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> Portuguese and Spanish are "sibling languages" When I was visiting Portugal I stayed with two people, one from Portugal and the other from Spain. They had be

by wenc 9y ago

> Portuguese and Spanish are "sibling languages" When I was visiting Portugal I stayed with two people, one from Portugal and the other from Spain. They had been living together for months before I joined them, and speaking to each other in their native languages. I was a unilingual Anglophone, and to accommodate me, they both spoke English in my presence. It was only through the medium of English that they discovered that they had misunderstood each other for months about various things. The fact that Spanish and Portuguese were similar lulled them in to a false sense of comprehension, when in fact there are many false friends (cognates) and divergent nuances. I'm told this happens a lot among Scandinavians too, and Danish is known to be especially difficult for Norwegians and Swedes to comprehend completely, so many fall back on English to avoid misunderstandings.

danso 9y ago
I would read an entire blog post/article about this situation.
larsiusprime 9y ago
Norwegian here, can confirm. I can speak to Swedes pretty easily with them in Swedish and I in Norwegian. Danes, despite the fact our languages are written about the same, are really hard to understand in speech. It's much easier to just switch to English. Going further, I've found that the mainstream Swedish dialect is probably more mutually intelligible with the mainstream Norwegian dialect than some of the more obscure regional Norwegian dialects (and I say this as someone who grew up speaking one of those regional dialects).
hsivonen 9y ago
Indeed, Nordic cooperation, both in business and in civil service, switches to English when the Danes get involved even though some cooperation between Swedish and Finnish entities may be conducted in Swedish. People from Finland, especially ones whose native language is Finnish, have even more trouble understanding Danish pronunciation than Swedes or Norwegians do. Switching to English doesn't require people from different countries, though. While in Helsinki Finnish-native and Swedish-native speakers typically speak Finnish with each other, there are parts of Finland where Swedish-speakers might not be fluent in Finnish and the most efficient mutual language with Finnish-speakers (who often aren't fluent in Swedish) is English.
nkristoffersen 9y ago
Ah, it is the Danish "potato" in their throat :-)

by wenc 9y ago

danso 9y ago

I would read an entire blog post/article about this situation.

larsiusprime 9y ago

Norwegian here, can confirm. I can speak to Swedes pretty easily with them in Swedish and I in Norwegian. Danes, despite the fact our languages are written about the same, are really hard to understand in speech. It's much easier to just switch to English. Going further, I've found that the mainstream Swedish dialect is probably more mutually intelligible with the mainstream Norwegian dialect than some of the more obscure regional Norwegian dialects (and I say this as someone who grew up speaking one of those regional dialects).

hsivonen 9y ago

Indeed, Nordic cooperation, both in business and in civil service, switches to English when the Danes get involved even though some cooperation between Swedish and Finnish entities may be conducted in Swedish. People from Finland, especially ones whose native language is Finnish, have even more trouble understanding Danish pronunciation than Swedes or Norwegians do. Switching to English doesn't require people from different countries, though. While in Helsinki Finnish-native and Swedish-native speakers typically speak Finnish with each other, there are parts of Finland where Swedish-speakers might not be fluent in Finnish and the most efficient mutual language with Finnish-speakers (who often aren't fluent in Swedish) is English.

nkristoffersen 9y ago

Ah, it is the Danish "potato" in their throat :-)