic language mutual intelligibility best, country. They are all very similar that most people from the three countries can understand each other. It belongs to the finnougric family along with estonian and hungarian. Languages of sweden wikimili, the best wikipedia reader. Spoken by more than 10 million people, swedish is a scandinavian language that has mutual intelligibility with danish and norwegian, and has the status of an official language in sweden as well as in finland.
Their mutual intelligibility varies greatly, both between the dialects themselves as well as with other languages. Pdf some scientific intelligibility studies robert. Thus scots english may at first be quite unintelligible to speakers of the various varieties of standard american english, and vice versa. In the present investigation, results from intelligibility tests measuring the mutual intelligibility of danish, norwegian and swedish were compared with results of similar tests of mutual. Like to know more about the history and culture of the northic countries, especially sweden. Internet experiment testing swedishdanish mutual intelligibility at the word level. Its easier for danish speakers to understand swedish than the other way around. Nov 23, 2010 in the present investigation, results from intelligibility tests measuring the mutual intelligibility of danish, norwegian and swedish were compared with results of similar tests of mutual intelligibility between speakers of dutch, frisian and afrikaans. Hence, the present study examined the distance and the mutual intelligibility between amharic and two tigrigna varieties together with the effect of the attitude on the mutual. Even though the three west germanic languages dutch, frisian and afrikaans are also closely related, semicommunication is not usual between these languages. The contribution of linguistic factors to the intelligibility of. If this is true it may be because, as scandinavians sometimes say, norwegian is pronounced like danish is spelt, while danish pronunciation bears a rather more. As many have already said, the written forms of swedish, norwegian and danish are easily understood by pretty much everyone in all three countries and the swedish contingent in finland.
As noticed, there are several aspects by which linguistic distances ld between a certain pair of languages may differ. Is norwegian as mutually intelligible with danish and. What is the level of mutual intelligibility of closely related languages in europe. Mutual intelligibility of chinese dialects experimentally tested. But swedish, danish, and norwegian are official languages of separate countries, and there are separate spelling conventions for some of the sounds in the languages.
The three mainland scandinavian languages danish, norwegian and swedish constitute an interesting linguistic community with respect to mutual intelligibility. Internetonderzoek naar onderlinge verstaanbaarheid van. These factors are hypothesized to influence mutual intelligibility asymmetrically, for example, because swedish is more prevalent in the media than danish asymmetrical contact and danish is. This holds especially true of danish and norwegian. Having a large body of recognizable vocabulary is a necessary condition for mutual intelligibility, but it is nowhere near sufficient. I would say that swedish, danish and norwegian can be to a fairly high degree mutually intelligible, but it depends a lot on dialects, and there are a lot of dialects spread out across the region.
Finnish, being completely different, belongs to the finnougric language family. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in. If you know one of the scandinavian languages, do you know them all. Comparison of norwegian bokmal and standard danish wikipedia. These listeners came from nine different towns in denmark, norway, sweden and the swedish speaking part of finland see figure 2. Norwegian, danish, and swedishmutually intelligible. Insular scandinavian faroese and icelandic, and continental scandinavian danish, norwegian, and swedish, based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of east scandinavian particularly danish on norwegian during the last millennium and divergence. Germanic language mutual intelligibility people, england, english, swedish user name. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double take.
The three mainland scandinavian languages danish, swedish and norwegian are so closely related that the speakers mostly communicate in their own languages semicommunication. Im danish and i read norwegian with no problem at all ive often mistaken norwegian for badly spelled danish before i realized that it wasnt actually my language while swedish is a little harder, but there is still no problem. Mutual intelligibility between speakers of north and west. Northern germanic languages spoken in scandinavia form a dialect continuum where two furthermost dialects have almost no mutual intelligibility. One sign of that that i know of is that norwegian, icelandic and faroese have the classical indoeuropean gender system of malefemaleneuter, while swedish. Some linguists claim that mutual intelligibility is, ideally at least, the primary criterion separating languages from dialects. Mutual intelligibility of scandinavian languages archive. Previous studies have indicated that mutual intelligibility between closely related language pairs is sometimes asymmetric.
Oct 23, 2019 unfortunately, the mutual intelligibility test does not always lead to clearcut results. The bestdocumented case of asymmetric intelligibility is danish swedish. The primary obstacles to mutual comprehension are differences in pronunciation. Pdf experimental methods for measuring intelligibility of closely. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Linguistic and extralinguistic predictors of interscandinavian. Introduction this paper reports on an investigation of the mutual intelligibility of the three mainland scandinavian languages danish, swedish and norwegian. Jun 07, 2019 whats the difference between swedish, danish and norwegian.
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