From: blix@milton.cs.uiuc.edu (Gunnar Blix)
Subject: Re: Closeness of the Nordic Languages
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 20:59:13 GMT

Edmund Ryan writes:

>Are Norweigan, Danish, and Swedish similar to the extent that a  
>speaker of one could get by with the other two?

A native speaker of Norwegian will have few problems understanding
many dialects of Swedish and Danish, but will have problems with
certain dialects.  It seems a bit harder for Danes and Swedes to grasp
many Norwegian dialects, probably due to less exposure.

On the other hand, a non-native speaker of either language should
expect considerable trouble understanding the other two;  there are
considerable differences that natives may have grown up to appreciate.
For instance, many Norwegian households take in Swedish TV (since
there are very few Norwegian TV channels even if you have cable) and
get used to both hearing spoken Swedish and seeing Swedish subtitles.

As for the dialects, there are considerable differences within each
country as well, perhaps especially Norway (because of the many
mountain ranges that used to limit communication).

Paul Shuttle is generally right in his characterization, but I'd like
to clear up a few minor things:

>Until very recently, the Official _written_ language of Norway
>was Danish. (Norway was under Danish Rule from the 1300s --
>1384 I think -- until 1814.)  So one written form of Norwegian
>is Bokmal, or Book-Language. This is very similar to Danish. This
>also survives as Riksmal, or National-Language.

Just so that you don't misunderstand "very recently", Norway was in a
Union with Sweden after the Danish rule and until 1905, and you will
find a gradual change from Danish into what today is known as Bokmaal.
Most of the change in written language probably happened in the later
half of this century, and reflects a change towards the spoken
language.  Riksmaal was primarily a spoken language that comprised the
official dialects found in the major cities that had dealings with the
Danish, but nowadays Riksmaal often refers to a stricter subset of
Bookmaal that grew as a reaction to the effort to accomodate more
dialects into Bookmaal.  Note that "riks" can be interpreted as
'National' in the sense 'Official'.

>However, unofficially, each Norwegian district (often isolated
>by valleys or fjords) has its own dialect.  These were often
>quite divergent.  Collectively these were known as Landsmal, or
>Country (Rural)-Language.  Recently, the various dialects were
>standardized in written form to create a new language called
>Ny-Norsk (New-Norwegian).  Norway is actually a bilingual country:
>Ny Norsk and Bokmal are both offical languages.  Sami (Lapp) is
>an unofficial language.  In general, however, there is not a
>great difference in these various dialects of Norwegian.

Landsmaal includes the dialects that are further from Danish, and my
guess is that the term originally was used to refer to anything other
than the official language, Riksmaal.  Today, Bokmaal and Nynorsk are
both official written languages, and you can in general choose one as
your first (written) language, but learn to write both in school.
Most dialects will be closer to one of the two, while some fit equally
well (the two overlap) or poorly with either.

>Basically, the three Scandinavian languages are dialects
>of some thousand years difference.  German and English
>are cognate of some several thousands of years
>difference.

Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic all have a common root in Old
Norse, which supposedly was sufficiently close to Old English that the
two were mutually understandable;  Old Norse was used as late as in
the age of the Vikings, roughly 1000 years ago.

Edmund again:

>I read this is in a few books on the history of the English
>language. I already know German. Does that help?

You should have an easier time learning a Scandinavian language with
your background in German for two reasons.  First, many of the words
that are not common between English and Scandinavian will be familiar
from German, as well as some rules for constructing words.  Second,
your exposure to German will have taught you some sounds that would
otherwise be difficult;  although they may not be spelled exactly the
same, they are nontheless familiar.
--
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* Gunnar Blix      * Good advice is one of those insults that    *
* blix@cs.uiuc.edu * ought to be forgiven.              -Unknown *
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Xref: sparky soc.culture.nordic:8078 rec.aviation.military:1534