--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Josh Geller <dclxvi@...> wrote:
>
>
> How close to mutually intelligible are the various modern
Scandinavian
> languages?
>
> Are there any situations like with Portuguese vs. Spanish (where a
> Portuguese speaker can generally understand a Spanish speaker but
not
> necessarily vice versa)?
>
About a year ago or so, on another list, we tried
to compare Germanic languages, such as Gothic,
Old High German, Gutnic, Old Norse etc...
It turned out however, that is was extremely difficult
to give a measure, in an objective and quantitative
manner, how close two languages actually are.
It is all a matter of which features to emphasize.
Do you emphasize similarities of grammatical features,
vocabularies, syntax, sound system, pronounciation
or what?
As for myself, I read Danish books as if they were
Norwegian books already when I was 7 or 8 years old,
not long after I had learned to read books on my own.
That may have been because we had quite a number of
childeren's books that were from the 1920ies. And I
read those and enjoyed them. Here the spelling conformed
to the old norm, and the language was norsk riksmål.
Not bokmål. In fact "bokmål" is what we learned in
school. But all the book publishers used riksmål.
So we can easily say that norsk riksmål is closely
related to Danish. And sure enough, this language was
spoken too. Still, as childeren we also had to
learn another language, and this was how kids spoke
among themselves when playing in the streets.
Typical differences involved the use of "eg" and
"ikkje" for "jeg" and "ikke".
Later, during from the 70ies until present the
dialects have been on the rise. Now there hardly
seems to be any one who speaks pure "riksmål" any more.
Although it is used in written communication.
At the same time "nynorsk" has become watered out,
and it simply is a very different language from
what you find written by well know nynorsk authors
such as Vinje, Aasen and Garborg.
All this has to do with urbanisation and equalisation.
Chances also are, that if you visit Norway as
Icelander, Swede or Dane, people will not speak
to you in dialect, but use bokmål, because they
probably consider it closer to Danish or Swedish.
Nowadays people from the Oslo area tend to understand
Swedish quite well. That is because they can watch
Swedish TV there. This means that they already get used to
understanding Swedish as childeren.
For me, who did not grow up with Swedish TV, I find
Swedish harder to read than Danish. But when I listen
to spoken Danish, I'd say it is much harder to understand
that spoken Swedish. That is because the Swedish sound system
is much closer to Norwegian than the Danish sound system.
We sometimes say that Danes speak as if they had their
mouths full of potatoes.
So it all depends on what you go by. Spoken or written language.
Those are not the same. When it comes to vocabularies, there
are also great differences between what words you selct
in writing or in speech. (statistical differences)
But I'd say that Danish and Norwegian riksmål vocabularies,
as used in writing, are very much alike. But in spoken
language one tends to favour other groups of words, so that
you will see greater differences here.
When reading Swedish, the initial problem is always
that there are a great number of words that need to
be learned, because there are a significant number
of words that differ. But in speech the problems
are reduced, because spoken language tends to use a
reduced vocabulary, and here there are fewer new words
that need to be learned.
When it comes to "nynorsk", I'd say it is closer
to Swedish than to Danish. But I cannot prove this,
since I do not know what features to emphasize
in order to obtain a basis for objective comparison.
It is just a feeling I have.
Besides, Norwegian consists of many dialects, and they
all differ en every respect: intonation, vocabularies
as well as grammatical features. We have, however, learned
to live with this, and most Norwegians understand almost
any Norwegian dialect without difficulties. But whether this
is an acquired feature, in the sense that small childeren
do not find it so easy, I do not know, but I suspect
it is that way. Today almost all cities have populations that
speak nearly every norwegian dialect. You also hear the dialects
on the radio and on TV all the time. And I suppose that is how we
have learned to understand them.
Speaking a given dialect is however a different matter.
That would take a number of years to learn. Probably
a life time to learn all the finesses. The same with
Swedish and Danish: There aren't many Norwegians who
can write or speak correct Danish or Swedish. That is
because the languages are too close, and so you tend
to mix up the spelling systems with that of your own language.
Best greeting
Xigung
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