10 ms·

I am a native Danish speaker (my first language) and this article definitely rings true to me. I wouldn't go so far as to say that English is a Scandinavian lan

by bitops 14y ago

I am a native Danish speaker (my first language) and this article definitely rings true to me. I wouldn't go so far as to say that English is a Scandinavian language proper, but it was very easy to learn growing up. Even as a kid growing up in Denmark, with all the British/American shows on TV (not dubbed) it was easy to learn a lot just by reading subtitles and following along. I give Saturday morning cartoon re-runs a lot of credit for helping me to learn. I remember sitting on a train with a friend of mine and us both realizing that we both knew a lot of English a year before we were going to start learning it in school. I've found that most Scandinavians (or at least Danes) have a pretty easy time with English. Because the sentence structures are so similar, you're mostly plugging in English words that you're already familiar with and using the same sentence. That said, on a deeper level, English is a very different language. That's most likely because it is such a cross between other languages.

vonbladet 14y ago
again, the speakers of dutch (west germanic) have exactly the same experience, even though the article claims the grammar is shockingly different. as a native english speaker, my experience in dutch & swedish classes has been that it's pretty much a wash between them for difficulty, so frankly i think this argument goes nowhere. (yes, dutch puts verbs at the end of subclauses. but 'Wegian puts articles at the end of nouns and has a funky medio-passive, so then where are you?)
w1ntermute 14y ago
While the similarities between Danish and English no doubt helped you, I think the fact that Denmark is a small country and so has less in the way of domestic media is equally important. You were exposed to English at an early age because it doesn't make economic sense to dub cartoons into a language with as few native speakers as Danish.
- bitops 14y ago
  I'm personally not so sure. Because Denmark is a small country, it's a much closer-knit community than, say, the US. I grew up with a lot of Danish-created media, and paid as much attention to that as I did English-based media. Any Danish kid born in the 80's (myself included) more likely than not has fond memories of watching "Bamses Billedbog" at 6pm on the weekends. Also, plenty of cartoons are dubbed into Danish, so I'm not totally convinced about the economic argument. Denmark is a rich country with plenty of money to spend.
- dimitar 14y ago
  I agree and I would like to add that undubbed Cartoon Network is spreading English probably much faster than the BBC.
sramsay 14y ago
Is the reverse true? Would I, as a native speaker of English, find it easy to learn Danish?
- threedaymonk 14y ago
  I just commented about this a bit above, but you've reminded me of a blog post I read years ago: "Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn" http://www.pagef30.com/2008/08/why-norwegian-is-easiest-language-for.html http://www.pagef30.com/2008/08/why-norwegian-is-easiest-lang...
- da3da 14y ago
  I can't speak for Danish in particular, but I know the Scandivanian languages are all fairly similar. I know a little Swedish and am learning Norwegian and don't find them to be any harder than Spanish.
threedaymonk 14y ago
I've found that most Scandinavians (or at least Danes) have a pretty easy time with English. I think it works the other way round, too, though there's an asymmetry in the fact that, whilst most Scandinavian speakers encounter English regularly, the reverse isn't true. Nonetheless, even though I've never studied any of the Scandinavian languages, nor ever been there, I find it fairly easy to read written Danish or Norwegian. I went to a Christmas market at the local Norwegian church last weekend, and amused myself by reading all the Norwegian signs and inscriptions. With so many cognate words and an almost one-to-one mapping of word order, I could easily guess the odd word that wasn't immediately obvious. (None of that either supports or refutes the Scandinavian hypothesis, of course. It's just an observation that there are significant common features and vocabulary.)
- _delirium 14y ago
  As an American living in Denmark for two years now, I would agree that that's true to some extent for written Danish, although it also helps that Danish grammar is just not that complex. But from a linguistic perspective, spoken language is often taken to be primary, and spoken Danish is not very close to mutually intelligible, even if you take a very generous view of it. It's nearly impossible for me to even parse spoken utterances into syllables, or produce most of the phonemes, despite some time attempting, because the phonology is just so dissimilar to English phonology. I find the Romance languages generally easier to approach from a phonological perspective (e.g. I can produce and transcribe Italian sounds vaguely competently, even if my Italian grammar and vocabulary is poor).
  - threedaymonk 14y ago
    You're right that the spoken language has a greater claim to primacy than the written - there are enough examples of diglossia around the world. However, I think you overstate the significance of phonology. Many native English speakers struggle to understand Glaswegians; partly, that's lexical, but mostly, it's phonological. It doesn't mean that it's hard, though, just that the listener is unfamiliar. An American dropped in Glasgow would soon learn to understand the locals, I feel sure. You say that you've lived in Denmark for two years but still struggle to parse spoken Danish. That seems like slow progress: would it be fair to assume that you spend your time mostly in an English-speaking environment? I ask because I'm trying to work out to what extent Danish pronunciation is hard, and to what extent you just haven't had much exposure.
jeffchuber 14y ago
Completely agree having lived in Denmark and my mother being Danish. Jeg vil gerne have en kop kaffe = i would like a cup of coffee That's my go to for similarity.
- timc3 14y ago
  There are plenty of examples that are not similar as well. But I thank you for reminding me for hygge/fika.
- Gmo 14y ago
  Well, your Danish looks like Dutch to me ;) As a matter of fact, people here in NL say regularly that Danish and Dutch are 2 close languages. I'm pretty sure Dutch is not considered a Scandinavian language though.
  - upinsmoke 14y ago
    Dutch is much closer to German to us (Danes) than Danish.
- oellegaard 14y ago
  Just for the record, the weird looking "Jeg", which is very different than e.g. "Ich" (German) or "Ik" (correct me if I'm wrong, in Dutch). Jeg is pronounced something like e-I - much closer to English "I".
guylhem 14y ago
My own 2 cents- my native language being french, I found that I "understood" english much better after learning danish - especially what I previously classified as "weird" (old?) english words like ale (øle), hound (hund) etc.
- timc3 14y ago
  It helps that you learnt a germanic based language with French because English is 2 thirds of a mix of both.
- dalke 14y ago
  Learning related languages does help understand the connections between the languages. To continue your example, "dog" in German is also "Hund". Etymonline says (of hound): O.E. hund "dog," from P.Gmc. hundas (cf. O.S., O.Fris. hund, O.H.G. hunt, Ger. Hund, O.N. hundr, Goth. hunds), from PIE kuntos, dental enlargement of root kwon- "dog" (see canine). Meaning narrowed 12c. to "dog used for hunting." Expanding that a bit, it says: Old English hund "dog" from Proto-Germanic hundas (compare to Old Saxon, Old Frisian hung, Old High German hunt, German Hund, Old Norwegian hundr, Gothic funds), from Proto-Indo-European kuntos, dental enlargement of root kwon- "dog" (see canine). Meaning narrowed in the 12th century to "dog used for hunting." It's actually "dog" which is the strange one out. That site elaborates: O.E. docga, a late, rare word used of a powerful breed of canine. It forced out O.E. hund (the general Germanic and IE word; see canine) by 16c. and subsequently was picked up in many continental languages (cf. Fr. dogue (16c.), Dan. dogge), but the origin remains one of the great mysteries of English etymology. (It looks like dog was applied to what we now call a mastiff, though I'm not sure.) Since you know French, it makes sense that you find "dog" to be a normal term - apparently it comes from the English (?!) - while you are less familiar with 'hund' and its variants.
gadders 14y ago
I had a bet with a friend once about how much a Big Mac costs in Reykjavik, and so to settle the bet I googled for a phone number for a MacDonalds in Iceland and called them up. I was answered in perfect, virtually accentless English.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Why would they answer the phone in English without knowing that you were a foreigner?
  - noselasd 14y ago
    caller-id ?

by bitops 14y ago

vonbladet 14y ago

again, the speakers of dutch (west germanic) have exactly the same experience, even though the article claims the grammar is shockingly different. as a native english speaker, my experience in dutch & swedish classes has been that it's pretty much a wash between them for difficulty, so frankly i think this argument goes nowhere. (yes, dutch puts verbs at the end of subclauses. but 'Wegian puts articles at the end of nouns and has a funky medio-passive, so then where are you?)

w1ntermute 14y ago

While the similarities between Danish and English no doubt helped you, I think the fact that Denmark is a small country and so has less in the way of domestic media is equally important. You were exposed to English at an early age because it doesn't make economic sense to dub cartoons into a language with as few native speakers as Danish.

bitops 14y ago
I'm personally not so sure. Because Denmark is a small country, it's a much closer-knit community than, say, the US. I grew up with a lot of Danish-created media, and paid as much attention to that as I did English-based media. Any Danish kid born in the 80's (myself included) more likely than not has fond memories of watching "Bamses Billedbog" at 6pm on the weekends. Also, plenty of cartoons are dubbed into Danish, so I'm not totally convinced about the economic argument. Denmark is a rich country with plenty of money to spend.
dimitar 14y ago
I agree and I would like to add that undubbed Cartoon Network is spreading English probably much faster than the BBC.

sramsay 14y ago

Is the reverse true? Would I, as a native speaker of English, find it easy to learn Danish?

threedaymonk 14y ago
I just commented about this a bit above, but you've reminded me of a blog post I read years ago: "Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn" http://www.pagef30.com/2008/08/why-norwegian-is-easiest-language-for.html http://www.pagef30.com/2008/08/why-norwegian-is-easiest-lang...
da3da 14y ago
I can't speak for Danish in particular, but I know the Scandivanian languages are all fairly similar. I know a little Swedish and am learning Norwegian and don't find them to be any harder than Spanish.

threedaymonk 14y ago

I've found that most Scandinavians (or at least Danes) have a pretty easy time with English. I think it works the other way round, too, though there's an asymmetry in the fact that, whilst most Scandinavian speakers encounter English regularly, the reverse isn't true. Nonetheless, even though I've never studied any of the Scandinavian languages, nor ever been there, I find it fairly easy to read written Danish or Norwegian. I went to a Christmas market at the local Norwegian church last weekend, and amused myself by reading all the Norwegian signs and inscriptions. With so many cognate words and an almost one-to-one mapping of word order, I could easily guess the odd word that wasn't immediately obvious. (None of that either supports or refutes the Scandinavian hypothesis, of course. It's just an observation that there are significant common features and vocabulary.)

_delirium 14y ago
As an American living in Denmark for two years now, I would agree that that's true to some extent for written Danish, although it also helps that Danish grammar is just not that complex. But from a linguistic perspective, spoken language is often taken to be primary, and spoken Danish is not very close to mutually intelligible, even if you take a very generous view of it. It's nearly impossible for me to even parse spoken utterances into syllables, or produce most of the phonemes, despite some time attempting, because the phonology is just so dissimilar to English phonology. I find the Romance languages generally easier to approach from a phonological perspective (e.g. I can produce and transcribe Italian sounds vaguely competently, even if my Italian grammar and vocabulary is poor).
- threedaymonk 14y ago
  You're right that the spoken language has a greater claim to primacy than the written - there are enough examples of diglossia around the world. However, I think you overstate the significance of phonology. Many native English speakers struggle to understand Glaswegians; partly, that's lexical, but mostly, it's phonological. It doesn't mean that it's hard, though, just that the listener is unfamiliar. An American dropped in Glasgow would soon learn to understand the locals, I feel sure. You say that you've lived in Denmark for two years but still struggle to parse spoken Danish. That seems like slow progress: would it be fair to assume that you spend your time mostly in an English-speaking environment? I ask because I'm trying to work out to what extent Danish pronunciation is hard, and to what extent you just haven't had much exposure.

jeffchuber 14y ago

Completely agree having lived in Denmark and my mother being Danish. Jeg vil gerne have en kop kaffe = i would like a cup of coffee That's my go to for similarity.

timc3 14y ago
There are plenty of examples that are not similar as well. But I thank you for reminding me for hygge/fika.
Gmo 14y ago
Well, your Danish looks like Dutch to me ;) As a matter of fact, people here in NL say regularly that Danish and Dutch are 2 close languages. I'm pretty sure Dutch is not considered a Scandinavian language though.
- upinsmoke 14y ago
  Dutch is much closer to German to us (Danes) than Danish.
oellegaard 14y ago
Just for the record, the weird looking "Jeg", which is very different than e.g. "Ich" (German) or "Ik" (correct me if I'm wrong, in Dutch). Jeg is pronounced something like e-I - much closer to English "I".

guylhem 14y ago

My own 2 cents- my native language being french, I found that I "understood" english much better after learning danish - especially what I previously classified as "weird" (old?) english words like ale (øle), hound (hund) etc.

timc3 14y ago
It helps that you learnt a germanic based language with French because English is 2 thirds of a mix of both.
dalke 14y ago
Learning related languages does help understand the connections between the languages. To continue your example, "dog" in German is also "Hund". Etymonline says (of hound): O.E. hund "dog," from P.Gmc. hundas (cf. O.S., O.Fris. hund, O.H.G. hunt, Ger. Hund, O.N. hundr, Goth. hunds), from PIE kuntos, dental enlargement of root kwon- "dog" (see canine). Meaning narrowed 12c. to "dog used for hunting." Expanding that a bit, it says: Old English hund "dog" from Proto-Germanic hundas (compare to Old Saxon, Old Frisian hung, Old High German hunt, German Hund, Old Norwegian hundr, Gothic funds), from Proto-Indo-European kuntos, dental enlargement of root kwon- "dog" (see canine). Meaning narrowed in the 12th century to "dog used for hunting." It's actually "dog" which is the strange one out. That site elaborates: O.E. docga, a late, rare word used of a powerful breed of canine. It forced out O.E. hund (the general Germanic and IE word; see canine) by 16c. and subsequently was picked up in many continental languages (cf. Fr. dogue (16c.), Dan. dogge), but the origin remains one of the great mysteries of English etymology. (It looks like dog was applied to what we now call a mastiff, though I'm not sure.) Since you know French, it makes sense that you find "dog" to be a normal term - apparently it comes from the English (?!) - while you are less familiar with 'hund' and its variants.

gadders 14y ago

I had a bet with a friend once about how much a Big Mac costs in Reykjavik, and so to settle the bet I googled for a phone number for a MacDonalds in Iceland and called them up. I was answered in perfect, virtually accentless English.

w1ntermute 14y ago
Why would they answer the phone in English without knowing that you were a foreigner?
- noselasd 14y ago
  caller-id ?