As a Swede, i don't even have to concentrate with Norwegian. With Danish i understand everything 100% but still have to concentrate because some words tend to trip me up a bit. With Icelandic i feel totally lost about 90% of the time, then a couple of sentences comes along that makes perfect sense and all of a sudden i understand the entire context. LOL this was fun!
Exactly this, full listening concentration required to decode Danish while spoken Norwegian is extremely easy to understand. For Icelandic I really need to see it in writing and think hard about the sentence, while contemplating any synonyms that might be applicable to make sense of the words. I think it would be easier if I had more knowledge in Icelandic pronunciation rules.
We wouldn’t be able too. It’s too far off as the others has evolved and Iceland was isolated for so long. Icelandic is the closest we get to Old Norse. I should know. I’m Norwegian and my bf is Icelandic. We like to brag that we understand as the Icelandic Vikings came from Norway, but we don’t. Tho they understand us of course as the learn Danish in school. They used to be under Danish rule, and they have to learn one other Scandinavian language, and the majority chooses Danish. They should choose Norwegian as they can’t do the sounds anyway and only sounds how any immigrant speaks Norwegian. And Icelanders are part Celtic due to the Irish and Scottish female slaves they brought with them from Dublin to settle Iceland, as no Norwegian woman wanted to come with.
This was really interesting, as a northern Norwegian I honestly understand Iceland (and Faroese) better than Danish but Swedish is probably the easiest. Some Southern northern dialects I struggle with sometimes equally as much as Danish or German. Personally I struggle seeing Norwegian as one language sometimes, where I live we have a different sentence structure and grammar than that of the South and many dialects have Russian influences aswell as a leftover from the Pomortrade. Really intresting though!
so, Norwegian isn't really one language but rather a country which thought it must one (a national language or so) ... probably it could have kept Danish and Swedish as national languages and probably no one would have complained
@@mikael5743 Yeah, Danish is hard for Norwegian speakers to understand when spoken, but reading is easy. There's some "throw up" sounds made in Danish sentences that makes a Norwegian ask to repeat what the Dane said. Faroese is easier to understand than Icelandic for me
As a swede, I love how icelandic sounds with all þ's, ð's and h's, it sounds mystical, in a way. It also reminds me of how my great grandparents say "h" before K's, they speak "bondska" a swedish dialect in northern sweden.
Yes the h in front of the k is also commonplace in the rural areas of inland South Norway such as classic Vågå. Listen to the chef Arne Brimi ,he should be somewhere on RUclips :)
I mean learning one, you sort of get all of them or atleast a part for free. As a native Swedish speaker, I understood the Norwegian perfectly. The Danish person spoke very clear Danish, but still it’s a bit hard. I can read Danish super easy. And I understood like maybe 95% of what he said. Danish feels like someone not articulating. So I actually know all the words he is saying, it’s just Danish sounds are hard to separate from each other. It all melts together. Sort of hard to understand in the same way like if someone spoke with their mouth full. Icelandic I was at maybe 70%. And understood what she was saying most of the time. But she is one of the most easy to understand Icelandic speakers I’ve experienced. Once in a while there was a word I wouldn’t understand at all. But not the same problem as with Danish. Super easy to understand all the sounds in Icelandic, crystal clear. The grammar is different, but it sort of clicks how you should change things. But the problem is just that I don’t understand what all the words mean. Most, but not all.
@@IQzminus2 Can Icelandic speakers understand Swedish easier than the other way around? If so, why? Is it because they are exposed to other Nordic languages more than the other way around or because Icelandic being a more archaic language boosts their ability to understand more a innovative one?
@@viharsarok I also guess that the fact that the other languages have been exposed to foreign influence (german during the Hansa years, french for Sweden during the 1700 and english the last couple of years) makes it a lot of words easier for an icelandic person to understand than the other way around. Iceland seems to be keen on using their own words instead of "loan words" from foreign languages. For example when it comes to things like IT/computers they use their own words instead of just using the english word.
I'm an American trying to learn Norwegian, and it's crazy that I BARELY know anything, but I can actually some what understand what they're all saying! I never realized how much these languages had in common!
Well 1. English is a Germanic language so related to Norwegian etc. 2. Of course we have many things in common being all related and being neighboring countries. We all spoke the same dialect of Norse once, but over time they evolved into separate languages. The Danes used to sound like us, until for whatever reason they decided to change with the heavy influence of German and Dutch. And as a Norwegian we all grow up being fluent by default without necessarily having to actually learn the language because it’s so similar, but also the exposure through media, TV shows, movies, music etc. And if course we all have a Dane or a Swede in our family somewhere. My aunt is Swedish and my 3rd cousin’s husband is also Swedish. We where also conquered and colonized by both Sweden and Denmark at one point in history. Also there are several million Norwegian Americans in the US… shouldn’t be too hard to learn seeing that English exists due to the influence from Latin/Roman, Anglo Saxon (Germanic), Danish and Norwegian (Old Norse), as Old English was very similar to that before they changed it.
I am currently learning german and i just started to Norwegian and it's kinda easy for me to understand and memorize vocabulary because it's like mixed version of german and English ✨😌
@@kilipaki87oritahiti English is related to Norwegian on more grounds than it just being "a Germanic lanugage". The ties of modern English to the Scandinavian languages are in fact much closer, since under the Danelaw English inherited a lot of absolutely basic Old Norse vocabulary, which makes modern English feel way closer to the Scandinavian languages than to say, German, despite genetically being a West Germanic language (like German), while the Scandinavian languages are from a different branch.
As an English speaker I was a little shocked by how much of the Norwegian was actually very intuitive and I picked up on it after a while, that's crazy!
As a native English speaker, I always find it mind-boggling when people don't even bother to list English in the languages they speak because they assume everyone will just take it as a given! People from Nordic countries do this quite often, I've noticed. Astonishing. Much respect. *tips hat*
Everyone is kind of expected to know English once they become adults. Personally I hardly even remember learning the language, it just happened as we watched a lot of English speaking media and computer games as kids.
Vad roligt denna videon var. Tack för detta! Jag är Britt men bott länge i Skandinavien. Blev så glad när jag förstod nästan allt som sas. Tack än gång!
I'm Norwegian so of course I understand everything he says, but even I struggled to understand exactly what he was describing.. at least the first one. There's quite a lot of words for lakes to choose from. Swedish and Danish is easy. But Icelandic is about 50% straight forward Norwegian with a different accent and 50% completely unknown. And weirdly it's often whole sentences that are fine and then whole sentences I don't understand at all. Makes it frustrating to watch Icelandic films and TV because I start listening to the parts that makes sense, and forget to look at the subtitles and then I'm suddenly lost and have to rewind to read the subtitles.
Islendingen minner meg mer om nynorsk, selv om jeg ikke snakker det flytende. Islandsk minner meg om det gamle språket. For meg var svensk lett, og dansk var greit, men vanskeligere.
Exaclty. Most of the time you don't understand a thing about Icelandic, and then all of a sudden a fully scandinavian sentence pops up out of nowhere :)
Also Norwegian - Him saying it could be saltwater made it very confusing. When I think of "innsjø" it's always fresh water, as it means "innland sea", while my other alternative would have been "fjord" where I would mainly think of saltwater.
Norwegian here, I also think when he actually said the word, it kinda destroyed the first one. Also, is he phrasing himself very wierd? "Jeg tror dette neste ordet blir sikkert lettere" 06:06 like who says that? He should be able to speak normal in this kind of setting: "Jeg tror det neste ordet blir lettere" ..anyways
I think these videos are fascinating. I love seeing related languages being used in this way. Even with my basic Swedish I was able to work out the first three answers. Being a fan of Germanic languages, it's great to see how they are both related and different at the same time.
You said it: "both related and different"! When I read a book in Norwegian it strikes me how different it actually is from Swedish. What I mean is that when hearing Norwegian I understand It so effortlessly that it does not strike me the differencies that I notice only once reading a book.
Som et nederlender jeg er overrasket over hvor mye jeg ha forstått (med undertekst naturlig), fordi jeg språker bare litt norsk og svensk. takk så mye for å gjøre dette video!
Listen to this. I live in Ostrobothina, Finland and we speak only Swedish here but we are speaking in very unique and complicated dialects. We can't for example go to Sweden and speak in out native dialect, they could not understand us! What strike me the most is what we have in common with the Icelanders! for us us water is "vattn" like in Iceland. Sorg = "leidur". We say "leidu" and in proper Swedish they say ledsen. I have suspected this and many others aswell that we in Ostrobothnia are speaking an older from of Scandinavian languages. Norwegians from the north are very easy to understand.
Wow, det hade jag ingen aning om. Ja det stämmer nog som du säger. Svenskan i Sverige har ju tagit in extrema mängder låneord genom åren, framförallt från tyskan men pågår än idag. Brukar läsa hufvudstadsbladet då och då och de har oftast en bättre svenska än svenska tidningar. Men Leidu har jag aldrig varken hört eller sett tidigare.
the reason you understood the danish guy was probably because he made an extra effort to speak slower and more clear. When danes do this, it’s not hard for swedes to understand, until you come across words that are exclusively different. Like “Fun” in danish is sjov, and it’s rolig in swedish, just 1 example
@@eddy_music_log It's a matter of exposure too. I've grown up in the South of Sweden, and I understand most Danish just fine. I've noticed that most Danes don't understand the Bornholm dialect as well as I do. What's up with that? 😅
@@sylvassasalladsbestick1342 True, exposure to the language is the key, that’s also what i hinted at when i said go to denmark for 1 or 2 weeks. Yeah the bornholm accent sounds kinda like a mix of danish and swedish, if the accent is thick it can hard for a dane to understand. Why? Probably because Bornholm is an isolated island away from the mainland, so their way of speaking has deviated from the more “standard” way of speaking in sweden/denmark
@@sylvassasalladsbestick1342 There are very few speakers of proper Bornholmsk dialect, and incredibly few of them speak it if they visit the mainland. My mother's cousin married a Bornholmsk woman whom has lived in Copenhagen for over 40 years and she still speaks proper Bornholmsk, intentionally even she just doesn't care lol and it does take some time to get it, but it's honestly easier to understand for me than proper sønder Jysk - the Dane in the video is not speaking proper sønder Jysk, he's basically avoiding all dialectal words and speaking formal Danish with a sønder Jysk "accent" one easy sign of it is that he never once used the sønderjyske article 'æ' instead of en/et, they also don't put the definite article at the end of words like the rest of Scandinavia (like, 'hvalen' and 'en hval' would both be 'æ hval') the pronoun 'jeg' in sønderjysk is also 'æ' (so 'I have a dog' in sønder jysk would be 'æ har æ hund') I mean there's a tongue twister in sønderjysk that is 'A æ u å æ ø i æ å' which means 'I am out on an/the island in a/the lake'
As an Icelander, I feel like I can understand the Swedes more but in reality the Danes are saying words I should actually understand (their pronunciation is just wild).
Haha yeah, I mean it's only logical since Iceland was a part of Denmark for half a millennium. Still they chose to pronounce words so that no one can hardly understand. Written it is almost exactly like Norwegian, yet I get 99% of spoken Norwegian. Danish? Not even close.
All of the Scandinavian languages was influenced by Low German during the middelages so than may explaine it, besides the fact that we share original share the same language roots.
Jag älskar dessa germanska serier❤Jag lär mig svenska och det är trevligt att se att jag kan förstå en del norska, , lite öländska och lite danska. Undertexterna är till stor hjälp, tack! 😁
Icelandic = "isländska". "Öländska" är namnet på de svenska dialekter som talas på Öland, den väldigt långsträckta ön utanför sydöstra Sveriges kust. En helt magiskt vacker ö med helt unik natur som mer liknar den vid Medelhavet än övriga Sverige. Annars var det helt korrekt skrivet :)
Hola Laura, I really enjoyed the videos featuring you in Catalan with other Romance Languages. Maybe you could convince Norbert to continue this amazing series 😅, and feature another Languages of Italy/Spain/France or more of Eastern Romance (Romanian ,Aromanian, ...), I would absolutely love these☺!!!
Awesome video, the North Germanic languages are fascinating...Icelandic is particularly beautiful. Excited to see the Discord server too, can't wait to join!
I feel like the reason Hólmfríður struggled a little bit with the whale question was because in Icelandic, padda as in paddedyr (mammal in many of the other languages) actually means insect. Mammals in Icelandic are called spendýr which is what she was asking about. And so I think she initially thought he was describing some kind of insect.
Well by context I as a swede could get what spendyr (spena=tit, Dyr=animal) meant. Though Padda in Swedish is toad so that's quite interesting perhaps. Per says Pattedyr, which I would think to be dyr=animal patte=breast. Which is a mammal (patte is a slang for breast in Swedish today)
I am Polish and I speak English and Norwegian. I understood Swedish and Danish (I had to focus a little bit more) and I was struggling with Icelandic, but I understood the core meaning.
@@helena_5456 Hi Helena. For Polish people Norwegian is very simple. There is no declension, no verb conjugation. The level of difficulty is the same as English. There are two factors which make Norwegian difficult. The first one is: there are actually two varieties of the language: bokmål and nynorsk. And the other one: there are the dialectal differences. But anyway Norwegian is one of the easiest languages in the World.
@@helena_5456 If one knows English at a decent level, and most Poles do, then Norwegian is quite simple. I would say it's one of the easiest languages to learn. But I am afraid it doesn't work the opposite way, so learning Polish will be quite difficult for Norwegian speakers. But nevertheless, good luck/lykke til/powodzenia with your Polish :)
I had a hard time understanding Icelandic, but its a very interesting language. I understood Norwegian the best and of course Swedish because I speak Swedish. I also found Danish to be easier to understand written than spoken. I would like to see this version but with Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, or maybe even Sami. I speak Finnish as well and it would have been intersting! I know the languages sound similiar but are different, but it would have been fun to see how similar they really are 😄
I am also speak Swedish since I am native Swedish speaker, I feel the same islandic was hard and norwegian was easy, danish for me is easy to understand when written but when they speak it's harder to understand.
@@HannahHäggAutisticTransWoman Exakt, men det är väl sant det dom säger, att det är lättare att förstå norska när det talas men inte i skrift medans det är lättare att förstå danska i skrift men inte i tal 😂
Finnish and Estonian definitely will probably work to some extent, but a Hungarian speaker won't understand a word. Finnic languages and Hungarian are as far apart from each other as Germanic and Slavic languages. I have no idea how much Finnish a Sami speaker would understand (or vice versa).
@@alexj9603 Yeah I know as i mentioned they are different from each other, my best friend is Hungarian so I know, but it would be fun to compare words or sentences 😁
I am a native English speaker and have learned some Swedish and it is much easier to understand the other languages than I expected. I knew that Norwegian would be easy but I am surprised that at least with subtitles even the icelandic was more comprehensible than I expected.
To me as a Swede Icelandic goes from almost completely non understandable to mostly understandable. "Mostly" meaning only just over 50% though. But understanding 50% makes it very guessable the general meaning of what she is saying.
@@beorlingo Yes, the experience of listening to Icelandic is a bit like hearing a mass of words, and then suddenly a phrase or sentence pops out and makes 100% sense.
As a native Swedish speaker. The difference between the Nordic languages are pretty small, mostly feels like just pronunciation (except Icelandic, it’s actually quite different). Swedish is nasal with a bit melody, Norwegian is more nasal with loads of melody, while Danish is extremely guttural with next to no melody. As a native Swedish speaker Norwegian sounds about as different to me as like a Irish accent and a Californian accent is to each other. Not a exact comparison, but pretty close. Different pronunciation of some letters, different melody, a few different words and ways of using words. But you should be able to speak with each other really easily without much problem. Maybe one word needs clarification once in a while. But if you didn’t get the Danish. Eh don’t worry about the Danish. It’s hard. The words and spelling in Norwegian and Danish is 99.9% the same. The only difference is really pronunciation. Norwegian is crystal clear. Danish is a struggle. But not that the words are hard, but in the same way as trying to understand someone who speaks with their mouth full, it’s just hard to differentiate one sound from the other.
I'm Finnish and have learned Swedish at school, so I was a bit surprised that I understood this so well and even remembered words for whale and so on. It's been 10 years since I studied Swedish and haven't really used it. Norwegian was very understandable as well. Danish and Icelandic not so much but I could read the Danish text quite well too.
Interesting: I tried to learn each of these languages once in my life, in different periods of time. Swedish tones made me freak out; Icelandic morphology and phonology are crazy AF, so I gave up immediatly; Danish is...well, it's full of useless letters, so I gave up. The only one I was very close to learn is Norwegian. I'm italian, but I can speak both German and English, so Norwegian to me is like the perfect combination of both: it has the simple morphology of English, keeping the pure germanic root in the vocabulary. I eventually gave up even with Norwegian, but I kept some information in my mind such that I can understand from 40% to 75% of a norwegian text. I may try again in the future when I'll have an income good ennough to afford a private teacher. Tusen takk for the video :)
Hi, I'm italian too and I'm fascinated that you tried to learn, I guess by yourself?, some nordic languages! As I'm a starter with German idiom, I can hear phonetic similarities with the others, but written differently. That's awesome, I woukd like, once learned a good level of German, also try to learn some Dutch 😄 Greetings from Ligury!👋👋👋
Feel free to try Norwegian again! Once you get the hang of it, the rest is a breeze! I'm actually trying to learn Latin on my own, and that is quite the adventure!
Norwegian grammar is easier than Swedish one but it has so many dialects that it gets confusing. Swedish is more homogeneous which ends up helping in the long run.
Regarding tones, I know a few italians that speak swedish largely with their native prosody or melody. It works fine, although they sound more italian than swedish of course. The context usually makes up for the lost information. And if it doesn't, you could always ask.
I really loved the video! 😍 I am currently learning Swedish as I worked with Swedish children who shared their culture and language during several months with me. They were my teachers. Danish is similar but the pronunciation is slightly different. It sounds so cute too. It is my first time to listen to someone speaking Icelandic. I am so surprised because I understood lots of words. It was wonderful!!!
As a Finn who understands Swedish fluently and speaks it almost fluently, I could understand almost everything here! Only had some trouble understanding Icelandic 😅 The subtitles helped me though! And I got all the words right 😁 These videos are awesome!
It was really interesting and fun to watch as someone who's studying Norwegian (and Swedish too, but I'm just getting started with it). Personally, I had a lot of trouble understanding anything in Icelandic. All the Nordic languages are so beautiful, though!
Such a fun video! I've been learning Danish for two years now and somehow got all five without subtitles/just listening to the audio. Makes me want to seriously pick up Norwegian now seeing as it's pretty comprehensible to me already.
Norwegian is all dialects. My experience as a Dane is that some dialects were as clear as Danish, others slightly harder, and some were impossible. I have since worked hard to get better at Norwegian and can now understand everybody I hear on the radio but I had to work really, really hard to get there. So: you’ll get some varieties of Norwegian for free because you know some Danish, the others will require time and effort (and learning them wont improve your Danish).
Absolutely fantastic video yet again Norbert 👏!!! I hope to see more of Scandinavian Languages comparison, and maybe getting back to Romance series (which was the best by far to me). Thanks a lot for your content, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance🎉🎉
Nie znam żadnego z tych języków ale brzmią bardzo ciekawie. Zupełnie inaczej niż języki słowiańskie. Dzięki temu, że oglądam twoje filmy na bieżąco zaczęłam interesować się innymi językami. Nigdy nie jest za późno na naukę. Fajnie, że łączysz ludzi z różnych krajów.
Pol’skij jazyk ochevidno gorazdo bolee ponjatny, odnako zhe mne kazhetsja interesnym tot fact, chto v Skandinavskich jazykach frazy tipa “på svenska”, “på engelska” napisany pochti tak zhe kak i v russkom
Amazing, very amazing ! This was a hard challenge for me, because I do not know Norwegian, I do not know Danish and I do not know Icelandic, I am just learning Swedish since July of this year. Nevertheless I could guess quite quickly the first word ("lake"), and the fourth word ("Greenland"). For the second word I found two solutions: "train" and "ship", and I found two solutions also for the last word: "whale" and "dolphin". Anyway I am satisfied with my "performance", and now I await a new video like this for another challenge. Thanks for this video and greetings from Novara, Northern Italy.
If it were the Icelandic person explaining a word the Scandinavians would be almost completely lost. If the Norwegian was a nynorsk user they might have the most comprehension. Bokmål is really a form of Danish, but nynorsk is based off dialects in Norway that actually are more closely related to Icelandic
Nej inte nynorsk! Sure en d l ord är mer likt svenska men bokmål fungerar helt ok. Alla förstår det redan så finns ingen anledning att gå bananas med nynorsk.
Icelandic is not mutually intelligible with the Scandinavian languages because it is very isolated and developed differently. As an Icelander, we do learn Danish which makes this easier. Norwegian: Understood maybe 60% Swedish: 40% Danish: 60-70%
@@Borrelaas He spoke a mix, and not a very good one. He makes soo many mistakes, literally not able to speak his own language properly. Was kinda hard to watch
@@Borrelaasdialects change through the time because we are more movable than back then. It happens in Germany, too. Kölsch for instance changed somehow too. I read that it was common to say “en” for “in” but through standard German even in Kölsch dialect people tend to say “in.” Also it’s possible that rhinish words got into Kölsch. I heard that Norwegians tend to talk in English to each other because their dialects are not really understandable. I learn Norwegian with dialects included and sometimes I find myself wondering if I really did learn the language because I can’t understand a thing😄.
@@MarieBra Yeah i know dialects change, i was just remarking that the norwegian guy is speaking a trønder dialect (middle norwegian if you will). But like someone pointed out he is speaking somewhat watered down with influences from eastern norwegian. It's not about dialects changing its something personal to that individual No norwegian ever talks english to eachother, i have never ever experienced or heard about something like that happening. The dialects here are very varied but we are generally very good at understanding them. What you probably heard is that scandinavians tend to talk english instead of their own language when talking to someone from another scandinavian country, and that is true, it happens. But i promise you, no norwegian ever speaks english to another norwegian because they are not able to understand eachother :)
This was so interesting to watch! I had it a bit easy being able to read what you all were saying, but just hearing it, especially via voice/video is a whole other thing. I wouldn´t been able to understand icelandic at all if I didn't have the text to guide me.
Interesting video, I knew I'd understand most Norwegian as I grew up in south west Sweden and we had a lot of Norwegian visitors (and even some access to NRK) in the areas i've lived in. I am happy I was able to understand Danish as well as I did, as I started working in a Scandinavian speaking market, and I am daily communicating with Norwegians and Danes. I was pleasantly surprised how well I understood Icelandic, normally I struggle a lot, but perhaps she spoke slower or more clearly than Icelandic I have heard in the past. I guessed 4 of 5, with mistaking the first for fjord, since I did not consider insjö (and it sounded like lake was out of the question).
I think he made the "insjö" somewhat overexplained. And when he falsely (I'd say) claimed that sometimes they put dams in them it even ruled out "insjö". They only put dams in lakes that are part of rivers and are hence per se actually rivers.
Yay! I got four right! I'm feeling very proud of myself. I've been using these videos to help me practice my Swedish, without the help of English subtitles. It makes me realize that I know a lot more than I give myself credit for. Hope to see more of these Nordic language videos! 🥰
I have absolutely zero exposure to any of those languages, but just from being a native English speaker, was able to figure a few of them out. It's strangely one of those situations where it's backwards from normal. Reading the text made it more difficult, but if I closed my eyes and listened carefully, I could make out words that sounded very similar to the English equivalent. How cool
That's exactly what I noticed with the Dutch videos on the Ecolinguist channel. Due to differences in orthography between English and Dutch, I found the written forms more of a hindrance than a help in understanding. A lot of the Dutch was comprehensible just by listening carefully. Unfortunately, I can't really say I had the same experience when listening to these North Germanic languages. Yes, I could pick out some words, but not enough for comprehension.
Some German dialects in the German-speaking countries are a lot more different than Danish-Swedish-Norwegian but are still considered "one" German language. 😆
Please, same could be said about some of the, sorry not sorry (you know it's true), VERY weird Norwegian Dialects... XD And I also do know Sweden and Denmark have dialects that everyone agree are hard to understand and really just something of their own. XD
Very true. The definition of what is a language and what is a dialect is arbitrary from a linguistic point of view (well not totally, but for the spoken language it is almost). Mandarin is probably as diverse as all the Germanic languages.
I laughed every time the Scandinavians just kinda stare blankly when the Icelandic woman speaks! I'm surprised how much Norwegian I retained despite having moved away from there a year ago! I can understand a little of the Swedish as well but not the Danish, I understand Icelandic more than The Danish but I vacation there often so probably am more familiar with the sounds 🤔
Så fint! Great video, utmärkt! Jag har lärat mig en lite svensk og så kan jag förstå en lite norsk, men dansk, o nej! Íslenska tunga… ég skil litill - málfraeði er mjög erfriður, men hún hljómar svo fallegur og þokkafullur! Takk, tack og þökk.
"Jeg er brasiliansk", er korrekt norsk. "Brasilianske" brukes om en gruppe (brasilianske menn, brasilianske kaffetyper, brasilianske matretter). Brasiliansk kaffe, brasiliansk restaurant, brasiliansk by, etc. De er brasilianske. Vi er brasilianske. Hun/han er brasiliansk.
So for context I'm fluent in Dutch, German and English. I tried to learn some Norwegian once on duo lingo for like 2 days but afterwards forgot about. I can honestly say understood most of what was said in the following order: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic just sounded magical to me. Somehow Danish really reminded me of German in a way. Just goes to show how similar germanic languages still are.
I (Norwegian) went to school in Sweden, where I understood the Swedish teacher from close to the border very well. He had a similar intonation to me, but my classmate from Stavanger was often more difficult to understand. Swedes had to ask him to repeat himself much more often than with us South-Easteners, naturally. Maybe for an Icelandic person it would be easier, as they have a closer connection linguistically.
Stavanger and further south along the coast are odd, they have vowels and soft consonant sounds similar to Danes, but they can have VERY west Norwegian vocabulary and grammar. Kaizers Orchestra lyrics are instructive!
Even as a norwegian I didnt know what Vebjørn was after. Was it a river or a lake? No clue! Should have written down a concise explanation of what it was and repeated that.
As a person who has been learning Norwegian in the spare time (I managed to get to A2 level by using Duolingo and some other resources) and has never spent more than couple of days in those countries I understood pretty much everything what Vebjorn was saying. When it comes to Danish and Swedish it is really difficult to understand words by ear but when it is written it's sort of understandable. To me, it's easier to understand written Danish than Swedish but spoken Swedish is easier than spoken Danish. Icelandic - I had no clue what Hólmfríður was trying to say.
This is how it is for many Norwegians too. Written Danish is very similar and easy to understand but spoken is not always so easy unless they slow down, and for Swedish it’s pretty easy to understand most of it, also because we have been exposed to Swedish in television from a young age. I actually thought Icelandic was much easier than I initially had thought because many of the words sounded similar with a twist so in the context you could guess what she was saying. I am Norwegian though. And she may have spoken very clear to be understood.
English used to have that silent H infront of words and in older version of Swedish literature we can also see words like Vilken and Vilket were spelled Hvilken and Hvilket
Some English accents have the "silent" h. I pronounce "what whale?" "hwat hwale" with a very light h. The mystery to me is how/why "hw" in old English spelling (hwaet hwael) was reversed to "wh".
@@HweolRidda Blame the Greeks and Romans. Greek had these three aspirated letters , and . The Romans decided to spell Greek loan words with these letters using , and . (There was also which was transcribed .) Later, the sounds for the Greek letters changed into [θ], [f] and [x]. English still spells words like "telephone" and "elephant" with where many other languages use an . Other languages started using as a way to mark either fricative or aspirated consonants. In English, some [k] and [sk] became [tʃ] and [ʃ] before or after front vowels. Their spelling was changed to and . English also replaced the letters and , which did not exist on German printing presses, with and . The reason why was changed to was simply to keep it consistent with the others (even though it comes from an older [kʷ]).
@@HweolRidda Long ago I read that this change in spelling was introduced by the Normans, so if that's correct, you should actually blame the Danes! -- well... _some_ of them, anyway. ;-)
As an English speaker in Scotland, I was able to understand most of what was being said with a mix of spoken and written forms. I found the Norwegian and Swedish the easiest and even got the words correct!
As a brazilian who studies swedish, it's very impressive how similar the languages are, specially between norwegian and swedish, I can understand a bit of danish too, but it's kinda hard Of course, Icelandic had to be the hardest to understand
Diferenças e semelhanças que também existem entre as línguas românicas. Sueco e dinamarquês seria como português e espanhol. E norueguês seria como o galego.
@@CPHJose actually a good comparison with the difference being that written Norwegian and Danish is almost identical. Way more identical than Norwegian and Swedish for example.
Interessting. The german Translation of "klar" -> "fertig" can also mean "ready" and "exhausted" like in norwegian but its not a regional difference it can mean Both depending on the context.
Similar in Swedish, where "klar" means both "clear" like a window glass and "ready". "Färdig" means "ready" but can also mean "exhausted" -> "Jag är helt färdig!" = "I'm totally exhausted!".
An also very common meaning of klar in German is clear. The well known phrase "alles klar" is a difficult one to translate, it can mean "everything is clear" (literal) and also something like "everything settled".
In my dialect (norwegian) it's also about the context. "Blir du med og går en tur?" (Are you ready for a stroll?) Nei, jeg er så klar (No, I'm so exhausted). Kommer du snart? (Are you coming soon?) Ja, jeg er klar. (Yes, I'm ready.)
I speak Swedish (not native though) so Norwegian was easy peasy. Danish is difficult to understand and sounds like a mix between Swedish and German. Icelandic is totally incomprehensible without subtitles. It's very interesting that Norwegian and Icelandic are both in Western group of Nordic/Scandinavian languages and Swedish and Danish are both in Eastern group of Nordic/Scandinavian languages, but Norwegian (at least spoken form) is much more similar to Swedish than Danish.
Old Norwegian was in the Western group but it was replaced by Danish centuries ago. Modern written Norwegian is still basically Danish with a few spelling changes.
@@johnnorthtribe As far as I know, Danish had a huge influence on written Norwegian (the bokmål variant) but not on a spoken one. Scandinavian languages are in a dialect continuum, that can be the reason I find it easier to understand Norwegian. I live near Gothenburg so dialects around Oslo are easy, but dialects from Bergen area are difficult to understand. I'm sure that people from Skåne find it easier to understand Danish than Norwegian.
I'm a finnosweed I could understand Swedish and Norwegian perfectly and I could understand the writing in danish pretty well. The hardest for me was Icelandic, but I could pick upp the general meaning. My dialect is pretty old so that could be the reason. Great video!
In Russian we can use the word "готов" ("gotov", "ready") with two different meanings: 1) literally as ready or done (обед готов = dinner is ready), 2) figuratively as dead or broken (ну всё, готов движок = that's all, the engine's down).
Right, but it was more about referring to the first meaning, which I should have pointed out, but if I insisted, I could say that in everyday speech, especially in anger, the appropriate use of weaving the word "ready" into a sentence expressing your resignation also would be there. All in all, Polish is flexible enough both in terms of sentence order and this type of syntax. However, I agree with you that this reference to death is not widely used.
I can understand the confusion with the first word. The Dane actually got it right with Sö (Danish for lake) but I think the Norwegian guy made it overly complicated and threw everyone off. The Swedish girl would have gotten it as well, no doubt but he really did make it sound more like it was something more complex than a lake and also said it's hard to explain, lol. Nothing hard to explain about a lake... That said, I also initially thought it was Lake because he said it wasn't moving (stagnant) and you could build dams and make a reservoir out of it. But then I wasn't sure if he meant fjord because he said it's found in mountainous regions. Now, flat lands don't have fjords but they certainly do have lakes, lol. Just my two cents.
As a Dutchman living in Sweden it's nice to see that Danmark and Norway have the word "bewegen". That word doesn't exist in Swedish (röra), but exists in Dutch. Triestheid Zorg Groenland Dier Walvis
Would be interesting to have Icelandic be the subject, and maybe include Dutch in the mix. So Icelandic, with 1 west-scandinavian language, either Norwegian or Faroese, 1 east-scandinavian language, either Danish or Swedish, then Dutch.
To me it seemed Vebjørn understood Holmfridur fairly well. The Norwegian in such a challenge should be someone from the Oslo area. For someone from Vestlandet it would be too easy. But the Norwegian of any sort will probably "win" all the same. Not 100% sure though since there's the Danish/Icelandic connection historically not all that far away in time.
It would not work to well for us Dutch. We mostly have troubles with the accents. So many words are pretty similar, but with the accent and words that are too dissimilar I guess most of us get lost. So we do not need lessons, but give us a couple of hours to adjust to the Scandinavian languages and then it will be interesting. I say this btw because reading Norwegian, Swedish to most Dutch (in fact ALL I know) is between "doable" and "very easy". Proof 1: we were in Rovaniemi for a week. Luckily most was also written in Swedish and we in fact never ever needed English. We could just always rely on or non-existant knowledge of Swedish. Finnish was just completely incomprehensible. Another point is that my GFs were always capable of reading a Danish or Norwegian Newspaper. I tested this more than once and they always knew what was meant even though some words were really different.
@@Serenoj69 may Dutch for Swedes/Danes/Norwegians/Icelanders. That would be interesting! Btw, my favourite Dutch word lately is 'vrachtwagen'. I remember reading it on a sign in a GeoGuessr game. It was so funny when the penny fell through. We have 'frakt'. But never used in any compound words referring to any sort of vehicles.
Wow, I absolutely loved this. I have studied mostly Swedish and Norwegian, but find Danish pretty difficult to understand. Icelandic sounds amazing, like the language of ancient royalty or something. I so much enjoyed this and thought it was awesome how these Northern Germanic language speakers all pretty much understood each other.
I don't know any of these languages, but damn, it's so relaxing to listen to them. I absolutely love the sound of northern languages and I hope to someday find the motivation to learn at least one of them Greetings from Poland :3
You should listen to some Finlandssvenska. It’s a dialect from Finland. And as a Swede I have to admit think they have one of the nicest melodies of the Nordic languages. Just so calming.
Haha, you didn't know Icelandic is the same language family and from the same roots as Swedish? It's the closest living language to Old Norse. And you'd be able to understand some Old Norse too because you're Swedish.
I enjoy these a lot. I'm swedish and can understand norwegian and danish perfectly well. I'm trying to work on my understanding of icelandic but obviously, that's a bit trickier. I think you all did a great job!
@@DaWorldGuardian001 Samogitian is a dialect of Lithuanian. It's not different enough to count it as a different language. But sure, it could be added for the sake of variety.
The danish influence is very strong indeed. I understand danish very well and i find it strange that alot of fellow norwegians have a hard time understanding danish... but truth be told i have a hard time being understood when i am in denmark. Last time i visited denmark i wanted to tell someone to have a nice evening, so i said "ha en fin kveld", the poor guy didnt understand what on earth i meant until i realized i had to say "ha en fin aften"
@@Borrelaas intressant då kväll används betydligt mer i Sverige. Afton är mer formellt. Men alla hade förstått båda orden här. Norska och Danska är ju i princip lika på papper men är helt annorlunda i verkligheten. Jag förstår nästan 100% av Norska men har stora problem med Danska. De kan inte artikulera sig överhuvudtaget.
I am English speaker but I could follow the written Norwegian subtitles without reading the English . I don’t speak Norwegian but i know it is close to English and the easiest language for English speakers to learn and I can see why.I can see the sameness in word building in both tongues as well as the many words that share the same root.
To be frank, the Norwegian guy was probably nervous, as he made mistakes in his own language. The subtitles are not very good. The typos made the words less intelligible to English speakers.
Nice video, but the notice that English subtitles are available is a bit too short and easy to miss. I'm guessing that this video doesn't make much sense unless you speak one of the four languages that is used. I was a bit disappointed that Vebjørn and the others didn't get the Iclandic word "spendýr" (= mammal). In Norwegian we use "pattedyr", and "patte" and "spene" are both used for the mammary glands of animals. Note that "spene" usually translates to "teats", and in Norwegian it's almost exclusively used for animals that have udders and that we use for milk (cows, sheep, goats).
I think it was because "dýr" has such a wierd pronunciation in Icelandic - In Swedish it's "Däggdjur", but cows have "spene/spenar" so I made that connection when I saw the Icelandic transcript...
It's easy to figure out 'spendýr' when you see it written - it is the vowel length and stress of spoken Icelandic that will throw off both Swedes and Norwegians I think.
@@frankrault3190 While I can't name any examples I think this is what happens to me more often with the languages of our northern neighbours. Indeed ""speendier". Or motobike is a "knallert" which to me makes perfect sense. We in fact could use that word for fun I think and all of us would understand. There must be a lot more. Also I found out that a lot of slang words are the same.....Like: pik (dick), Doos (cunt), vet (fet) means "cool".
I know very basic Swedish words and sentences because of Duolingo. I was so surprised that I actually got 4 words correctly without even reading the subtitles... I am a polyglot, but I mostly speak slavic and romance languages. I never thought it would be so easy to understand this. Also, I thought the last word was dinosaur because I didn't know the words for ocean and mammal haha
Really enjoyed this video. As someone who is learning Norwegian ( and German speaking ) I was really pleased I could understand nearly all your Norwegian. 🙂🇳🇴 , a little bit of the Swedish....🇸🇪, Danish 🇩🇰and Icelandic.🇮🇸 .not so much..😅 Love Scandinavia and its languages..especially Norwegian 🇳🇴 Would like to learn Icelandic at some point...🇮🇸🙂
This is interesting. As an English speaker i obviously don’t understand as much as anyone else but i can still find those few words and phrases that are understandable. Maybe like 10% of the words are close enough that i can figure them out but it’s not enough to follow anything past introductions. Still very interesting.
As a Norwegian, my answers would be: 1) Vann. Ett vann. 2) Tog. Ett tog. We don't have these up north. Could've been ferge, ferry, until the certain number of seats one. 3) Sorg. En sorg. Any synonym is too light to really describe what you feel when you lose someone close to you. 4) Grønnland. The land Norway lost to Denmark in the 20th century, and we've been happy about that ever since! (And you spelled it wrong!) 5) Hval. En hval. Or rather, kval. In Northern Norwegian, the silent H before older words often become K. So kem, ka, kor, kval, not vem, va, vor, val. (Hvem, hva, hvor, hval.) I do notice Northern Norwegian and Icelandic sound more alike in tone and cadence than Northern and Southern Norwegian, though of course the vocabulary is very far, and the specific sounds, the hl and the thorn and so on, are not in northern Norwegian. It's fascinating that Northern and Southern Norwegian basically have the exact opposite tones of voice, one rising where the other is falling and vice versa. Southerners always sound like they're asking questions, even when they aren't; Northerners sound like we're making statements, even when asking questions. (Random Norwegian-language joke: What's the world's largest country? Poland. It reaches all the way from the South Pole/Southern Poland to the North Pole/Northern Poland!)
As a Swede, i don't even have to concentrate with Norwegian. With Danish i understand everything 100% but still have to concentrate because some words tend to trip me up a bit. With Icelandic i feel totally lost about 90% of the time, then a couple of sentences comes along that makes perfect sense and all of a sudden i understand the entire context. LOL this was fun!
Exactly this, full listening concentration required to decode Danish while spoken Norwegian is extremely easy to understand. For Icelandic I really need to see it in writing and think hard about the sentence, while contemplating any synonyms that might be applicable to make sense of the words. I think it would be easier if I had more knowledge in Icelandic pronunciation rules.
I know only basic and unstructuredly learned Swedish and Norwegian, but my impressions about Icelandic exactly mirror yours lol
Same!
I heard that eating nonstop rødgrød med fløde makes you understand Danish even in your sleep.
Can we get a part two? Would love to see this with Hólmfríður explaining words to see how many Nordics can understand Icelandic
Great idea! I would love to see this.
Yes please! I struggle very much with icelandic but being able to see it in writing helped a lot
We wouldn’t be able too. It’s too far off as the others has evolved and Iceland was isolated for so long. Icelandic is the closest we get to Old Norse. I should know. I’m Norwegian and my bf is Icelandic. We like to brag that we understand as the Icelandic Vikings came from Norway, but we don’t. Tho they understand us of course as the learn Danish in school. They used to be under Danish rule, and they have to learn one other Scandinavian language, and the majority chooses Danish. They should choose Norwegian as they can’t do the sounds anyway and only sounds how any immigrant speaks Norwegian. And Icelanders are part Celtic due to the Irish and Scottish female slaves they brought with them from Dublin to settle Iceland, as no Norwegian woman wanted to come with.
This was really interesting, as a northern Norwegian I honestly understand Iceland (and Faroese) better than Danish but Swedish is probably the easiest. Some Southern northern dialects I struggle with sometimes equally as much as Danish or German. Personally I struggle seeing Norwegian as one language sometimes, where I live we have a different sentence structure and grammar than that of the South and many dialects have Russian influences aswell as a leftover from the Pomortrade. Really intresting though!
Oh,you mean the relics of Russenorsk language?what is the part of Norway you live in?
I get you. From my end I struggle to understand northern Norwegian sometimes.
so, Norwegian isn't really one language but rather a country which thought it must one (a national language or so) ... probably it could have kept Danish and Swedish as national languages and probably no one would have complained
@@mathiaslist6705 There is no "correct" spoken Norwegian, only dialects. There are two written languages.
yea im from iceland and i think norwegian is the easiest by far but thats just because its the closest to icelandic
As a Faroese person I could understand most of what everyone said, sometimes I struggle with understanding the pronunciation of Icelandic though ^^
Written I find Faroese looks like German a bit.
@@SchmulKrieger ooh interesting! Never thought about that
I thought Faroese is the closest one to Icelandic, or could it be just in lexical similarities and not pronounciation-wise?
Really? I thought the Danish pronunciation is the tricky one
@@mikael5743 Yeah, Danish is hard for Norwegian speakers to understand when spoken, but reading is easy. There's some "throw up" sounds made in Danish sentences that makes a Norwegian ask to repeat what the Dane said. Faroese is easier to understand than Icelandic for me
As a swede, I love how icelandic sounds with all þ's, ð's and h's, it sounds mystical, in a way.
It also reminds me of how my great grandparents say "h" before K's, they speak "bondska" a swedish dialect in northern sweden.
Låter lite som samiska, tror jag.
Yes the h in front of the k is also commonplace in the rural areas of inland South Norway such as classic Vågå. Listen to the chef Arne Brimi ,he should be somewhere on RUclips :)
Being able to speak both Icelandic and Danish kind of gives you an ability to understand the rest of Scandinavian languages.
I mean learning one, you sort of get all of them or atleast a part for free.
As a native Swedish speaker, I understood the Norwegian perfectly.
The Danish person spoke very clear Danish, but still it’s a bit hard. I can read Danish super easy. And I understood like maybe 95% of what he said.
Danish feels like someone not articulating. So I actually know all the words he is saying, it’s just Danish sounds are hard to separate from each other. It all melts together. Sort of hard to understand in the same way like if someone spoke with their mouth full.
Icelandic I was at maybe 70%. And understood what she was saying most of the time. But she is one of the most easy to understand Icelandic speakers I’ve experienced.
Once in a while there was a word I wouldn’t understand at all.
But not the same problem as with Danish.
Super easy to understand all the sounds in Icelandic, crystal clear. The grammar is different, but it sort of clicks how you should change things.
But the problem is just that I don’t understand what all the words mean. Most, but not all.
@@IQzminus2 Can Icelandic speakers understand Swedish easier than the other way around? If so, why? Is it because they are exposed to other Nordic languages more than the other way around or because Icelandic being a more archaic language boosts their ability to understand more a innovative one?
@@viharsarok I also guess that the fact that the other languages have been exposed to foreign influence (german during the Hansa years, french for Sweden during the 1700 and english the last couple of years) makes it a lot of words easier for an icelandic person to understand than the other way around.
Iceland seems to be keen on using their own words instead of "loan words" from foreign languages.
For example when it comes to things like IT/computers they use their own words instead of just using the english word.
Maybe, but norwegians and swedes will not really understand you lol
Icelandic or Danish, plus one other might be a more powerful combo. Because then you could also make yourself understood :P
I'm an American trying to learn Norwegian, and it's crazy that I BARELY know anything, but I can actually some what understand what they're all saying! I never realized how much these languages had in common!
Well 1. English is a Germanic language so related to Norwegian etc. 2. Of course we have many things in common being all related and being neighboring countries. We all spoke the same dialect of Norse once, but over time they evolved into separate languages. The Danes used to sound like us, until for whatever reason they decided to change with the heavy influence of German and Dutch. And as a Norwegian we all grow up being fluent by default without necessarily having to actually learn the language because it’s so similar, but also the exposure through media, TV shows, movies, music etc. And if course we all have a Dane or a Swede in our family somewhere. My aunt is Swedish and my 3rd cousin’s husband is also Swedish. We where also conquered and colonized by both Sweden and Denmark at one point in history. Also there are several million Norwegian Americans in the US… shouldn’t be too hard to learn seeing that English exists due to the influence from Latin/Roman, Anglo Saxon (Germanic), Danish and Norwegian (Old Norse), as Old English was very similar to that before they changed it.
I am currently learning german and i just started to Norwegian and it's kinda easy for me to understand and memorize vocabulary because it's like mixed version of german and English ✨😌
@@kilipaki87oritahiti English is related to Norwegian on more grounds than it just being "a Germanic lanugage". The ties of modern English to the Scandinavian languages are in fact much closer, since under the Danelaw English inherited a lot of absolutely basic Old Norse vocabulary, which makes modern English feel way closer to the Scandinavian languages than to say, German, despite genetically being a West Germanic language (like German), while the Scandinavian languages are from a different branch.
Alt? Arr, nok næppe, islandsk er så meget anderledes end de andre.
Indo-European Germanic language, French, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian all have some common linguistic roots.
Finnish, on the other hand...
As a Swedish speaker, I could understand everyone quite well but I was glad to read the subtitles for Danish and Icelandic.
As an English speaker I was a little shocked by how much of the Norwegian was actually very intuitive and I picked up on it after a while, that's crazy!
As a native English speaker, I always find it mind-boggling when people don't even bother to list English in the languages they speak because they assume everyone will just take it as a given! People from Nordic countries do this quite often, I've noticed. Astonishing. Much respect. *tips hat*
Everyone is kind of expected to know English once they become adults. Personally I hardly even remember learning the language, it just happened as we watched a lot of English speaking media and computer games as kids.
@@oskich Well dhu English is our 2nd language taught in school. We become fluent already then. If not fluent until adulthood you’re quite slow.
Vad roligt denna videon var. Tack för detta! Jag är Britt men bott länge i Skandinavien. Blev så glad när jag förstod nästan allt som sas. Tack än gång!
I'm Norwegian so of course I understand everything he says, but even I struggled to understand exactly what he was describing.. at least the first one. There's quite a lot of words for lakes to choose from.
Swedish and Danish is easy. But Icelandic is about 50% straight forward Norwegian with a different accent and 50% completely unknown. And weirdly it's often whole sentences that are fine and then whole sentences I don't understand at all. Makes it frustrating to watch Icelandic films and TV because I start listening to the parts that makes sense, and forget to look at the subtitles and then I'm suddenly lost and have to rewind to read the subtitles.
Islendingen minner meg mer om nynorsk, selv om jeg ikke snakker det flytende. Islandsk minner meg om det gamle språket. For meg var svensk lett, og dansk var greit, men vanskeligere.
Totally agree with you re the first one.
Your analogy about Icelandic is spot on :)
Exaclty. Most of the time you don't understand a thing about Icelandic, and then all of a sudden a fully scandinavian sentence pops up out of nowhere :)
Also Norwegian - Him saying it could be saltwater made it very confusing. When I think of "innsjø" it's always fresh water, as it means "innland sea", while my other alternative would have been "fjord" where I would mainly think of saltwater.
Norwegian here, I also think when he actually said the word, it kinda destroyed the first one. Also, is he phrasing himself very wierd? "Jeg tror dette neste ordet blir sikkert lettere" 06:06 like who says that? He should be able to speak normal in this kind of setting: "Jeg tror det neste ordet blir lettere" ..anyways
I think these videos are fascinating. I love seeing related languages being used in this way. Even with my basic Swedish I was able to work out the first three answers. Being a fan of Germanic languages, it's great to see how they are both related and different at the same time.
You said it: "both related and different"! When I read a book in Norwegian it strikes me how different it actually is from Swedish. What I mean is that when hearing Norwegian I understand It so effortlessly that it does not strike me the differencies that I notice only once reading a book.
Som et nederlender jeg er overrasket over hvor mye jeg ha forstått (med undertekst naturlig), fordi jeg språker bare litt norsk og svensk. takk så mye for å gjøre dette video!
Listen to this. I live in Ostrobothina, Finland and we speak only Swedish here but we are speaking in very unique and complicated dialects. We can't for example go to Sweden and speak in out native dialect, they could not understand us! What strike me the most is what we have in common with the Icelanders! for us us water is "vattn" like in Iceland. Sorg = "leidur". We say "leidu" and in proper Swedish they say ledsen. I have suspected this and many others aswell that we in Ostrobothnia are speaking an older from of Scandinavian languages. Norwegians from the north are very easy to understand.
Wow, det hade jag ingen aning om. Ja det stämmer nog som du säger. Svenskan i Sverige har ju tagit in extrema mängder låneord genom åren, framförallt från tyskan men pågår än idag. Brukar läsa hufvudstadsbladet då och då och de har oftast en bättre svenska än svenska tidningar. Men Leidu har jag aldrig varken hört eller sett tidigare.
@@Hrotiberhtaz ” Ny har jag leidu” = I have enough. , I’m up to my neck in this in a negative tone.
Easy for me as a Swede. You even found a Dane i could understand. Maybe include a Faroese next time?
the reason you understood the danish guy was probably because he made an extra effort to speak slower and more clear. When danes do this, it’s not hard for swedes to understand, until you come across words that are exclusively different. Like “Fun” in danish is sjov, and it’s rolig in swedish, just 1 example
@@eddy_music_log You kan also use Skoj for Fun in swedish, at least on the west coast.
@@eddy_music_log It's a matter of exposure too. I've grown up in the South of Sweden, and I understand most Danish just fine. I've noticed that most Danes don't understand the Bornholm dialect as well as I do. What's up with that? 😅
@@sylvassasalladsbestick1342 True, exposure to the language is the key, that’s also what i hinted at when i said go to denmark for 1 or 2 weeks. Yeah the bornholm accent sounds kinda like a mix of danish and swedish, if the accent is thick it can hard for a dane to understand. Why? Probably because Bornholm is an isolated island away from the mainland, so their way of speaking has deviated from the more “standard” way of speaking in sweden/denmark
@@sylvassasalladsbestick1342 There are very few speakers of proper Bornholmsk dialect, and incredibly few of them speak it if they visit the mainland. My mother's cousin married a Bornholmsk woman whom has lived in Copenhagen for over 40 years and she still speaks proper Bornholmsk, intentionally even she just doesn't care lol and it does take some time to get it, but it's honestly easier to understand for me than proper sønder Jysk - the Dane in the video is not speaking proper sønder Jysk, he's basically avoiding all dialectal words and speaking formal Danish with a sønder Jysk "accent" one easy sign of it is that he never once used the sønderjyske article 'æ' instead of en/et, they also don't put the definite article at the end of words like the rest of Scandinavia (like, 'hvalen' and 'en hval' would both be 'æ hval') the pronoun 'jeg' in sønderjysk is also 'æ' (so 'I have a dog' in sønder jysk would be 'æ har æ hund') I mean there's a tongue twister in sønderjysk that is 'A æ u å æ ø i æ å' which means 'I am out on an/the island in a/the lake'
As an Icelander, I feel like I can understand the Swedes more but in reality the Danes are saying words I should actually understand (their pronunciation is just wild).
Einmitt! 😂😂
Haha yeah, I mean it's only logical since Iceland was a part of Denmark for half a millennium. Still they chose to pronounce words so that no one can hardly understand. Written it is almost exactly like Norwegian, yet I get 99% of spoken Norwegian. Danish? Not even close.
As a Dutch person I was very surprised by how well I could understand. Especially when reading the subtitles
All of the Scandinavian languages was influenced by Low German during the middelages so than may explaine it, besides the fact that we share original share the same language roots.
Jag älskar dessa germanska serier❤Jag lär mig svenska och det är trevligt att se att jag kan förstå en del norska, , lite öländska och lite danska. Undertexterna är till stor hjälp, tack! 😁
Icelandic = "isländska". "Öländska" är namnet på de svenska dialekter som talas på Öland, den väldigt långsträckta ön utanför sydöstra Sveriges kust. En helt magiskt vacker ö med helt unik natur som mer liknar den vid Medelhavet än övriga Sverige. Annars var det helt korrekt skrivet :)
Hola Laura, I really enjoyed the videos featuring you in Catalan with other Romance Languages. Maybe you could convince Norbert to continue this amazing series 😅, and feature another Languages of Italy/Spain/France or more of Eastern Romance (Romanian ,Aromanian, ...), I would absolutely love these☺!!!
@@fartreta oooh tack för korrigeringen :)
@@mohamadmosa8116 good idea :D
Awesome video, the North Germanic languages are fascinating...Icelandic is particularly beautiful. Excited to see the Discord server too, can't wait to join!
I feel like the reason Hólmfríður struggled a little bit with the whale question was because in Icelandic, padda as in paddedyr (mammal in many of the other languages) actually means insect. Mammals in Icelandic are called spendýr which is what she was asking about. And so I think she initially thought he was describing some kind of insect.
Pattedyr, not padde.
Well by context I as a swede could get what spendyr (spena=tit, Dyr=animal) meant. Though Padda in Swedish is toad so that's quite interesting perhaps. Per says Pattedyr, which I would think to be dyr=animal patte=breast. Which is a mammal (patte is a slang for breast in Swedish today)
In Swedish padda means toad but I got the meaning of it anyway. In Swedish we would say blötdjur I think (wet animals).
@@northbreeze0198
No, paTTedyr=bröstdjur, i.e. däggdjur/mammal. Blötdjur är sniglar och molliusker.
Iceland, the lost brother that ended up on a boat and drifted away to a remote island.
I am Polish and I speak English and Norwegian. I understood Swedish and Danish (I had to focus a little bit more) and I was struggling with Icelandic, but I understood the core meaning.
@@brazzo975 Of course I understand. It is your right not to like Poland.
@@brazzo975 i dont like your being
@@mirekbiek534 Based af
@@helena_5456 Hi Helena. For Polish people Norwegian is very simple. There is no declension, no verb conjugation. The level of difficulty is the same as English. There are two factors which make Norwegian difficult. The first one is: there are actually two varieties of the language: bokmål and nynorsk. And the other one: there are the dialectal differences. But anyway Norwegian is one of the easiest languages in the World.
@@helena_5456 If one knows English at a decent level, and most Poles do, then Norwegian is quite simple. I would say it's one of the easiest languages to learn. But I am afraid it doesn't work the opposite way, so learning Polish will be quite difficult for Norwegian speakers. But nevertheless, good luck/lykke til/powodzenia with your Polish :)
I've been learning Danish since recently and it was a very useful video for me!! Thank you ♥
Please, more videos like this one, with Icelandic and the other Scandinavian languages!
This is something I've been curious about. Thank you!
I had a hard time understanding Icelandic, but its a very interesting language. I understood Norwegian the best and of course Swedish because I speak Swedish. I also found Danish to be easier to understand written than spoken. I would like to see this version but with Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, or maybe even Sami. I speak Finnish as well and it would have been intersting! I know the languages sound similiar but are different, but it would have been fun to see how similar they really are 😄
I am also speak Swedish since I am native Swedish speaker, I feel the same islandic was hard and norwegian was easy, danish for me is easy to understand when written but when they speak it's harder to understand.
@@HannahHäggAutisticTransWoman Exakt, men det är väl sant det dom säger, att det är lättare att förstå norska när det talas men inte i skrift medans det är lättare att förstå danska i skrift men inte i tal 😂
Finnish and Estonian definitely will probably work to some extent, but a Hungarian speaker won't understand a word. Finnic languages and Hungarian are as far apart from each other as Germanic and Slavic languages. I have no idea how much Finnish a Sami speaker would understand (or vice versa).
@@alexj9603 Yeah I know as i mentioned they are different from each other, my best friend is Hungarian so I know, but it would be fun to compare words or sentences 😁
@@Nakiimushi Then take a look at Bahador Alast's channel. He recently made a video on similarities between Estonian and Hungarian.
I am a native English speaker and have learned some Swedish and it is much easier to understand the other languages than I expected. I knew that Norwegian would be easy but I am surprised that at least with subtitles even the icelandic was more comprehensible than I expected.
I’m pretty much in the same exact boat there
Same here.
To me as a Swede Icelandic goes from almost completely non understandable to mostly understandable. "Mostly" meaning only just over 50% though. But understanding 50% makes it very guessable the general meaning of what she is saying.
@@beorlingo Yes, the experience of listening to Icelandic is a bit like hearing a mass of words, and then suddenly a phrase or sentence pops out and makes 100% sense.
As a native Swedish speaker.
The difference between the Nordic languages are pretty small, mostly feels like just pronunciation (except Icelandic, it’s actually quite different).
Swedish is nasal with a bit melody, Norwegian is more nasal with loads of melody, while Danish is extremely guttural with next to no melody.
As a native Swedish speaker Norwegian sounds about as different to me as like a Irish accent and a Californian accent is to each other.
Not a exact comparison, but pretty close.
Different pronunciation of some letters, different melody, a few different words and ways of using words. But you should be able to speak with each other really easily without much problem.
Maybe one word needs clarification once in a while.
But if you didn’t get the Danish. Eh don’t worry about the Danish. It’s hard.
The words and spelling in Norwegian and Danish is 99.9% the same. The only difference is really pronunciation.
Norwegian is crystal clear. Danish is a struggle.
But not that the words are hard, but in the same way as trying to understand someone who speaks with their mouth full, it’s just hard to differentiate one sound from the other.
For a native Swedish speaker: this is not even a challenge. It's more like a strange dialect than a different language.
Very strange
Bror du ljuger om du säger att du fatta isländskan hahahha
@@alfredpersson4961 jag har ingen aning hur man förstår det
I'm Finnish and have learned Swedish at school, so I was a bit surprised that I understood this so well and even remembered words for whale and so on. It's been 10 years since I studied Swedish and haven't really used it. Norwegian was very understandable as well. Danish and Icelandic not so much but I could read the Danish text quite well too.
I don't speak any Nordic languages but I still like this content ^^
I could listen to Hólmfríður all day.
Interesting: I tried to learn each of these languages once in my life, in different periods of time.
Swedish tones made me freak out; Icelandic morphology and phonology are crazy AF, so I gave up immediatly; Danish is...well, it's full of useless letters, so I gave up. The only one I was very close to learn is Norwegian.
I'm italian, but I can speak both German and English, so Norwegian to me is like the perfect combination of both: it has the simple morphology of English, keeping the pure germanic root in the vocabulary.
I eventually gave up even with Norwegian, but I kept some information in my mind such that I can understand from 40% to 75% of a norwegian text. I may try again in the future when I'll have an income good ennough to afford a private teacher.
Tusen takk for the video :)
Hi, I'm italian too and I'm fascinated that you tried to learn, I guess by yourself?, some nordic languages!
As I'm a starter with German idiom, I can hear phonetic similarities with the others, but written differently.
That's awesome, I woukd like, once learned a good level of German, also try to learn some Dutch 😄
Greetings from Ligury!👋👋👋
Well... Norwegian has the exact same tones (called pitch accent) as Swedish, so I don't quite understand what made you freak out.
Feel free to try Norwegian again! Once you get the hang of it, the rest is a breeze!
I'm actually trying to learn Latin on my own, and that is quite the adventure!
Norwegian grammar is easier than Swedish one but it has so many dialects that it gets confusing. Swedish is more homogeneous which ends up helping in the long run.
Regarding tones, I know a few italians that speak swedish largely with their native prosody or melody. It works fine, although they sound more italian than swedish of course. The context usually makes up for the lost information. And if it doesn't, you could always ask.
I really loved the video! 😍
I am currently learning Swedish as I worked with Swedish children who shared their culture and language during several months with me.
They were my teachers.
Danish is similar but the pronunciation is slightly different. It sounds so cute too.
It is my first time to listen to someone speaking Icelandic.
I am so surprised because I understood lots of words. It was wonderful!!!
Fascinated by these videos. It's so interesting to see how cultures deviated through language like this. Honestly the best use of RUclips so far.
As a Finn who understands Swedish fluently and speaks it almost fluently, I could understand almost everything here! Only had some trouble understanding Icelandic 😅 The subtitles helped me though! And I got all the words right 😁 These videos are awesome!
Love your vids, thanks Norbert and everyone who participated!
It was really interesting and fun to watch as someone who's studying Norwegian (and Swedish too, but I'm just getting started with it). Personally, I had a lot of trouble understanding anything in Icelandic. All the Nordic languages are so beautiful, though!
I appreciate you showing Icelandic more often!
Such a fun video! I've been learning Danish for two years now and somehow got all five without subtitles/just listening to the audio. Makes me want to seriously pick up Norwegian now seeing as it's pretty comprehensible to me already.
Norwegian is all dialects. My experience as a Dane is that some dialects were as clear as Danish, others slightly harder, and some were impossible. I have since worked hard to get better at Norwegian and can now understand everybody I hear on the radio but I had to work really, really hard to get there. So: you’ll get some varieties of Norwegian for free because you know some Danish, the others will require time and effort (and learning them wont improve your Danish).
Absolutely fantastic video yet again Norbert 👏!!! I hope to see more of Scandinavian Languages comparison, and maybe getting back to Romance series (which was the best by far to me). Thanks a lot for your content, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance🎉🎉
Nie znam żadnego z tych języków ale brzmią bardzo ciekawie. Zupełnie inaczej niż języki słowiańskie. Dzięki temu, że oglądam twoje filmy na bieżąco zaczęłam interesować się innymi językami. Nigdy nie jest za późno na naukę. Fajnie, że łączysz ludzi z różnych krajów.
Вот и я говорю, что ничего не понятно(((
Даа, польский язык намного понятнее!
Pol’skij jazyk ochevidno gorazdo bolee ponjatny, odnako zhe mne kazhetsja interesnym tot fact, chto v Skandinavskich jazykach frazy tipa “på svenska”, “på engelska” napisany pochti tak zhe kak i v russkom
@@ivanmaslov7540 Indo-European roots!
@@ivanmaslov7540 То же самое и на польском, например: po norwesku, по-норвежски, på norsk, på norska :)
Amazing, very amazing ! This was a hard challenge for me, because I do not know Norwegian, I do not know Danish and I do not know Icelandic, I am just learning Swedish since July of this year. Nevertheless I could guess quite quickly the first word ("lake"), and the fourth word ("Greenland"). For the second word I found two solutions: "train" and "ship", and I found two solutions also for the last word: "whale" and "dolphin".
Anyway I am satisfied with my "performance", and now I await a new video like this for another challenge.
Thanks for this video and greetings from Novara, Northern Italy.
If it were the Icelandic person explaining a word the Scandinavians would be almost completely lost.
If the Norwegian was a nynorsk user they might have the most comprehension.
Bokmål is really a form of Danish, but nynorsk is based off dialects in Norway that actually are more closely related to Icelandic
Nej inte nynorsk! Sure en d l ord är mer likt svenska men bokmål fungerar helt ok. Alla förstår det redan så finns ingen anledning att gå bananas med nynorsk.
Icelandic is not mutually intelligible with the Scandinavian languages because it is very isolated and developed differently.
As an Icelander, we do learn Danish which makes this easier.
Norwegian: Understood maybe 60%
Swedish: 40%
Danish: 60-70%
For a swede it's almost impossible to not understand norwegian østland dialect.
this norwegian spoke a middle norwegian accent though
@@Borrelaas He spoke a mix, and not a very good one. He makes soo many mistakes, literally not able to speak his own language properly. Was kinda hard to watch
@@NorwegianNationalist1 Yeah thats true, a watered down version of his dialect i think is a fair way to label it
@@Borrelaasdialects change through the time because we are more movable than back then. It happens in Germany, too. Kölsch for instance changed somehow too. I read that it was common to say “en” for “in” but through standard German even in Kölsch dialect people tend to say “in.” Also it’s possible that rhinish words got into Kölsch. I heard that Norwegians tend to talk in English to each other because their dialects are not really understandable. I learn Norwegian with dialects included and sometimes I find myself wondering if I really did learn the language because I can’t understand a thing😄.
@@MarieBra Yeah i know dialects change, i was just remarking that the norwegian guy is speaking a trønder dialect (middle norwegian if you will). But like someone pointed out he is speaking somewhat watered down with influences from eastern norwegian. It's not about dialects changing its something personal to that individual
No norwegian ever talks english to eachother, i have never ever experienced or heard about something like that happening. The dialects here are very varied but we are generally very good at understanding them.
What you probably heard is that scandinavians tend to talk english instead of their own language when talking to someone from another scandinavian country, and that is true, it happens. But i promise you, no norwegian ever speaks english to another norwegian because they are not able to understand eachother :)
This was so interesting to watch! I had it a bit easy being able to read what you all were saying, but just hearing it, especially via voice/video is a whole other thing. I wouldn´t been able to understand icelandic at all if I didn't have the text to guide me.
Really enjoyed this video!! You should invite a Faroese speaker sometime, I am curious if a Danish or Icelandic speaker would understand them better
Get someone from Western Norway, it’s closer to Icelandic and Faroese than this dialect and the dialects of every other Norwegian they bring on here
Sometimes....depends on the sentence. But in general I find Faroese to be easier (I'm Danish)
So cool! I will show it to my Norwegian as a foreign language students.
Interesting video, I knew I'd understand most Norwegian as I grew up in south west Sweden and we had a lot of Norwegian visitors (and even some access to NRK) in the areas i've lived in. I am happy I was able to understand Danish as well as I did, as I started working in a Scandinavian speaking market, and I am daily communicating with Norwegians and Danes. I was pleasantly surprised how well I understood Icelandic, normally I struggle a lot, but perhaps she spoke slower or more clearly than Icelandic I have heard in the past. I guessed 4 of 5, with mistaking the first for fjord, since I did not consider insjö (and it sounded like lake was out of the question).
I think he made the "insjö" somewhat overexplained. And when he falsely (I'd say) claimed that sometimes they put dams in them it even ruled out "insjö". They only put dams in lakes that are part of rivers and are hence per se actually rivers.
Haha, you just need to be a Swede to understand most of Norwegian, don't need any experience with it.
She was speaking slowly
Yay! I got four right! I'm feeling very proud of myself. I've been using these videos to help me practice my Swedish, without the help of English subtitles. It makes me realize that I know a lot more than I give myself credit for. Hope to see more of these Nordic language videos! 🥰
The first one didn't feel completely fair. He said the word, so they ruled it out.
I have absolutely zero exposure to any of those languages, but just from being a native English speaker, was able to figure a few of them out. It's strangely one of those situations where it's backwards from normal. Reading the text made it more difficult, but if I closed my eyes and listened carefully, I could make out words that sounded very similar to the English equivalent. How cool
That's exactly what I noticed with the Dutch videos on the Ecolinguist channel. Due to differences in orthography between English and Dutch, I found the written forms more of a hindrance than a help in understanding. A lot of the Dutch was comprehensible just by listening carefully. Unfortunately, I can't really say I had the same experience when listening to these North Germanic languages. Yes, I could pick out some words, but not enough for comprehension.
Some German dialects in the German-speaking countries are a lot more different than Danish-Swedish-Norwegian but are still considered "one" German language. 😆
Likewise for Norway. Oslo-Bokmål is often more similar to Swedish and Danish than to Norwegian dialects from the west or north of the country.
Please, same could be said about some of the, sorry not sorry (you know it's true), VERY weird Norwegian Dialects... XD
And I also do know Sweden and Denmark have dialects that everyone agree are hard to understand and really just something of their own. XD
same as elfdalian is considered a swedish dialect but it sounds more like icelandic.
No?
Very true. The definition of what is a language and what is a dialect is arbitrary from a linguistic point of view (well not totally, but for the spoken language it is almost). Mandarin is probably as diverse as all the Germanic languages.
I laughed every time the Scandinavians just kinda stare blankly when the Icelandic woman speaks! I'm surprised how much Norwegian I retained despite having moved away from there a year ago! I can understand a little of the Swedish as well but not the Danish, I understand Icelandic more than The Danish but I vacation there often so probably am more familiar with the sounds 🤔
Så fint! Great video, utmärkt! Jag har lärat mig en lite svensk og så kan jag förstå en lite norsk, men dansk, o nej! Íslenska tunga… ég skil litill - málfraeði er mjög erfriður, men hún hljómar svo fallegur og þokkafullur! Takk, tack og þökk.
Hei alle sammen! Jeg er brasilianske og jeg lærer meg det norske språket alene.
"Jeg er brasiliansk", er korrekt norsk. "Brasilianske" brukes om en gruppe (brasilianske menn, brasilianske kaffetyper, brasilianske matretter). Brasiliansk kaffe, brasiliansk restaurant, brasiliansk by, etc. De er brasilianske. Vi er brasilianske. Hun/han er brasiliansk.
@@perberger809 Tusen takk for informasjon. 😀
So for context I'm fluent in Dutch, German and English. I tried to learn some Norwegian once on duo lingo for like 2 days but afterwards forgot about. I can honestly say understood most of what was said in the following order: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic just sounded magical to me. Somehow Danish really reminded me of German in a way. Just goes to show how similar germanic languages still are.
I (Norwegian) went to school in Sweden, where I understood the Swedish teacher from close to the border very well. He had a similar intonation to me, but my classmate from Stavanger was often more difficult to understand. Swedes had to ask him to repeat himself much more often than with us South-Easteners, naturally. Maybe for an Icelandic person it would be easier, as they have a closer connection linguistically.
Stavanger and further south along the coast are odd, they have vowels and soft consonant sounds similar to Danes, but they can have VERY west Norwegian vocabulary and grammar. Kaizers Orchestra lyrics are instructive!
Even as a norwegian I didnt know what Vebjørn was after. Was it a river or a lake? No clue! Should have written down a concise explanation of what it was and repeated that.
As a person who has been learning Norwegian in the spare time (I managed to get to A2 level by using Duolingo and some other resources) and has never spent more than couple of days in those countries I understood pretty much everything what Vebjorn was saying. When it comes to Danish and Swedish it is really difficult to understand words by ear but when it is written it's sort of understandable. To me, it's easier to understand written Danish than Swedish but spoken Swedish is easier than spoken Danish. Icelandic - I had no clue what Hólmfríður was trying to say.
Good job on the Norwegian learning then! (:
This is how it is for many Norwegians too. Written Danish is very similar and easy to understand but spoken is not always so easy unless they slow down, and for Swedish it’s pretty easy to understand most of it, also because we have been exposed to Swedish in television from a young age.
I actually thought Icelandic was much easier than I initially had thought because many of the words sounded similar with a twist so in the context you could guess what she was saying. I am Norwegian though. And she may have spoken very clear to be understood.
English used to have that silent H infront of words and in older version of Swedish literature we can also see words like Vilken and Vilket were spelled Hvilken and Hvilket
as a swede, i wish that we could go back to spelling things with an "h" in the front, so we're closer to danish, bokmål, nynorsk and icelandic
Some English accents have the "silent" h. I pronounce "what whale?" "hwat hwale" with a very light h. The mystery to me is how/why "hw" in old English spelling (hwaet hwael) was reversed to "wh".
@@HweolRidda It is usually safe to blame the French. ;-))
@@HweolRidda Blame the Greeks and Romans. Greek had these three aspirated letters , and . The Romans decided to spell Greek loan words with these letters using , and . (There was also which was transcribed .) Later, the sounds for the Greek letters changed into [θ], [f] and [x]. English still spells words like "telephone" and "elephant" with where many other languages use an . Other languages started using as a way to mark either fricative or aspirated consonants. In English, some [k] and [sk] became [tʃ] and [ʃ] before or after front vowels. Their spelling was changed to and . English also replaced the letters and , which did not exist on German printing presses, with and . The reason why was changed to was simply to keep it consistent with the others (even though it comes from an older [kʷ]).
@@HweolRidda Long ago I read that this change in spelling was introduced by the Normans, so if that's correct, you should actually blame the Danes! -- well... _some_ of them, anyway. ;-)
As an English speaker in Scotland, I was able to understand most of what was being said with a mix of spoken and written forms. I found the Norwegian and Swedish the easiest and even got the words correct!
Coming from Western Swedish I almost understood the norwegian better than swede
Hi Ecolinguist. I would love to see one of these videos with speakers of different Celtic languages.
Yes thats what im also anticipating from Ire, Alba, Mannin, Cymraeg, Kernewek and Briton.
@@typhoon2minerva Yes, that would be amazing.
And of course it would be interesting to hear the comparison of Romani Gypsy language vs Rahjastani Language of India
Респект за германские языки
Now I get why people say Danish is ugly, it does sound very nasal. Swedish is my favorite one and Icelandic sounds ancient in a good way
As a brazilian who studies swedish, it's very impressive how similar the languages are, specially between norwegian and swedish, I can understand a bit of danish too, but it's kinda hard
Of course, Icelandic had to be the hardest to understand
Diferenças e semelhanças que também existem entre as línguas românicas. Sueco e dinamarquês seria como português e espanhol. E norueguês seria como o galego.
@@CPHJose Islandês seria tipo um italiano no meio disso
@@etruscanetwork Seria francês talvez kkkkkkk
@@CPHJose actually a good comparison with the difference being that written Norwegian and Danish is almost identical. Way more identical than Norwegian and Swedish for example.
for some reason this video gave me so much asmr lol much love
Very interesting thank you! All these languages sound so beautiful !!!
Interessting. The german Translation of "klar" -> "fertig" can also mean "ready" and "exhausted" like in norwegian but its not a regional difference it can mean Both depending on the context.
Similar in Swedish, where "klar" means both "clear" like a window glass and "ready". "Färdig" means "ready" but can also mean "exhausted" -> "Jag är helt färdig!" = "I'm totally exhausted!".
In Dutch klaar means ready or done. It also has the meaning of clear but only in some phrases, such as klare taal (clear language / speech).
@@oskich Färdig is done, not ready. Unless you can use ready as done.
An also very common meaning of klar in German is clear. The well known phrase "alles klar" is a difficult one to translate, it can mean "everything is clear" (literal) and also something like "everything settled".
In my dialect (norwegian) it's also about the context. "Blir du med og går en tur?" (Are you ready for a stroll?) Nei, jeg er så klar (No, I'm so exhausted). Kommer du snart? (Are you coming soon?) Ja, jeg er klar. (Yes, I'm ready.)
If there would be a Video with Faroese language, that would be really great.
Swedish and Norwegian were so identical that they kinda made fun of Icelandic. And danish just sat there.
I speak Swedish (not native though) so Norwegian was easy peasy. Danish is difficult to understand and sounds like a mix between Swedish and German. Icelandic is totally incomprehensible without subtitles. It's very interesting that Norwegian and Icelandic are both in Western group of Nordic/Scandinavian languages and Swedish and Danish are both in Eastern group of Nordic/Scandinavian languages, but Norwegian (at least spoken form) is much more similar to Swedish than Danish.
It is because the Danes changed the Norwegian language when Norway belonged to Denmark for many hundred years.
@@johnnorthtribe All languages split up over 1200 years ago.
Old Norwegian was in the Western group but it was replaced by Danish centuries ago. Modern written Norwegian is still basically Danish with a few spelling changes.
@@AnnaKaunitz Danish still had an influence on Norwegian long after that
@@johnnorthtribe As far as I know, Danish had a huge influence on written Norwegian (the bokmål variant) but not on a spoken one. Scandinavian languages are in a dialect continuum, that can be the reason I find it easier to understand Norwegian. I live near Gothenburg so dialects around Oslo are easy, but dialects from Bergen area are difficult to understand. I'm sure that people from Skåne find it easier to understand Danish than Norwegian.
I'm a finnosweed
I could understand Swedish and Norwegian perfectly and I could understand the writing in danish pretty well. The hardest for me was Icelandic, but I could pick upp the general meaning. My dialect is pretty old so that could be the reason.
Great video!
In Russian we can use the word "готов" ("gotov", "ready") with two different meanings:
1) literally as ready or done (обед готов = dinner is ready),
2) figuratively as dead or broken (ну всё, готов движок = that's all, the engine's down).
Same in German!
It is literally the same as in Polish!
@@MichalTheWariat No. We don't use "gotowy" as 'dead' or 'broken' in Polish.
Right, but it was more about referring to the first meaning, which I should have pointed out, but if I insisted, I could say that in everyday speech, especially in anger, the appropriate use of weaving the word "ready" into a sentence expressing your resignation also would be there. All in all, Polish is flexible enough both in terms of sentence order and this type of syntax. However, I agree with you that this reference to death is not widely used.
I can understand the confusion with the first word. The Dane actually got it right with Sö (Danish for lake) but I think the Norwegian guy made it overly complicated and threw everyone off. The Swedish girl would have gotten it as well, no doubt but he really did make it sound more like it was something more complex than a lake and also said it's hard to explain, lol. Nothing hard to explain about a lake...
That said, I also initially thought it was Lake because he said it wasn't moving (stagnant) and you could build dams and make a reservoir out of it. But then I wasn't sure if he meant fjord because he said it's found in mountainous regions. Now, flat lands don't have fjords but they certainly do have lakes, lol.
Just my two cents.
I was so sure the word was Fjord that I was chocked when he said lake. Where ever has anyone built a dam in a lake? Salt water? Naah come on.
Ah, I just love these beautiful languages. Currently learning Swedish. Hopefully one day will be fluent is Norwegian as well 🤞🏻💡🤲🏼
As a Dutchman living in Sweden it's nice to see that Danmark and Norway have the word "bewegen". That word doesn't exist in Swedish (röra), but exists in Dutch.
Triestheid
Zorg
Groenland
Dier
Walvis
Would be interesting to have Icelandic be the subject, and maybe include Dutch in the mix. So Icelandic, with 1 west-scandinavian language, either Norwegian or Faroese, 1 east-scandinavian language, either Danish or Swedish, then Dutch.
Yes that is a great idea!! but I think it would be correct to switch between "east" and "west"☺
@@mohamadmosa8116 thx, didn't notice
To me it seemed Vebjørn understood Holmfridur fairly well. The Norwegian in such a challenge should be someone from the Oslo area. For someone from Vestlandet it would be too easy. But the Norwegian of any sort will probably "win" all the same. Not 100% sure though since there's the Danish/Icelandic connection historically not all that far away in time.
It would not work to well for us Dutch. We mostly have troubles with the accents. So many words are pretty similar, but with the accent and words that are too dissimilar I guess most of us get lost. So we do not need lessons, but give us a couple of hours to adjust to the Scandinavian languages and then it will be interesting. I say this btw because reading Norwegian, Swedish to most Dutch (in fact ALL I know) is between "doable" and "very easy". Proof 1: we were in Rovaniemi for a week. Luckily most was also written in Swedish and we in fact never ever needed English. We could just always rely on or non-existant knowledge of Swedish. Finnish was just completely incomprehensible. Another point is that my GFs were always capable of reading a Danish or Norwegian Newspaper. I tested this more than once and they always knew what was meant even though some words were really different.
@@Serenoj69 may Dutch for Swedes/Danes/Norwegians/Icelanders. That would be interesting!
Btw, my favourite Dutch word lately is 'vrachtwagen'. I remember reading it on a sign in a GeoGuessr game. It was so funny when the penny fell through. We have 'frakt'. But never used in any compound words referring to any sort of vehicles.
Wow, I absolutely loved this. I have studied mostly Swedish and Norwegian, but find Danish pretty difficult to understand. Icelandic sounds amazing, like the language of ancient royalty or something. I so much enjoyed this and thought it was awesome how these Northern Germanic language speakers all pretty much understood each other.
I believe Icelandic is nearest to old Norsk.......Viking speech
Det var så morsomt!! Jeg vil se mere ting med norsk, takk ;3
bra gjort!
I speak swedish B1 level, when I came to norway (Sör Tröndelag) people told me that my norwegian was really good.😉
I don't know any of these languages, but damn, it's so relaxing to listen to them. I absolutely love the sound of northern languages and I hope to someday find the motivation to learn at least one of them
Greetings from Poland :3
You should listen to some Finlandssvenska.
It’s a dialect from Finland.
And as a Swede I have to admit think they have one of the nicest melodies of the Nordic languages.
Just so calming.
Totally agree, finlandssvenska is the most beautiful dialect of them all.
I'm a Swede so I expected no problem with Norwegian and only slight problem with Danish. I never thought I would get some of the Icelandic as well
Haha, you didn't know Icelandic is the same language family and from the same roots as Swedish? It's the closest living language to Old Norse. And you'd be able to understand some Old Norse too because you're Swedish.
Als Deutscher konnte ich am meisten dänisch verstehen
I enjoy these a lot. I'm swedish and can understand norwegian and danish perfectly well. I'm trying to work on my understanding of icelandic but obviously, that's a bit trickier. I think you all did a great job!
Sicket namn :)
Hin/den hårde (litet äldre svenska)
Hinn harði (isländska)
Hinn harði (vikingasvenska)
@@Utgardaloki76 hin håle är väl annars mest ett smeknamn för djävulen?
@@northbreeze0198 Det stämmer och betyder egentiligen "den hårde".
Please make Lithuanian and Latvian, additionally Polish and Belarusian just to see if they can grasp Baltic languages
Samogitian and Latgalian also exist, but that all depends if there are any speakers willing to participate in these videos.
@@DaWorldGuardian001 Samogitian is a dialect of Lithuanian. It's not different enough to count it as a different language. But sure, it could be added for the sake of variety.
👍👍
As a Pole, I can say that it can be very interesting experience.
I am from Denmark. I see Norwegian as a kind of Danish, just with a very special accent!
The danish influence is very strong indeed. I understand danish very well and i find it strange that alot of fellow norwegians have a hard time understanding danish... but truth be told i have a hard time being understood when i am in denmark. Last time i visited denmark i wanted to tell someone to have a nice evening, so i said "ha en fin kveld", the poor guy didnt understand what on earth i meant until i realized i had to say "ha en fin aften"
@@Borrelaas intressant då kväll används betydligt mer i Sverige. Afton är mer formellt. Men alla hade förstått båda orden här. Norska och Danska är ju i princip lika på papper men är helt annorlunda i verkligheten. Jag förstår nästan 100% av Norska men har stora problem med Danska. De kan inte artikulera sig överhuvudtaget.
I am English speaker but I could follow the written Norwegian subtitles without reading the English . I don’t speak Norwegian but i know it is close to English and the easiest language for English speakers to learn and I can see why.I can see the sameness in word building in both tongues as well as the many words that share the same root.
To be frank, the Norwegian guy was probably nervous, as he made mistakes in his own language. The subtitles are not very good. The typos made the words less intelligible to English speakers.
Nice video, but the notice that English subtitles are available is a bit too short and easy to miss. I'm guessing that this video doesn't make much sense unless you speak one of the four languages that is used.
I was a bit disappointed that Vebjørn and the others didn't get the Iclandic word "spendýr" (= mammal). In Norwegian we use "pattedyr", and "patte" and "spene" are both used for the mammary glands of animals. Note that "spene" usually translates to "teats", and in Norwegian it's almost exclusively used for animals that have udders and that we use for milk (cows, sheep, goats).
Literally translated in Dutch: "Speendier", usually used as "zoogdier". Yeah. An animal that sucks! 😅 (Zuigen/zoog vs suck) (Speen-NL = spene-N)
I think it was because "dýr" has such a wierd pronunciation in Icelandic - In Swedish it's "Däggdjur", but cows have "spene/spenar" so I made that connection when I saw the Icelandic transcript...
As a Dutch person, I instantly figured out "spendýr", because in Dutch we have the word "speen" which is a nipple or soother/pacifier.
It's easy to figure out 'spendýr' when you see it written - it is the vowel length and stress of spoken Icelandic that will throw off both Swedes and Norwegians I think.
@@frankrault3190 While I can't name any examples I think this is what happens to me more often with the languages of our northern neighbours. Indeed ""speendier". Or motobike is a "knallert" which to me makes perfect sense. We in fact could use that word for fun I think and all of us would understand. There must be a lot more. Also I found out that a lot of slang words are the same.....Like: pik (dick), Doos (cunt), vet (fet) means "cool".
I'm an Irishman who has some Swedish and is learning Faroese, I could more or less understand the Norwegian fella :D
I know very basic Swedish words and sentences because of Duolingo. I was so surprised that I actually got 4 words correctly without even reading the subtitles... I am a polyglot, but I mostly speak slavic and romance languages. I never thought it would be so easy to understand this. Also, I thought the last word was dinosaur because I didn't know the words for ocean and mammal haha
thank you for this video! it was v fun to watch!
Really enjoyed this video. As someone who is learning Norwegian ( and German speaking ) I was really pleased I could understand nearly all your Norwegian.
🙂🇳🇴 , a little bit of the Swedish....🇸🇪, Danish 🇩🇰and Icelandic.🇮🇸 .not so much..😅
Love Scandinavia and its languages..especially Norwegian 🇳🇴
Would like to learn Icelandic at some point...🇮🇸🙂
I speak Dutch and German and it's crazy how I understood almost 70-80% of (written) Norwegian/Swedish
This is interesting. As an English speaker i obviously don’t understand as much as anyone else but i can still find those few words and phrases that are understandable. Maybe like 10% of the words are close enough that i can figure them out but it’s not enough to follow anything past introductions. Still very interesting.
As a Norwegian I find Dutch easier to understand than Icelandic. Strange I know.
I agree! And I was there! Haha
Same as a Swede
Low German vocab from the Hansa age
I dont speak any nordic language but knowing english and german i can understand many of dutch words and phrases...
I agree as a Swede.
As a Norwegian, my answers would be:
1) Vann. Ett vann.
2) Tog. Ett tog. We don't have these up north. Could've been ferge, ferry, until the certain number of seats one.
3) Sorg. En sorg. Any synonym is too light to really describe what you feel when you lose someone close to you.
4) Grønnland. The land Norway lost to Denmark in the 20th century, and we've been happy about that ever since! (And you spelled it wrong!)
5) Hval. En hval. Or rather, kval. In Northern Norwegian, the silent H before older words often become K. So kem, ka, kor, kval, not vem, va, vor, val. (Hvem, hva, hvor, hval.)
I do notice Northern Norwegian and Icelandic sound more alike in tone and cadence than Northern and Southern Norwegian, though of course the vocabulary is very far, and the specific sounds, the hl and the thorn and so on, are not in northern Norwegian. It's fascinating that Northern and Southern Norwegian basically have the exact opposite tones of voice, one rising where the other is falling and vice versa. Southerners always sound like they're asking questions, even when they aren't; Northerners sound like we're making statements, even when asking questions.
(Random Norwegian-language joke: What's the world's largest country? Poland. It reaches all the way from the South Pole/Southern Poland to the North Pole/Northern Poland!)