That's a good idea. I believe five minutes of listening to the Scandinavians speak with each other would be enough to distinguish them for anyone with experience from the German language family, including English. The error with the way they did in this video is the lack of establishment of a baseline. A viewer can't relate to or understand the challenge without that baseline.
Scandinavians have little difficulties in understanding each other, Norwegians understands both Swedish and Danish and Danes usually understand Norwegian
@@doncarlodivargas5497 not really. I know a lot of Norwegians can understand both but most definitely have a harder time with Danish. the only reason they can understand them and Swedes can't is because when written, Norwegian and Danish are almost the exact same whilst Swedish is a little bit different. However when speaking, Swedish and Norwegian are similar and Danish really different, they speak in a unique way that is closer to Dutch or German than Swedish or Norwegian.
Me and the Danish girl both thinking "weelll... I mean, sort of, but not entirely" and making the head angle at the same time when she said Denmark is next to the Netherlands 😂
You can distinguish quite easily between norwegian and swedish by the fact that norwegian typicall always rise in pitch at the end of sentences. To us swedes it give off a "always happy" texture to their speech.
Actually, Swedes do not have to refer to a Norwegian in order to get that "always happy" tone, they can just come into contact within their country with someone that comes from a place like Gothenburg (Göteborg) - Their tone is equally "happy" :)
I'm from Scotland, and heard of Norwegian as the "sing-song" language, with how it rises and falls in pitch. She sounded almost Scottish to me, so the Norwegian was the easiest to pick out!
Only the eastern side of Norway. West, parts of South and Northern Norway have a similar pitch to swedish that goes down instead of up ^^ But it's never represented in media haha But most of the dialects are still very sing song and up and down regardless
Funny part with Norwegian, Swedish and Danish is that as a Norwegian you can more easily read Danish and understand what it says, but it's much easier to understand the Swedish spoken language when you talk to them. Making it a bit special. The Norwegian language is based on the Danish seen Norway was under Danish rule for quite sometime in the past. But a lot of Norwegians have issues understanding the Danish language when spoken and especially when their dialect is thick. Then you sorta gotta get used to it before you fully understand what they say.
Its the same for me as a Swede when it comes to hearing Danish VS Norwegian, with Norwegian i usually understand it pretty well but Danish can in some cases be almost impossible to understand even. I remember well when i went camping to Denmark in the early 90´s one time and i thought i would be able to understand the language somewhat ok at least but when we arrived at the camping site not far from Copenhagen i didnt understand a word they were saying and finally when they pointed at the electrical outlet i understood that they were asking if we needed any electricity, ha ha. Reading Danish and Norwegian is about the same though and i can understand most of it.
@@Stefan- I think that the different dialects around Copenhagen are some of the most difficult to understand. Fyn and Jylland dialects are imho much easier to understand.
@@secularnevrosis You are probably right, i have heard dialects of Danish that are way easier to understand even before i went there, probably mainly on TV though which is why i was so surpriced when i didnt understand a word.
Danish numbers is a story of its own though. Halv-tres and things like that instead of 50,60,70,80,90 instead of the common Swedish and Norwegian counting system. No problem reading either Danish or Norwegian as a Swede though. I think Swedish is kind of the "middle ground" of the Nordic languages since we don't have so many totally unintelligible dialects as Norway and at the same time don't swallow every consonant as the Danish in the end making it probably the easiest to understand by a majority of Scandinavian people.
@@Magnus_Loov Yea that's probly true, and Danish numbers are very special for sure. In addition to certain Norwegian Dialects are hard to understand at times. But doesn't Sweeden have natives that talk a language only those who leared it can understand ? Like "Samer" in Norway?
I was hoping for a Finnish person to introduce themselves. That would have been so different that she would have recognized it right away. Another wild card would have been a Swedish-speaking Finn (like me). We don't have the same "soft" pronounciation as the Sweden-Swedes, but we speak crystal clear Swedish as our mother tongue even though born here in Finland for many many many generations, sometimes even centuries.
@@decryptedmemes7534 Inte från Hangö, även om mina föräldrar har sommarstuga i Västra Nyland och min mammas släkt har rötter i trakterna. Jag är född i Helsingfors, men bor nu i Vanda.
@@CandidZulu Trevligt att många rikssvenskar tycker det :D Jag pratade svenska som kund på McDonald's när jag bodde i Sverige och fick svar på engelska. Jag fortsatte prata svenska och de fortsatte på engelska. Väldigt konstig känsla efter att jag hört samma person prata flytande (riks)svenska med de tre föregående kunderna 😅
It's funny how she keeps mentioning Finnish even though that language is absolutely different to the three Germanic ones. Just from the word "Tack" you can already tell it's not Finnish. But she still thinks it must be alike just because the countries are close.
The Norwegian girl speaks Trondheim's dialect, a city in the middle of Norway. Norwegian and Swedish are very similar, not difficult to understanding most of the time. Norwegians and Swedes also understand moste of Danish with some challenges. German has some similarities with Norwegian (and the others) which means that we can sometimes partly understand but not speak
@@coolenaam Yes all are on the Germanic language tre ,but for my I feel German is closer (but not close) to Norwegian, compared to Dutch. Dutch and Austrian I can pick out certain "German" words but not much more than that :)
@@TheMrPeteChannel English has more in common with Danish than Dutch. So Danish is primitive English. ;) Now go back to when Old Norse was spoken, and it's almost as similar to Old English as modern Swedish is to Norwegian!
For a native English speaker its important to remember that the Nordic languages with the exeption of Finnish are Germanic languages just like English, so the basic structure of these languages is quite similar
yeah one problem you cant get norwegian right because 5000 dialects the only "right" one is The oslo area but thtas cuz the most people speak that dialect
@@benjasine3472 Swedes and Danes also have settled on *one* written language while Norwegians have two!!. That was the real suprise when I moved to Norway. There is even a language police! Incredible but true. In Sweden it doesn't matter what "dialect" you have when you are writing something. The word pojke (boy) is spelled as is, even if some dialects would say påg.
I do not get it why it is so hard for people outside of the Nordic Europe do understand the difference between Scandinavian languages (swedish, Norwegian, danish) and Nordic languages (swedish, norwegian, danish AND icelandic, faroese and finnish plus some smaller languages). Finnish (and sami) however belongs to a complete different language group from the rest.
it is very easy actually to differentiate them by sound, no actually vocabulary knowledge needed, just by sound. But i guess many people out there simply never have actually getting in touch with them or lets say spent any time on them
like it always cringes me when ppl have absolutely no single clue or guess the easy ones totally wrong, but i'm not gonna blame anyone out there. Probably would be the same when me confronting asian languages or something, where other people are way more enthusiast
I mean, she thinks Denmark is right next to the Netherlands, so don't expect her to know that Finnish belongs to a completely different language family :D
@@andyx6827 well yeah thats another thing tho. Many dont know that finnish is in a different language family despite it being up there geographically with the other 3
For Norway there is a large difference depending on where you are from. Some dialects sound closer to Swedish, while others are (a bit) closer to Danish. You do of course have dialects in the other Scandinavian countries, but with the possible exception of Scanian in Sweden, I don't think that they are as distinct. This is mostly due to the geography of Norway, where people were separated by lots of mountains and fjords.
Korrekt and there are even a few places that got influenced by germans, where I live. If you had birthday you would say E har gebursdag. A real meltingpot tbh
There are a _lot_ of different dialects in Sweden that are _very_ distinct and different. Like the dialect in Värmland, they have "thick k", and is probably the closest to Norwegian. And, as you mentioned, the Scanian accents are closer to Danish. Swedish has a lot of sj-sounds, and they are pronounce differently in different regions. The dialect in Småland lacks the r (they sound like they have a speech impediment...). In Närke they have a bit of a whiny sound. On Gotland they have a lot of diftongs, like instead of hus (house) they say "heos" and instead of mer (more) they say "meir", and a lot of other thing that makes that accent very distinct. In Gothenburg they pronounce "i" as "e" in some words, instead of "fisk" (fish) they say "fesk". Just to name a few of the dialects of Swedish, there are so many!
Yes and in Östergötland we talk in a 'lazy' way where we don't pronounce som syllables. For example: Jag heter...(my name is) And Jag är från Amerika(i am from America) sounds more like Ja hete... And Ja e från Amerika.
Probably the best explanation I have seen for the difference between these languages. In writing however danish and norwegian is very similar, a few words maybe difference, we also use Æ. Ø and Å both in speaking and writing, while swedes use Å, Ä, Ö. and abit more different in writing than norwegian and danish. We also had for quite some time danish as official or governmental language so laws where written in dansih among other things.But Norway now have 3 official languages ... or 2 official spoken and 3 written, as Ny Norsk is only a written language and only considered a dialect spoken ... and then ofcourse Sami.
Danish: Listen for the uvular R, the stød, and the D becoming a ð sound. Swedish: Listen for the characteristic SJ sound, O becoming U, and the retroflex L/R sounds, tones mostly on 2 syllable words. Norwegian: Listen for the feminine gender inflection and tones on all words, regardless of number of syllables or gender.
It's hard to pin Norwegian down, because there are at least four main dialects spoken (North, West, Mid and East), that also sound very different, with different ways of pronouncing the R sound, and _seven_ different ways of saying I. Eight if you count Swedish. Add to this that Norwegian has two different standard writing systems, Nynorsk and Bokmål, with Bokmål being the most prevalent.
Me and my Swedish friend enter a bar in Spain where the bartender was a Danish girl. They start a conversation, him speaking Swedish and her, Danish. Everything was intelligible for the both of them. 😄
@@hencytjoe It takes a week or two in Denmark for the normal Swede to get the hang of Danish and after that it's easy. One just have to find the pattern in how they swallow half their words and weaken the consonants on whats left. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish share over 90% of their vocabulary. I think with Icelandic it's about 70%.
@@tovep9573 Nah man, we need the danish person to talk english or very slowly. It's a very muddy language for someone who's not used to it so even after speaking a year with some danish mates I still ask them to repeat a few words in english because I can't even guess how to it's spelled. Same thing with some scanians lmao
@@Exerosp If a swede and a dane both speak articulate they can easily understand each other. The grammar between the two langages are almost identical and they share more than 90 % of the words. Swedish and danish are very differently pronounced. That means that swedes and danes can have problems understanding each other the same way that someone from northern England and someone from southern England can have problems understanding each other.
@@erikeriksson1660 It's not a matter of the grammar being similar. How Danes pronounce their words make them really hard of hearing to a swede. And it's not like comparing dialects, that's comparing Northerners dialect with Scanian in Sweden. I'm swedish, most of the people across the country that I know are swedish, and most will agree that yes, danish is hard to hear.
Danish sounds dramatically different from Swedish/Norwegian, I knew immediately the first woman was Danish. I struggled with #2, and kept going back and forth between Swedish/Norwegian. The women's name being Josefin was why I guessed Swedish, since I have seen Josefin/Josephine as a name in Swedish films/TV or actresses from Sweden. #3. Process of elimination that it would be Norwegian. Unsure if I would have guessed Norwegian is she had gone second. As for Finnish. It would have been interesting to have a person from Finland. Finnish is not a Scandinavian language, though it would have been the one language to ask "what is thank you" amongst the Nordic countries.
Danish sounds so glottal. It's like they are speaking with a hot potato or cotton swabs in their mouth. At times, it sounds like they are choking on you know what, after giving deep throat.
Re: #2, her 'I' and 'Y' are a dead giveaway that she's Swedish. Nobody else makes those atrocious sounds. Also, the Swedish 'sj' is different from any other language. But this only applies to the standard language and "normalized" regional accents, of course. There are many dialects that can have very different pronunciation. If she were speaking some western dialect, there would be no way for anyone but a native speaker to tell it apart from Norwegian.
Really fascinating as a Norwegian how fast I could recognize each language instantly. We all just have a lot of small (or big things) that distinguishes us between each other huh :D
@@LasVegar -Jepp eg sku- Yep I was gonna comment on it as well, but didn't want things to get too long/confusing haha. Was honestly surprised they invited someone from Trondheim and not Oslo, considering that's not where most of the speakers from Norway they invite are from, at least from the videos I have watched. Love the trønder dialect tho, so I don't mind at all :D
@@PotatoKing147 It could be and probably is because she studies in Oslo. She said she lives near the Ocean. From what I know there is no big ocean around Trondheim, but in Oslo we have a big fjord.
How nice that you made a video about the Nordic languages 😊 it was way fun to watch their interactions cause I could relate to myself as a Swedish and it put a smile on my face
Danish is recognizable by the soft D and Swedish by the sound SJ (like in SJU) and in some swedish dialects by viby-I which only exists in Swedish. If it's not any of those and you hear tones, then it's Norwegian (Swedish also has tones but not as obvious as Norwegian)
Norwegian has at least four main dialects that are pretty different from one another. But most of them are more singy-songy than Swedish, although Swedish can also be pretty singy-songy I guess :p The most monotonous dialect in Norway is the Northern one. Same for Danish, it's kind of monotonous, but also very different with the glottal stops.
I mean, they're, what, a hundred miles apart? Something like that? So it's like a European saying Detroit is close to Toronto. (And yes, she was talking about geographic proximity, and reasoning based on that, about the languages. Which would not be valid in general, but in this case the languages in question are in fact related.)
The ÆØÅ letters are used both in Denmark and Norway our languages are very similar in writing but they sound different. Sweden has their own variation of these letters. Å, Ä, Ö We usually understand each-other very well, but most struggle a little bit when it comes to some of the most complex dialects, both each others and our own. I would say all 3 countries have many living dialects, and interesting tongue twisters to offer up to a eagerly listening ear :) Talking of interesting Finnish and Icelandic are very different and often mindboggling to the most of us in Scandinavia. But we love them anyway :)
I think Icelandic can be understood to a degree by most Scandinavian speakers, at least the most common words and sentences. However I do agree, when I first heard spoken Icelandic I wasn't even certain what I was listening to at first. I think Icelandic is a beautiful language, and I've been striving to learn more of it - no thanks to my obsession with the viking age.
I think of Ä and Ö as the swedish equivelant to Æ and Ø. Ja, jeg er norsk, hvis du lurte på om det. (Yes, I am norwegian if you're wondering about that.)
@Sofie72 That just sounds like every other major country in the world. You go to Japan and they'll have different dialects in different regions. Hokkaido they speak a different dialect, in Osaka, they speak a slightly different dialect that can be funny but also confusing as someone who's more used to the regular Tokyo-ben dialect. In the Kansai region of Japan, so around Kyoto, they speak Kansai-ben dialect which is very different from what they speak and how they speak way up in Hokkaido.
I, as a Swedish-American fluent in Swedish, was dying inside when she guessed Norwegian. But I see how you can make the mistake, they’re very similar to non-native speakers. But that she instantly got rid of Sweden in the process of elimination…
This video actually helped me a little bit because I’m 20% Norwegian and I’m in the middle of learning Norwegian so I kinda helped me understand Norwegian better.
Thing about Sweden is that it's so full of very different dialects. So depending on where in the country you're from, you can sound incredibly different. Even to the point of the most northern part not understanding the most southern, and vice versa. The most northern part is more similar to Norwegian , and the most southern is more similar to Danish. I think that's part of why it can be very hard to learn Swedish, but if you know Swedish, the other two languages becomes a bit easier to learn as well. So I'm not surprised at all that she didn't clock the Swedish girl x) But then there's also Åland, which belongs to Finland but where they speak both Finnish and Swedish. And that's also the case with some other parts of Finland too. There's even a dialect called Finland Swedish.
SAME WITH NORWAY, the dialects are so different even native Norwegian speakers have hard times understanding each other depending where in norway they are from!
@@SunRoadG07 I can imagine! Sweden is over all a lot wider, but Norway is a little bit longer, so that must be why! Isn't it kinda interesting though? I love that there's so many dialects. And so many mixes too. Like, I live in a region in the south thats called Småland. But I live just like 20km from the region called Skåne. So while I speak småländska, there are still some words or phrases from the skånska. And older generations have even more of that mix, which makes it even harder for people up north to understand, and vice versa. So I think it's cool, but it's also too bad that it makes it harder for non natives to learn. People down here usually have it fairly easy to understand at least basic Danish. But I'm completely lost at it 😅 I have to speak English when I'm over there, or when talking to tourists here, because I can barely understand a word! My friends thinks that's very amusing 🙈 Norwegian is easier, but I struggle a bit there too. At least when it goes quickly. Do you find it difficult to understand either Swedish or Danish?
@@EDuGoIHuvvet I know right! Also, very true that the older generations have thicker dialect than the younger ones. To be honest I understand Swedish alot better than Danish. That might be because Swedish is more similar Norwegian or the fact that I grew up with a little Swedish TV like Pippi Langstrømpe and Emil i Lønneberget😄
@@SunRoadG07 I kinda think that's a shame sometimes. Like, it would be sad if the dialects just disappeared one day. I have a thicker dialect when speaking to my dad, but otherwise it's kinda mild. Yeah that's probably it for me too 😊 I've only been in Norway one time, basically just over the border. But there weren't any problem understanding the cashier when we were shopping. Like, it's pretty easy to understand your numbers when they're spoken. In Danmark that always gives me a bit of anxiety, because I can't for the life of me understand their number system 🙈 Oh so they weren't dubbed to Norwegian? That's nice! 😄 I don't think we had any shows from Norway. Not that I can remember at least. We had some Finnish tv though. Some in pure Finnish, and some in Finnish Swedish. But there are a lot of people from Finland or that have family there, so that's probably why that is. Don't understand it though 😅 I can count to 10 and say thank you, but that's pretty much it.
Norwegian is actually even more different with dialects because it's more geographically challenging to travel in Norway so people crossed cities less in the past and dialects came to be in isolation
i’m an australian learning swedish so this was pretty easy for me lmaooo. the danish was obvious immediately because the sound is insanely different from swedish & norwegian, i’ve heard people say it sounds like they have a potato in their mouth lmfao, i have to agree, it’s much harder to understand. surprisingly the swedish one was actually a little harder, i think it sounds a little different to the swedish i hear alot but i got it because the up and down sounds gave it away. the norwegian was very easy to get as it was the last language (as finnish isn’t a germanic language) it’s so similar to swedish but they speak a little different, there’s less up and down, it’s more similar to english in the sound???
The swedish speaker has a dialect so that's probably why it was harder to recognize. There are some dialects that are incomprehensible even to swedes. Also you can usually tell if someone is Norwegian if they sound like they're ski-jumping on the end of every sentence
I find Norwegian easiest to understand, because the vocabulary is most similar to Danish, but they actually bother to properly enunciate all the syllables.
cool video, Norwegian and Danish are very similar in writing but not in the way we speak. Swedish is a lot like us in pronunciation. Finnish language , no one in Scandianavia understands 🤣
My stepdad's heritage on his mom's side was Swedish. He remembers his mother teaching him, "Tack sa mycket." This is why I knew right away the second girl was Swedish. 😄
It's more common to say "Tack så mycket" (thanks so much) in Sweden, but sometimes they also say Tack ska du ha, which is the same as Takk skal du ha(ve) in Norwegian and Danish. You can say it sarcastically in all languages. Meanwhile if you're actually thankful, you say "Tack so mycket" in Sweden, and "Tusen takk" (thanks a thousand) in Norwegian.
Dutch has some fascinating similarities with Scandinavian languages. Both in terms of words and in terms of pronunciation. Dutch people coming to Norway often become very fluent and speak almost flawless Norwegian, partly because our languages share some tricky consonant combination sounds that many other languages don't have. Also there are some words that have common roots in Dutch and Norwegian, but are somewhat different in English or German: For example: English: Hospital German: Krankenhaus Norwegian: Sykehus Swedish: Sjukhus Danish: Hospital (Sygehus) Dutch: Ziekenhuis
@@simens8646 In Swedish we also have a variety of different "Sch"-sounds, including some very thick guttural "Sch"-sounds often with very different spellings, which also may be something similar to Dutch? Something I don't see in Danish or Norwegian. To me listening to Dutch, it is often a case of very muddy speaking with bursts of passages of phrases that suddenly sounds like clear Swedish without even an accent then its back to the Dutch muddynes again. Almost like listening to a drunk Swede! Written Dutch is clearly easier (just as it is with Danish)
Danish is easy. If I hear a sentence in a Nordic language, and have absolutely no clue how I would even begin to write down any of the words, it must be Danish :D. To my eastern European ear, it's really hard to break down Danish words into individual letters, or to even tell where a word begins and ends. Some of the letters sound like they are half-pronounced, other letters sound like a combination of at least two different letters. Swedish or Norwegian I obviously can't write down with the correct spelling, but I could phonetically write down how they sound to me. Danish just does not phonetically sound to me like it's made of the letters I am familiar with.
Danish here. Yeah, we're notorious for looking at how our words are written and then just ... pronounce it as lazily as possible (favouring the back of our throats and just do the bare minimum with our lips and tongues) to the point where that's become the official pronounciation and good luck if you don't already know 😅 I can see how that's very tricky to backwards-engineer into the written word.
Funny enough, I have lived in Sweden as an exchange student, just got back from Christmas vacation there, 4 years since the last time. I still remember a little bit of Swedish, my cousin, who now lives there is way better at the language than me now, and never been to Norway or Denmark But I’m able to speak a little bit of each, and only been to Åland in Finland. Only know Kiitos
Why did they have to be guessed one by one? They can be presented one by one but they should be guessed which is which at the same time at the end. This format in the video makes it easier to guess the last participant.
Yes, also, I think that would help Illa since she'd be able to compare them to eachother. She said she'd heard Swedish before and maybe she'd be able to distinguish it when heard next to Norwegian, but not on its own.
Good point. But also, for those of us playing along at home. Have them talk more! How am I supposed to guess which one is which when the american is doing 90% of the speaking?
Funnily enough, Danish and Swedish, both East Scandinavian languages, were the same once, whereas Norwegian was very different, speaking a West Scandinavian language, more in line to how they speak in Iceland. Long before that, however, all Norsemen spoke more or less the same language. Swedish is the most similar to that of old Danish, as it originated in Denmark. While some say Swedish has influenced the Norwegian language, this is quite misleading, as it only was occupied by Sweden for less than 100 years, where Norway was given great autonomy, leading its way to its own independence, before which it was occupied by Denmark for hundreds of years. In fact, Norwegian is very similar to the Danish spoken before it gained its guttural noises, from Frankish and Low German influences. These guttural noises were later introduced, but after achieving independence it practically disappeared. Enjoyed the video, would be cool to include Faroese, Icelandic, Gutnish and even some East Swedish dialects (Finnish Swedish or Estonian Swedish for instance, found in Gammalsvenskby in Ukraine) some time in the future. Maybe include someone who speaks Norn (New Norn), as it is seeing some revival on the Shetland and Orkney islands. Some also list Elfdalian as its own language.
In general you could say Norwegian has more words directly in common with Danish, but the pronunciation/"singy" way of speaking is more closely related to Swedish. It may be easier for a Swedish person to verbally understand a Norwegian, while it may be easier for a Dane to understand Norwegian in writing. Then on top, regional dialect differences within each country can be different enough that people from the same country may not always understand each other perfectly, especially in the outer rural areas. If I travel 3 hours southwest in Denmark I might have trouble understanding a naturally flowing conversation in my own native language xD
Finland-Swedish, yeah. Sure we are Finns, but many of us are ethnically Swedish and if you want to be really specific you can (and should) call us Finland-Swedes.
There are at least 2 definitions of Scandinavia, one of which includes Denmark and the other one doesn’t. I think Nordic is quite an accurate word to use, although this includes Finnish, which is completely unrelated to any of the other languages spoken in the region. Finnish is related to Estonian, and (distantly) to Hungarian.
@@reineh3477 And by calling it Nordic, they make it more difficult to the uninformed, because they may think Finnish is in the mix while it is not here (and Finnish is actually completely different and totally incomprehensible to the average speaker of the Germanic languages - unless they have learnt Finnish, that is).
I'm Dutch and I've been to all of these countries multiple times and I have a hard time telling which is which, just by hearing. But Norway is the only place where I can hear what they are talking about a bit, if the speaker speaks clearly and I concentrate hard enough. Reading goes pretty well, a lot of words are similar, it's just a matter recognising them. But it's tricky, some words are the same but have a totally different meaning. Ikke in Norwegian is not, but in Dutch it means me or myself. Snakke is Norwegian for talk, but in Dutch it means, gasping, or really wanting something.
That's actually interesting! As a Swede, I can usually read Dutch, but hearing it I understand just about nothing because the pronounciations are so different.
as a Norwegian who have travelled a lot to the Netherlands I must say I do agree with the similarities, I tend to find that reading Dutch is not very problematic as it almost seams like a mix between English, Norwegian and German. Might be that there is a lot of similarities because there have been a lot of trade between Norway and the Netherlands in the 1600-1900. also a lot of Norwegians immigrated to the Netherlands around that time as well.
@@torba23 Wel they're all Germanic languages and from what I learned on YT, Dutch didn't undergo major sound shifts from the old Germanic, like German or English. So there should be recognisable words for everyone. Having family migrated to Norway in the seventies I know we're so culturally alike, we probably won't have much trouble fitting in, both ways.
@@thespankmyfrank It's all about recognising the words. It reminds me of the Dutch singer Cornelis Vreeswijk who used to sing his songs in Dutch and Swedish and it's great fun to hear the same song in both languages, besides the fact he's got some great songs.
@@hunchbackaudio I've learned Swedish as a second language, and written Dutch is quite intelligible to me. But I can also read German, which definitely helps. The spoken language is a different story though... Hmm... I know another Dutch singer, currently living in Sweden. Extremely talented lady and an absolute legend in some circles. I wonder if you know who I'm talking about.
You would have noticed Finnish because it belongs to the Uralic languages family tree and is completely unrelated to the other Scandinavian languages (Indo-European family tree)... and most others. Despite trying they have so far not been able to find anything connecting it to the other language family trees. It's a very debated topic where many have tried to find a connection by have failed.
Now you are getting into the politics of Frisia and Slesvig-Holsten. How about we just say Denmark is “close” to the Netherlands. And they do share a maritime border.
It is a small part of Germany that is in between, it takes a few hours to cross it. Liguistically Dutch and Danish are close, which is what this is all about. Of course the three over here are a lot closer but Dutch is still very close. When I went to Sweden (south Central part) we had a chat with friends (Swedish) and I mentioned I was able to read Danish but not understand it and they said they had the exact same experience.
1. Danish doesn't round its "u" sounds and when "d" is at the end of some words it kinda curves 2. The "i" sound in Swedish has a really distinct sound and the "sj" makes a sound thats pretty unique to Swedish, and otherwise sounds a little more similar to Norwegian than Danish 3. The vowel system in Norwegian, except for maybe the "u" and "ø" sound, is more similar to an English accent I would say, especially Northern English / Scotts
I guessed all of the 3, because I watched a performance of an Icelandic comedian and he pretty much described how the nordic languages sound, so it was quite easy.
The swedish language is spoken in the middle of the mouth, the danish in the throat and the norwegian in front of the teeth. Source: kim A. page scandinavian voices (on youtube) From quora It probably is Swedish and I can tell you about a personal experience. I once talked in West-Flemish to a Swede. (West Flemish is a dialect derived from Dutch and is spoken in a Belgian province as well as in the adjacent part of the Netherlands). The Swede answered … in Swedish. We both understood each other for, say, 30%. I tried the same in Norway but it did not work at all. My personal experience as a swede, if i overhear dutch people speaking abroad, i first think theyre swedish. Until i hear the "Ik". That doesnt even happen to me with danish or norwegian.
We in Norway also have rødgrøt (red porridge mentioned by the Danish woman). I grew up with it at my grandparents house and in cooking at school. 😊 It's funny because the Norwegian girl is from the east part of Norway while I'm from the west part, so we talk at least as different as Norwegian and Swedish I think. Someone in Oslo don't understand what I say, and they sometimes have subtitles on tv when it's people from the west speaking 😅 She says jeg heter.. and I say eg hette, sounding different and we have a different r sound, not the rolling r 😛 And just 10 minutes with car we get to the farms where they say æg hætte with more of a Danish kind of sound but not really 😂😅 We also have 2 different ways of writing (Nynorsk and Bokmål), eg. Love kan be both elsker and kjærlighet in Norway (meining 2 different things), but kjærlighet is bokmål and Kjærleik is nynorsk 😛 They even spell Norway different 😅 Norge and Noreg 🙈😂
I'm from Oslo but any Oslonians being so -dumb- non-worldly (so to say) is quite a bit of shameful for me 😅 And I feel less in common with them than random people from anywhere else. It doesn't take much exposure to "get" our dialects and quickly learn to understand, even though they're so different. Get out of your home, go someplace else than your local street you know? Meet more people than your mom and dad 😅😅 One of my favourite words are "Kjærleik på staur" and if I remember correctly this case was from Stord lol. Also learnt something like "Fonne noke brakji" and "Fidla på fudla" but completely forgot the specific contextes haha. Sogn and inner Telemark is my favourite dialects I think. Also people who think Oslo doesn't have a dialect haven't met me or a couple 100 of my friends 😂😂 Only students from _other_ parts of the country, speak this weird "synthetic" "Østlands" dialect. Og pappagutter og sosser fra vestkanten seff haha
Some norwegian (e.g. from Bergen) dialects and Swedish ones (e.g. Skånska/scanian) dialects sounds very different from the rest (they even sounds simiöliar to one and other). Finnish is from a different language group compare to the others.
@@Henrik46Why does she look Asian? Are some Icelanders traced back to Asia? I guess most people could trace back to the Middle East right? Either the Middle East or Asia.
In sweden we often say that norwegian is swedish but happier (and with some just wild card words) and danish is just norwegian but with a whole potato in your mouth.
They should have called the video “skandinavian languages” because Finland and Iceland is also Nordic countries, and they a very different than Norway, Sweden and Denmark:)) But great video
It's fun watching as a Norwegian, since it's somewhat easy too understand what they are saying and what the language is. Wish you threw in Icelandic or Farose. I learned Farose from my friend (whom was a neighbor) and begun learning Icelandic.
@Captain-Axeman Ah interesting, but I hear that Icelandic is actually different from the other modern Germanic Languages because it is more based on Old Norse language than modern Northern Germanic. Most North Europeans could probably understand each other well enough. Depending on where they're from. If they're from some obscure Norwegian town then maybe they'd not really understand.
as a german native speaker i understand and pick up some words from the scandinavian language. it's funny to hear in norwegian they say "Ja" in german also "ja" to yes and "nei", in german: "nein" to no :-)
Norwegian BOKMÅL is based on the Danish Language, and Norwegian NYNORSK was put together by Ivar Aasen. This are the two writing forms in Norway, but the people who live here talks in differnet dialects, there is a saying that Bokmål is Danish and Nynorsk is Norwegian. There are so many different dialects here and there can be different dialects with only a 20 minutes drive from where you are. Also Norway, Danmark and Sweden all have the Æ,Ø,Å but they are a bit different in Swedish (I don't have them on my keybord though here) Norwegians tend to understand Swedish very well when spoken, and are able to read Danish very well. But we can all communicate rather well with each other. A typical Norwegian thing to do is to drive over to Sweden on a "Harrytur" and shop, because candy, soda, alkohol and some foods tends to be cheaper over there XD For me those are the best trips! It's so cozy, driving with either friends or family. Also a lot of Norwegians will go on a "Dansketur". where we take the boat over to Danmark, mainly to shop alkohol and candy on the boat and go straight home. and the trip will take about 8 hours or so :)
I wouldn't really call Denmark a neighbor to The Netherlands. Our borders aren't connected and there's a pretty long trip through Germany to get to The Netherlands.
Not geographically, but our languages are similar due to a greater influence during the Dutch renaissance (or so I'm told). When I hear Dutch being spoken I sometimes have to check if I'm having a stroke, because it sounds like Danish, but it's also clearly not. Uncanny Valley effect, I guess :)
@@JeppeBeier Where to start....I have met so many Danes in reallife living in The Netherlands that one thing is clear: Danes are so similar that on most occasions I never realised they were not Dutch. They talk fluent (I mean 99.9% fluent) in a very short time. I never realised Jan Heinze was a Dane, a friend of mine had the exact same thing with Dennis Rommedahl. We both actually asked oneanother why either of them was not playing in the Dutch national team. Me in 1985 and he in 2000. I think ti is really funny. When Americans mix us up and say Amsterdam is the capital of Denmark or Denmark is in The NEtherland both Dutch and Danes see it as a great example of how uneducated they are. Meanwhile we go to great lengths in saying how different we are. And we make the same mistake, also due to the lack of knowledge and basic lack of interest in eachother. Because the fact that Americans mix us up. for the wrong reasons does not mean that they are completely wrong. I have not seen one country in Europe that is even remotely as similar to my country as Denmark is. But the fact (I think) is that we have no interest in Denmark or Scandinavia. We don't care about any country in Europe and feel no connection to any other country than our own. And Danes I guess are first and foremost Danes and then probably Scandinavians. I think they also have no interest in either Germany or The NEtherlands. Which means we know very little about oneanother, not even that for whatever reason we are culturally geographically and linguistically (very) close.
@@jaysimoes3705 Yeah our countries probably do have some similarities. I'd say Danes in general know more about Germany and has more relations with Germany than we do The Netherlands, so I don't know how similar Denmark and The Netherlands are.
Im so glad that the swedish girl had a swedish dialect that dont pronounce the rs that often. Like my own dialect, Småländska. Only happy because she said that swedes have the specific r.
I think with the Norwegian girl, since she is using an accent, it can sound a bit different from what Norwegian learners would learn in lessons, which is closer to the written language. As a Norwegian, even I at times have a hard time understanding some of the other accents than my own
@@Augenatic I might not get the specific city right but Trøndersk is the accent I believe it is the closest to. I'm from the capital so I speak the accent that is the closest to the written language.
@@thespankmyfrank I agree! I am from Oslo so for me anything that is extremely different from the written language is hard for me to understand, but then again I have an easier time understanding Swedish and Danish actually.
@@helle_larsen It feels that you confuse accent with dialect. Accent is just the melody (prosody), while differences in vocabulary or full syllables missing/added/changed are dialectal.
We have different ways of saying "r" in different parts of Norway (and Sweden too apparently) so a bit tough to recognize us by that. Norwegian is often considered somewhat "sing-songy" though. Both Norwegian and Swedish is semi-tonal languages, but I think that is more pronounced in Norwegian then Swedish.
I think Swedish is considered more sing-songy. It goes up and down more compared to Norwegian which goes up towards the end mostly (making it sound "happy"). Lot's of dialects in both Swedish and Norwegian though were the tone (sing-songing) varies a lot. In northern Sweden close to Finland we have some very monotonic speakers. In the city of Gothenburg or the landscape of Värmland we go up more in tone towards the end of sentences more resembling Norwegian. People of Gotland have a very different tone too. As do Skåne. And lets not forget about Dalarna. The Swedish chef that is singing in the muppets show was inspired from a Dalecarlian who visited USA in the 70:s and often guested a TV talkshow as, yes, a Swedish chef. He was bad at English and speaked with a very singy-songy Dalecarlian dialect when doing cooking presentations! (Extremely funny come think of it actually) Danish is the the most monotone of all the Nordic languages though.
i’ve always had more trouble distinguishing spoken danish and norwegian, other than sometimes danish sounds more swallowed but to me, swedish is the easiest of the three with that sj, almost like an H sound seen in sju (seven) that the other two don’t have. it’s also incredibly surprising to me still how many people think finnish sounds anything like the scandinavian languages. it sounds more like russian or estonian, naturally since it’s uralic, not germanic.
Really dont understand how you can confuse finnish with the scandinavian languages. They are extremely different to Finnish. It has an entirely different linguistic background andd origin. It would be like confusing german with italian
The way the Danes use their tongues is what makes it complicated for us swedes to understand them. But the most norwegian i think is no problem to talk with in our different languages and still understand eachother. All three languages is almost the same as you can se if you look at it in written form. We are one people in blod and share same ancestors. But the Finns are a total different etnicity with a total different language. But because our shared history ewen the Finns are part of our nordic family. They are the adopted sibling we love as mutch as we love our other familymembers.
I really enjoyed this video a lot. I have a very extensive background in distinguishing Nordic Languages since I was young. I have always loved Nordic languages and have admired them in a lifetime. So it was very refreshing to watch Illa try and guess the languages she was presented with. Danish - she did really well guessing Danish. Danish is very unique out of the 3 main Scandinavian languages. However, I still find it difficult to agree with the statement about how Dutch is similar to Danish. Dutch is West Germanic and has a different sounding pattern along with different consonants. Swedish - I can see why Illa struggled with trying to recognize Swedish. However once I heard the “sjö” sound as well as “Tack så mycket”, it was a freebie for me. Norwegian - Illa is very reliant on the “r” sound. There was also the moment she mentions Finnish. 🤦🏻♂️ I am happy she was was able to guess it right. However, for me right away I could recognize it easily as Norwegian. Norwegian is the clearest sounding to me out of all 3. Great job! I really enjoyed watching it and also how beautiful they are also! 😊
Bokmål is not a spoken language though. Her dialect is not strong, but I feel she's from somewhere on the coast a bit south of Trondheim. Bokmål and Nynorsk is not dialects, but written standards. No one speaks either.
@@Floorman7285 A lot of people say Danish and Dutch sound similar. Normally, it's the people who speak neither. There are some similarities, of course, but to me (a non-native Swedish speaker) they don't really sound alike. They're almost equally unintelligible to me, this much I can tell.🤣 Off-topic: I'm curious what your "name" means.🤔
@@noneofyerbeeswax8194 haha yes that’s true. It’s definitely those who speak neither Dutch or Danish that say they are so similar. It makes sense though to non native speakers because of the geography and also Dutch and Danish starting with a “D”. Pronunciation wise, very different. I have practiced speaking both languages. My name is a given nickname from staring down at the floor as a kid.
It was so fun watching this vid, I’m from Sweden 🇸🇪 and I’m there rn,! I actually could understand Norwegian even tho I can’t Norwegian. Did you know that the year 1400-1700 Sweden owned Norway 🇳🇴
"Nordic languages" but forgets Icelandic, Faroese, Greenlandic and Sapmi (even Sapmi is too much but it would be fun to throw in Meänkieli as a wild card)
I think Norway has some linguistical influence on ireland from raiders in the past and I couldn't figure out the first two. Obviously knowing from the title them being the last one to go was norwigen but as soon as she said one (ien) its the same in irish XD dang I woulda got it if she were first XD
Hey i am from norway. I think danish and norwegian is pretty similar too in some ways. I understand Danish if they talk slow. But that can also have something to do with alle the Danish series I watch, they make reallllyyyy good tv!!
At 2:00. This must be the first time I've ever heard anyone say that Danish is a beautiful language... In the rest of Scandinavia we say that Danish is a "speaking disorder". 😉😄 They have their porridge stuck in the throat... God bless Denmark though!! 😀
@@Onnarashi Writing forms, not language. Language comes from Latin and means tongue and speech. Same with the Norwegian word Språk. It means speech with the tongue.
![Why Finnish Is One of The EASIEST Language [7 Reasons]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jTKBfy8OHzw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Why Finnish Is One of The EASIEST Language [7 Reasons]](/img/tr.png)
wish someone would have pointed out that there is no way you could mistake finnish for any of those other languages. Finnish is just something else
she's american
moi
yeah finnish isnt even indoeuropean and the language is built very differently we have a lot of suffixes instead of saying something before the word
Finnish has more in common with Hungarian than the rest of the Nordic languages. :)
@@kebman i know its common sense
You should do a video where Danish, Norwegian and Swedish people can only speak their native tongue and has to collaborate on a challenge 😊
Yes please make this happen!!
That's a good idea. I believe five minutes of listening to the Scandinavians speak with each other would be enough to distinguish them for anyone with experience from the German language family, including English.
The error with the way they did in this video is the lack of establishment of a baseline. A viewer can't relate to or understand the challenge without that baseline.
Scandinavians have little difficulties in understanding each other, Norwegians understands both Swedish and Danish and Danes usually understand Norwegian
Brilliant idea
@@doncarlodivargas5497 not really. I know a lot of Norwegians can understand both but most definitely have a harder time with Danish. the only reason they can understand them and Swedes can't is because when written, Norwegian and Danish are almost the exact same whilst Swedish is a little bit different. However when speaking, Swedish and Norwegian are similar and Danish really different, they speak in a unique way that is closer to Dutch or German than Swedish or Norwegian.
Me and the Danish girl both thinking "weelll... I mean, sort of, but not entirely" and making the head angle at the same time when she said Denmark is next to the Netherlands 😂
Wait... You're telling me that Købendam is NOT the capital of Dutchmark?😲
Ah come on, Denmark is basically the Netherlands right? Well, It's at least as flat xDD
Both at the North Sea so fair enough
@@bananenmusli2769 We sometimes forget this but the Vikings sat on all our overoverover... grandmothers so we are basically the same people xD
Didnt know we moved 😂
"Guess the Nordic language Part 2" - But just bring 4-5 Norwegians from different parts of the country
omg yes
that's genius
It would be fun to compare which one of them is most similar to Icelandic and Old English
Loving this idea!
Same for Sweden
You can distinguish quite easily between norwegian and swedish by the fact that norwegian typicall always rise in pitch at the end of sentences. To us swedes it give off a "always happy" texture to their speech.
Oh!! Yeye, Im swedish and I find that aspect of norwegian really nice!
@@sugoish9461 hahah i just tried speaking some sentences in norwegian and swedish and ive never noticed that i do that myself. im learning stuff
Actually, Swedes do not have to refer to a Norwegian in order to get that "always happy" tone, they can just come into contact within their country with someone that comes from a place like Gothenburg (Göteborg) - Their tone is equally "happy" :)
I'm from Scotland, and heard of Norwegian as the "sing-song" language, with how it rises and falls in pitch. She sounded almost Scottish to me, so the Norwegian was the easiest to pick out!
Only the eastern side of Norway. West, parts of South and Northern Norway have a similar pitch to swedish that goes down instead of up ^^ But it's never represented in media haha
But most of the dialects are still very sing song and up and down regardless
Funny part with Norwegian, Swedish and Danish is that as a Norwegian you can more easily read Danish and understand what it says, but it's much easier to understand the Swedish spoken language when you talk to them. Making it a bit special.
The Norwegian language is based on the Danish seen Norway was under Danish rule for quite sometime in the past.
But a lot of Norwegians have issues understanding the Danish language when spoken and especially when their dialect is thick. Then you sorta gotta get used to it before you fully understand what they say.
Its the same for me as a Swede when it comes to hearing Danish VS Norwegian, with Norwegian i usually understand it pretty well but Danish can in some cases be almost impossible to understand even. I remember well when i went camping to Denmark in the early 90´s one time and i thought i would be able to understand the language somewhat ok at least but when we arrived at the camping site not far from Copenhagen i didnt understand a word they were saying and finally when they pointed at the electrical outlet i understood that they were asking if we needed any electricity, ha ha. Reading Danish and Norwegian is about the same though and i can understand most of it.
@@Stefan- I think that the different dialects around Copenhagen are some of the most difficult to understand. Fyn and Jylland dialects are imho much easier to understand.
@@secularnevrosis You are probably right, i have heard dialects of Danish that are way easier to understand even before i went there, probably mainly on TV though which is why i was so surpriced when i didnt understand a word.
Danish numbers is a story of its own though. Halv-tres and things like that instead of 50,60,70,80,90 instead of the common Swedish and Norwegian counting system.
No problem reading either Danish or Norwegian as a Swede though.
I think Swedish is kind of the "middle ground" of the Nordic languages since we don't have so many totally unintelligible dialects as Norway and at the same time don't swallow every consonant as the Danish in the end making it probably the easiest to understand by a majority of Scandinavian people.
@@Magnus_Loov Yea that's probly true, and Danish numbers are very special for sure. In addition to certain Norwegian Dialects are hard to understand at times. But doesn't Sweeden have natives that talk a language only those who leared it can understand ? Like "Samer" in Norway?
I was hoping for a Finnish person to introduce themselves. That would have been so different that she would have recognized it right away. Another wild card would have been a Swedish-speaking Finn (like me). We don't have the same "soft" pronounciation as the Sweden-Swedes, but we speak crystal clear Swedish as our mother tongue even though born here in Finland for many many many generations, sometimes even centuries.
e du från hangö elle?
Kippis. I just said that cuz I like Finnish. I'm Norwegian tho. Skål!
Finlandssvenska är bästa svenskan. Det tycker många rikssvenskar.
@@decryptedmemes7534 Inte från Hangö, även om mina föräldrar har sommarstuga i Västra Nyland och min mammas släkt har rötter i trakterna. Jag är född i Helsingfors, men bor nu i Vanda.
@@CandidZulu Trevligt att många rikssvenskar tycker det :D Jag pratade svenska som kund på McDonald's när jag bodde i Sverige och fick svar på engelska. Jag fortsatte prata svenska och de fortsatte på engelska. Väldigt konstig känsla efter att jag hört samma person prata flytande (riks)svenska med de tre föregående kunderna 😅
It's funny how she keeps mentioning Finnish even though that language is absolutely different to the three Germanic ones. Just from the word "Tack" you can already tell it's not Finnish. But she still thinks it must be alike just because the countries are close.
Finno-ugric power
I agree. Finnish is just in another level.
Finnish is completely incomprehensible to me as a swede, which is funny since Swedish is a language they teach at most schools in Finland
Hello in Norwegian: Hallo.
Hello in Danish: Hallo.
Hello in Swedish: Hallå.
Hello in Finnish: Moikka.
@@lovem7105 Finnish is closer to Hungarian than Swedish.
The Norwegian girl speaks Trondheim's dialect, a city in the middle of Norway. Norwegian and Swedish are very similar, not difficult to understanding most of the time. Norwegians and Swedes also understand moste of Danish with some challenges. German has some similarities with Norwegian (and the others) which means that we can sometimes partly understand but not speak
Dutch has some similarities with Norwegian and the others as well, which makes sense because we all speak a Germanic language
@@coolenaam Yes all are on the Germanic language tre ,but for my I feel German is closer (but not close) to Norwegian, compared to Dutch. Dutch and Austrian I can pick out certain "German" words but not much more than that :)
@@coolenaam ha ha. Dutch is primitive English!
@@TheMrPeteChannel ..... no, it's not
@@TheMrPeteChannel English has more in common with Danish than Dutch. So Danish is primitive English. ;) Now go back to when Old Norse was spoken, and it's almost as similar to Old English as modern Swedish is to Norwegian!
For a native English speaker its important to remember that the Nordic languages with the exeption of Finnish are Germanic languages just like English, so the basic structure of these languages is quite similar
There's a video of Eddie Izzard going to Friesland to buy a brown cow by using Old English. It's pretty hilarious if you're a language nerd...
yeah one problem you cant get norwegian right because 5000 dialects the only "right" one is The oslo area but thtas cuz the most people speak that dialect
@@klauslunde danish and swedish both have a standard dialect, norwegian does not. So every dialect is Just as right as the fucking Oslo dialect
@@benjasine3472 Swedes and Danes also have settled on *one* written language while Norwegians have two!!. That was the real suprise when I moved to Norway. There is even a language police! Incredible but true.
In Sweden it doesn't matter what "dialect" you have when you are writing something. The word pojke (boy) is spelled as is, even if some dialects would say påg.
@@benjasine3472 ofc but the oslo dialect the most people speak
I do not get it why it is so hard for people outside of the Nordic Europe do understand the difference between Scandinavian languages (swedish, Norwegian, danish) and Nordic languages (swedish, norwegian, danish AND icelandic, faroese and finnish plus some smaller languages). Finnish (and sami) however belongs to a complete different language group from the rest.
it is very easy actually to differentiate them by sound, no actually vocabulary knowledge needed, just by sound. But i guess many people out there simply never have actually getting in touch with them or lets say spent any time on them
like it always cringes me when ppl have absolutely no single clue or guess the easy ones totally wrong, but i'm not gonna blame anyone out there. Probably would be the same when me confronting asian languages or something, where other people are way more enthusiast
I mean, she thinks Denmark is right next to the Netherlands, so don't expect her to know that Finnish belongs to a completely different language family :D
@@andyx6827 well yeah thats another thing tho. Many dont know that finnish is in a different language family despite it being up there geographically with the other 3
@@andyx6827 its very close, she isn’t far off
For Norway there is a large difference depending on where you are from. Some dialects sound closer to Swedish, while others are (a bit) closer to Danish. You do of course have dialects in the other Scandinavian countries, but with the possible exception of Scanian in Sweden, I don't think that they are as distinct. This is mostly due to the geography of Norway, where people were separated by lots of mountains and fjords.
Korrekt and there are even a few places that got influenced by germans, where I live. If you had birthday you would say E har gebursdag. A real meltingpot tbh
@@jandeusvult2920 My grandparents say gebursdag. I say Bursdag.
There are a _lot_ of different dialects in Sweden that are _very_ distinct and different. Like the dialect in Värmland, they have "thick k", and is probably the closest to Norwegian. And, as you mentioned, the Scanian accents are closer to Danish. Swedish has a lot of sj-sounds, and they are pronounce differently in different regions. The dialect in Småland lacks the r (they sound like they have a speech impediment...). In Närke they have a bit of a whiny sound. On Gotland they have a lot of diftongs, like instead of hus (house) they say "heos" and instead of mer (more) they say "meir", and a lot of other thing that makes that accent very distinct. In Gothenburg they pronounce "i" as "e" in some words, instead of "fisk" (fish) they say "fesk".
Just to name a few of the dialects of Swedish, there are so many!
Yes and in Östergötland we talk in a 'lazy' way where we don't pronounce som syllables. For example: Jag heter...(my name is) And Jag är från Amerika(i am from America) sounds more like Ja hete... And Ja e från Amerika.
In addition, in norway "language" or dialects are politicised
Probably one of the most asked videos of the channel , finally Nordic countries 👏
Still missed 2 out of the 5 nordic countries...
It's only Scandinavia tho
Danish sounds more guttural, Swedish sound more nasal and Norwegian sounds more sing-songy.
Agreed!!! I also like the distinction of the “sjö” or “sju” sound in Swedish. Norwegian is a very happy up beat and cheerful!
That's honestly spot on
Probably the best explanation I have seen for the difference between these languages. In writing however danish and norwegian is very similar, a few words maybe difference, we also use Æ. Ø and Å both in speaking and writing, while swedes use Å, Ä, Ö. and abit more different in writing than norwegian and danish. We also had for quite some time danish as official or governmental language so laws where written in dansih among other things.But Norway now have 3 official languages ... or 2 official spoken and 3 written, as Ny Norsk is only a written language and only considered a dialect spoken ... and then ofcourse Sami.
The noewegians love ski jumping so much, they made their language like ski jumping. Always having a little jump at the end of the sentence.
Totally depends on the speaker (and also dialect) though.
They only thing constant is that Danish is guttural :)
Looking forward to another edition, hopefully featuring Finnish and Icelandic
Yes that would be awesome
Danish: Listen for the uvular R, the stød, and the D becoming a ð sound.
Swedish: Listen for the characteristic SJ sound, O becoming U, and the retroflex L/R sounds, tones mostly on 2 syllable words.
Norwegian: Listen for the feminine gender inflection and tones on all words, regardless of number of syllables or gender.
pretty sure the O doesnt become U in swedish
"stol" isnt pronounced "stul", its closer (not really, but CLOSER) to "stool"
the O is heavier
@@zephyriic exactly idk what made them think that O become U lol
@@treebug7738 In Norwegian this is sometimes the case as well as u becoming something like the German ü
It's hard to pin Norwegian down, because there are at least four main dialects spoken (North, West, Mid and East), that also sound very different, with different ways of pronouncing the R sound, and _seven_ different ways of saying I. Eight if you count Swedish. Add to this that Norwegian has two different standard writing systems, Nynorsk and Bokmål, with Bokmål being the most prevalent.
for norwegian my method is to listen closely if it sounds weird. otherwise its swedish cuz im native-
Me and my Swedish friend enter a bar in Spain where the bartender was a Danish girl. They start a conversation, him speaking Swedish and her, Danish. Everything was intelligible for the both of them. 😄
She probably spoke Swedified Danish then to avoid confusion, it's a common occurance. Danish is so hard to understand
@@hencytjoe It takes a week or two in Denmark for the normal Swede to get the hang of Danish and after that it's easy. One just have to find the pattern in how they swallow half their words and weaken the consonants on whats left.
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish share over 90% of their vocabulary. I think with Icelandic it's about 70%.
@@tovep9573 Nah man, we need the danish person to talk english or very slowly. It's a very muddy language for someone who's not used to it so even after speaking a year with some danish mates I still ask them to repeat a few words in english because I can't even guess how to it's spelled. Same thing with some scanians lmao
@@Exerosp If a swede and a dane both speak articulate they can easily understand each other. The grammar between the two langages are almost identical and they share more than 90 % of the words. Swedish and danish are very differently pronounced. That means that swedes and danes can have problems understanding each other the same way that someone from northern England and someone from southern England can have problems understanding each other.
@@erikeriksson1660 It's not a matter of the grammar being similar. How Danes pronounce their words make them really hard of hearing to a swede. And it's not like comparing dialects, that's comparing Northerners dialect with Scanian in Sweden. I'm swedish, most of the people across the country that I know are swedish, and most will agree that yes, danish is hard to hear.
Danish sounds dramatically different from Swedish/Norwegian, I knew immediately the first woman was Danish.
I struggled with #2, and kept going back and forth between Swedish/Norwegian. The women's name being Josefin was why I guessed Swedish, since I have seen Josefin/Josephine as a name in Swedish films/TV or actresses from Sweden.
#3. Process of elimination that it would be Norwegian. Unsure if I would have guessed Norwegian is she had gone second.
As for Finnish. It would have been interesting to have a person from Finland. Finnish is not a Scandinavian language, though it would have been the one language to ask "what is thank you" amongst the Nordic countries.
Danish sounds so glottal. It's like they are speaking with a hot potato or cotton swabs in their mouth. At times, it sounds like they are choking on you know what, after giving deep throat.
Hi my name is Josefine and I'm from Denmark lol
Re: #2, her 'I' and 'Y' are a dead giveaway that she's Swedish. Nobody else makes those atrocious sounds. Also, the Swedish 'sj' is different from any other language. But this only applies to the standard language and "normalized" regional accents, of course. There are many dialects that can have very different pronunciation. If she were speaking some western dialect, there would be no way for anyone but a native speaker to tell it apart from Norwegian.
@@lissandrafreljord7913Swedish and Norwegian sounds like someone has the hiccups
@@lissandrafreljord7913 Is it just Swedes life purpose to do the same copy and paste for every video containing a Dane 😂
Really fascinating as a Norwegian how fast I could recognize each language instantly. We all just have a lot of small (or big things) that distinguishes us between each other huh :D
Also she was an trønder, she said «æ e» i am
@@LasVegar -Jepp eg sku- Yep I was gonna comment on it as well, but didn't want things to get too long/confusing haha. Was honestly surprised they invited someone from Trondheim and not Oslo, considering that's not where most of the speakers from Norway they invite are from, at least from the videos I have watched. Love the trønder dialect tho, so I don't mind at all :D
@@PotatoKing147 It could be and probably is because she studies in Oslo. She said she lives near the Ocean. From what I know there is no big ocean around Trondheim, but in Oslo we have a big fjord.
Haha! I never talked yet to a person from Scandinavia irl, but easily guessed all the languages :-) Such a fun video, thank u, guys!
How nice that you made a video about the Nordic languages 😊 it was way fun to watch their interactions cause I could relate to myself as a Swedish and it put a smile on my face
Danish is recognizable by the soft D and Swedish by the sound SJ (like in SJU) and in some swedish dialects by viby-I which only exists in Swedish. If it's not any of those and you hear tones, then it's Norwegian (Swedish also has tones but not as obvious as Norwegian)
Norwegian has at least four main dialects that are pretty different from one another. But most of them are more singy-songy than Swedish, although Swedish can also be pretty singy-songy I guess :p The most monotonous dialect in Norway is the Northern one. Same for Danish, it's kind of monotonous, but also very different with the glottal stops.
The swedish girl only talked half as much as the other two. Which was genuinly quite swedish of her. 😆
The fact that she didn't correct her on the Netherlands being close to the Scandinavia is so Scandinavian
Dutch and Danish are quite close.
Just count the regions where they traditionally speak Low German as Dutch :)
@@Nekotaku_TV Yeah but not as close as Danish, Norwegian and Swedish
Denmark and the Netherlands are just 200 kilometers from each other, which you could count as extreme geographical proximity.
I mean, they're, what, a hundred miles apart? Something like that? So it's like a European saying Detroit is close to Toronto. (And yes, she was talking about geographic proximity, and reasoning based on that, about the languages. Which would not be valid in general, but in this case the languages in question are in fact related.)
The ÆØÅ letters are used both in Denmark and Norway our languages are very similar in writing but they sound different. Sweden has their own variation of these letters. Å, Ä, Ö We usually understand each-other very well, but most struggle a little bit when it comes to some of the most complex dialects, both each others and our own. I would say all 3 countries have many living dialects, and interesting tongue twisters to offer up to a eagerly listening ear :) Talking of interesting Finnish and Icelandic are very different and often mindboggling to the most of us in Scandinavia. But we love them anyway :)
I think Icelandic can be understood to a degree by most Scandinavian speakers, at least the most common words and sentences. However I do agree, when I first heard spoken Icelandic I wasn't even certain what I was listening to at first. I think Icelandic is a beautiful language, and I've been striving to learn more of it - no thanks to my obsession with the viking age.
I think of Ä and Ö as the swedish equivelant to Æ and Ø.
Ja, jeg er norsk, hvis du lurte på om det. (Yes, I am norwegian if you're wondering about that.)
@Sofie72 That just sounds like every other major country in the world. You go to Japan and they'll have different dialects in different regions. Hokkaido they speak a different dialect, in Osaka, they speak a slightly different dialect that can be funny but also confusing as someone who's more used to the regular Tokyo-ben dialect. In the Kansai region of Japan, so around Kyoto, they speak Kansai-ben dialect which is very different from what they speak and how they speak way up in Hokkaido.
I, as a Swedish-American fluent in Swedish, was dying inside when she guessed Norwegian. But I see how you can make the mistake, they’re very similar to non-native speakers. But that she instantly got rid of Sweden in the process of elimination…
Yeah ikr, I’m also from Sweden, Stockholm :)
@@yoannamekhail7076 same.
@@Ironcurtainproductions twins!
It would've been very cool if they indeed had a finnish girl to throw in the mix. That would throw her off guard! :)
Lol. Everyone else "Tack"
Finnish girl "Kiitos"
This video actually helped me a little bit because I’m 20% Norwegian and I’m in the middle of learning Norwegian so I kinda helped me understand Norwegian better.
Thing about Sweden is that it's so full of very different dialects.
So depending on where in the country you're from, you can sound incredibly different.
Even to the point of the most northern part not understanding the most southern, and vice versa.
The most northern part is more similar to Norwegian , and the most southern is more similar to Danish.
I think that's part of why it can be very hard to learn Swedish, but if you know Swedish, the other two languages becomes a bit easier to learn as well.
So I'm not surprised at all that she didn't clock the Swedish girl x)
But then there's also Åland, which belongs to Finland but where they speak both Finnish and Swedish. And that's also the case with some other parts of Finland too.
There's even a dialect called Finland Swedish.
SAME WITH NORWAY, the dialects are so different even native Norwegian speakers have hard times understanding each other depending where in norway they are from!
@@SunRoadG07 I can imagine!
Sweden is over all a lot wider, but Norway is a little bit longer, so that must be why!
Isn't it kinda interesting though?
I love that there's so many dialects. And so many mixes too.
Like, I live in a region in the south thats called Småland. But I live just like 20km from the region called Skåne. So while I speak småländska, there are still some words or phrases from the skånska. And older generations have even more of that mix, which makes it even harder for people up north to understand, and vice versa.
So I think it's cool, but it's also too bad that it makes it harder for non natives to learn.
People down here usually have it fairly easy to understand at least basic Danish. But I'm completely lost at it 😅 I have to speak English when I'm over there, or when talking to tourists here, because I can barely understand a word! My friends thinks that's very amusing 🙈
Norwegian is easier, but I struggle a bit there too. At least when it goes quickly.
Do you find it difficult to understand either Swedish or Danish?
@@EDuGoIHuvvet I know right! Also, very true that the older generations have thicker dialect than the younger ones.
To be honest I understand Swedish alot better than Danish. That might be because Swedish is more similar Norwegian or the fact that I grew up with a little Swedish TV like Pippi Langstrømpe and Emil i Lønneberget😄
@@SunRoadG07 I kinda think that's a shame sometimes. Like, it would be sad if the dialects just disappeared one day.
I have a thicker dialect when speaking to my dad, but otherwise it's kinda mild.
Yeah that's probably it for me too 😊
I've only been in Norway one time, basically just over the border. But there weren't any problem understanding the cashier when we were shopping. Like, it's pretty easy to understand your numbers when they're spoken.
In Danmark that always gives me a bit of anxiety, because I can't for the life of me understand their number system 🙈
Oh so they weren't dubbed to Norwegian? That's nice! 😄
I don't think we had any shows from Norway. Not that I can remember at least.
We had some Finnish tv though. Some in pure Finnish, and some in Finnish Swedish.
But there are a lot of people from Finland or that have family there, so that's probably why that is.
Don't understand it though 😅
I can count to 10 and say thank you, but that's pretty much it.
Norwegian is actually even more different with dialects because it's more geographically challenging to travel in Norway so people crossed cities less in the past and dialects came to be in isolation
i’m an australian learning swedish so this was pretty easy for me lmaooo.
the danish was obvious immediately because the sound is insanely different from swedish & norwegian, i’ve heard people say it sounds like they have a potato in their mouth lmfao, i have to agree, it’s much harder to understand.
surprisingly the swedish one was actually a little harder, i think it sounds a little different to the swedish i hear alot but i got it because the up and down sounds gave it away.
the norwegian was very easy to get as it was the last language (as finnish isn’t a germanic language) it’s so similar to swedish but they speak a little different, there’s less up and down, it’s more similar to english in the sound???
The swedish speaker has a dialect so that's probably why it was harder to recognize. There are some dialects that are incomprehensible even to swedes.
Also you can usually tell if someone is Norwegian if they sound like they're ski-jumping on the end of every sentence
också lär mig svenska
I find Norwegian easiest to understand, because the vocabulary is most similar to Danish, but they actually bother to properly enunciate all the syllables.
@@moondaughter1004 No she doesn't have a specific dialect, she speaks rikssvenska
Norwegian generally is perceived as more "up and down" but dialects and social setting (or personality) may apply :)
cool video, Norwegian and Danish are very similar in writing but not in the way we speak. Swedish is a lot like us in pronunciation. Finnish language , no one in Scandianavia understands 🤣
My stepdad's heritage on his mom's side was Swedish. He remembers his mother teaching him, "Tack sa mycket." This is why I knew right away the second girl was Swedish. 😄
Så* ;)
Varsågod = your welcome :)
It's more common to say "Tack så mycket" (thanks so much) in Sweden, but sometimes they also say Tack ska du ha, which is the same as Takk skal du ha(ve) in Norwegian and Danish. You can say it sarcastically in all languages. Meanwhile if you're actually thankful, you say "Tack so mycket" in Sweden, and "Tusen takk" (thanks a thousand) in Norwegian.
I really like the sounds coming from these languages , there should be more videos about northern countries
As someone from the Netherlands, I could understand about 50% of the words as somewhat connected to my language
Kind of the same with German
Dutch has some fascinating similarities with Scandinavian languages. Both in terms of words and in terms of pronunciation.
Dutch people coming to Norway often become very fluent and speak almost flawless Norwegian, partly because our languages share some tricky consonant combination sounds that many other languages don't have.
Also there are some words that have common roots in Dutch and Norwegian, but are somewhat different in English or German:
For example:
English: Hospital
German: Krankenhaus
Norwegian: Sykehus
Swedish: Sjukhus
Danish: Hospital (Sygehus)
Dutch: Ziekenhuis
@@simens8646 In Swedish we also have a variety of different "Sch"-sounds, including some very thick guttural "Sch"-sounds often with very different spellings, which also may be something similar to Dutch? Something I don't see in Danish or Norwegian.
To me listening to Dutch, it is often a case of very muddy speaking with bursts of passages of phrases that suddenly sounds like clear Swedish without even an accent then its back to the Dutch muddynes again. Almost like listening to a drunk Swede!
Written Dutch is clearly easier (just as it is with Danish)
Hehe ja! I feel the same when I hear Dutch! We kind of understand eacother. Im from Norway.
I speak both Norwegian and Dutch fluently, but I don’t feel like they are very similar 😊
Danish is easy. If I hear a sentence in a Nordic language, and have absolutely no clue how I would even begin to write down any of the words, it must be Danish :D. To my eastern European ear, it's really hard to break down Danish words into individual letters, or to even tell where a word begins and ends. Some of the letters sound like they are half-pronounced, other letters sound like a combination of at least two different letters. Swedish or Norwegian I obviously can't write down with the correct spelling, but I could phonetically write down how they sound to me. Danish just does not phonetically sound to me like it's made of the letters I am familiar with.
Danish here. Yeah, we're notorious for looking at how our words are written and then just ... pronounce it as lazily as possible (favouring the back of our throats and just do the bare minimum with our lips and tongues) to the point where that's become the official pronounciation and good luck if you don't already know 😅 I can see how that's very tricky to backwards-engineer into the written word.
@@AskForDoodles Fuck en konge kommentar 🤣
@@AskForDoodles This made my day! Skål!
It's because they speak with a potato down their throat :)
LOL that’s so true!! The Danes slur the words a lot, the Swedes articulate more and the Norwegians articulate very clearly I would say.
Funny enough, I have lived in Sweden as an exchange student, just got back from Christmas vacation there, 4 years since the last time. I still remember a little bit of Swedish, my cousin, who now lives there is way better at the language than me now, and never been to Norway or Denmark But I’m able to speak a little bit of each, and only been to Åland in Finland. Only know Kiitos
I wonder how a Finnish Norwegian Bergen dialect would sound like ....... Hmmmmmm!!!11111
Why did they have to be guessed one by one? They can be presented one by one but they should be guessed which is which at the same time at the end. This format in the video makes it easier to guess the last participant.
Yes, also, I think that would help Illa since she'd be able to compare them to eachother. She said she'd heard Swedish before and maybe she'd be able to distinguish it when heard next to Norwegian, but not on its own.
Good point. But also, for those of us playing along at home. Have them talk more! How am I supposed to guess which one is which when the american is doing 90% of the speaking?
Funnily enough, Danish and Swedish, both East Scandinavian languages, were the same once, whereas Norwegian was very different, speaking a West Scandinavian language, more in line to how they speak in Iceland. Long before that, however, all Norsemen spoke more or less the same language. Swedish is the most similar to that of old Danish, as it originated in Denmark. While some say Swedish has influenced the Norwegian language, this is quite misleading, as it only was occupied by Sweden for less than 100 years, where Norway was given great autonomy, leading its way to its own independence, before which it was occupied by Denmark for hundreds of years. In fact, Norwegian is very similar to the Danish spoken before it gained its guttural noises, from Frankish and Low German influences. These guttural noises were later introduced, but after achieving independence it practically disappeared.
Enjoyed the video, would be cool to include Faroese, Icelandic, Gutnish and even some East Swedish dialects (Finnish Swedish or Estonian Swedish for instance, found in Gammalsvenskby in Ukraine) some time in the future. Maybe include someone who speaks Norn (New Norn), as it is seeing some revival on the Shetland and Orkney islands. Some also list Elfdalian as its own language.
Illa is back! It was a fun and educational video!
In general you could say Norwegian has more words directly in common with Danish, but the pronunciation/"singy" way of speaking is more closely related to Swedish.
It may be easier for a Swedish person to verbally understand a Norwegian, while it may be easier for a Dane to understand Norwegian in writing.
Then on top, regional dialect differences within each country can be different enough that people from the same country may not always understand each other perfectly, especially in the outer rural areas. If I travel 3 hours southwest in Denmark I might have trouble understanding a naturally flowing conversation in my own native language xD
They should also have a fin talking swedish there maybe from swedish finnish border or finland, gotta love finnish swedish accent
Muumin finnish-swedish :D
Finland-Swedish, yeah. Sure we are Finns, but many of us are ethnically Swedish and if you want to be really specific you can (and should) call us Finland-Swedes.
Ok, finland-swedes and tornedalingar then. :)
@@Cronin_ That's what you are called in Sweden. FinlandsSvenskar.
@@zoom5024 Int bara i Sverige. Nog kallar vi oss själva fö Finlandssvenskar också😅
They're Scandinavian laguages, no nordic.
And for Illa: Finnish doesn't have anything to do with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish
There are at least 2 definitions of Scandinavia, one of which includes Denmark and the other one doesn’t. I think Nordic is quite an accurate word to use, although this includes Finnish, which is completely unrelated to any of the other languages spoken in the region. Finnish is related to Estonian, and (distantly) to Hungarian.
It's okay to say Nordic as well as scandinavian, no one up here would care as long as you don't bring in the term Scandinavia with Finland or Iceland.
They are both Scandinavian and Nordic.
@@reineh3477 And by calling it Nordic, they make it more difficult to the uninformed, because they may think Finnish is in the mix while it is not here (and Finnish is actually completely different and totally incomprehensible to the average speaker of the Germanic languages - unless they have learnt Finnish, that is).
@@jasperkok8745 yes I know, they are Finno-ugric.
I'm Dutch and I've been to all of these countries multiple times and I have a hard time telling which is which, just by hearing. But Norway is the only place where I can hear what they are talking about a bit, if the speaker speaks clearly and I concentrate hard enough. Reading goes pretty well, a lot of words are similar, it's just a matter recognising them. But it's tricky, some words are the same but have a totally different meaning. Ikke in Norwegian is not, but in Dutch it means me or myself. Snakke is Norwegian for talk, but in Dutch it means, gasping, or really wanting something.
That's actually interesting! As a Swede, I can usually read Dutch, but hearing it I understand just about nothing because the pronounciations are so different.
as a Norwegian who have travelled a lot to the Netherlands I must say I do agree with the similarities, I tend to find that reading Dutch is not very problematic as it almost seams like a mix between English, Norwegian and German. Might be that there is a lot of similarities because there have been a lot of trade between Norway and the Netherlands in the 1600-1900. also a lot of Norwegians immigrated to the Netherlands around that time as well.
@@torba23 Wel they're all Germanic languages and from what I learned on YT, Dutch didn't undergo major sound shifts from the old Germanic, like German or English. So there should be recognisable words for everyone. Having family migrated to Norway in the seventies I know we're so culturally alike, we probably won't have much trouble fitting in, both ways.
@@thespankmyfrank It's all about recognising the words. It reminds me of the Dutch singer Cornelis Vreeswijk who used to sing his songs in Dutch and Swedish and it's great fun to hear the same song in both languages, besides the fact he's got some great songs.
@@hunchbackaudio I've learned Swedish as a second language, and written Dutch is quite intelligible to me. But I can also read German, which definitely helps. The spoken language is a different story though...
Hmm... I know another Dutch singer, currently living in Sweden. Extremely talented lady and an absolute legend in some circles. I wonder if you know who I'm talking about.
You would have noticed Finnish because it belongs to the Uralic languages family tree and is completely unrelated to the other Scandinavian languages (Indo-European family tree)... and most others. Despite trying they have so far not been able to find anything connecting it to the other language family trees. It's a very debated topic where many have tried to find a connection by have failed.
Denmark is not next to The Netherlands theres a little tiny country called Germany in between
@RaniHinnawi tru dat
Now you are getting into the politics of Frisia and Slesvig-Holsten. How about we just say Denmark is “close” to the Netherlands. And they do share a maritime border.
You need to work on your "proportions" or tell me how you would squeeze in Germany between Denmark and The Netherlands.
It is a small part of Germany that is in between, it takes a few hours to cross it. Liguistically Dutch and Danish are close, which is what this is all about. Of course the three over here are a lot closer but Dutch is still very close. When I went to Sweden (south Central part) we had a chat with friends (Swedish) and I mentioned I was able to read Danish but not understand it and they said they had the exact same experience.
1. Danish doesn't round its "u" sounds and when "d" is at the end of some words it kinda curves
2. The "i" sound in Swedish has a really distinct sound and the "sj" makes a sound thats pretty unique to Swedish, and otherwise sounds a little more similar to Norwegian than Danish
3. The vowel system in Norwegian, except for maybe the "u" and "ø" sound, is more similar to an English accent I would say, especially Northern English / Scotts
I guessed all of the 3, because I watched a performance of an Icelandic comedian and he pretty much described how the nordic languages sound, so it was quite easy.
I think I know what you mean, and it's a pretty epic skit
The swedish language is spoken in the middle of the mouth, the danish in the throat and the norwegian in front of the teeth. Source: kim A. page scandinavian voices (on youtube)
From quora
It probably is Swedish and I can tell you about a personal experience. I once talked in West-Flemish to a Swede. (West Flemish is a dialect derived from Dutch and is spoken in a Belgian province as well as in the adjacent part of the Netherlands). The Swede answered … in Swedish. We both understood each other for, say, 30%. I tried the same in Norway but it did not work at all.
My personal experience as a swede, if i overhear dutch people speaking abroad, i first think theyre swedish. Until i hear the "Ik". That doesnt even happen to me with danish or norwegian.
Ik Ich ic -> Nynorsk (New Norwegian) Eg
@@kebman It isnt pronounced the same
You should try to have Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian and Japanese (there's so many similar words)
We in Norway also have rødgrøt (red porridge mentioned by the Danish woman). I grew up with it at my grandparents house and in cooking at school. 😊
It's funny because the Norwegian girl is from the east part of Norway while I'm from the west part, so we talk at least as different as Norwegian and Swedish I think. Someone in Oslo don't understand what I say, and they sometimes have subtitles on tv when it's people from the west speaking 😅
She says jeg heter.. and I say eg hette, sounding different and we have a different r sound, not the rolling r 😛 And just 10 minutes with car we get to the farms where they say æg hætte with more of a Danish kind of sound but not really 😂😅 We also have 2 different ways of writing (Nynorsk and Bokmål), eg. Love kan be both elsker and kjærlighet in Norway (meining 2 different things), but kjærlighet is bokmål and Kjærleik is nynorsk 😛 They even spell Norway different 😅 Norge and Noreg 🙈😂
Ho sa da også "æ" heter og "e" for er. Ser ut til å vær en liten blanding, rart.
I'm from Oslo but any Oslonians being so -dumb- non-worldly (so to say) is quite a bit of shameful for me 😅 And I feel less in common with them than random people from anywhere else.
It doesn't take much exposure to "get" our dialects and quickly learn to understand, even though they're so different. Get out of your home, go someplace else than your local street you know? Meet more people than your mom and dad 😅😅
One of my favourite words are "Kjærleik på staur" and if I remember correctly this case was from Stord lol.
Also learnt something like "Fonne noke brakji" and "Fidla på fudla" but completely forgot the specific contextes haha.
Sogn and inner Telemark is my favourite dialects I think.
Also people who think Oslo doesn't have a dialect haven't met me or a couple 100 of my friends 😂😂
Only students from _other_ parts of the country, speak this weird "synthetic" "Østlands" dialect.
Og pappagutter og sosser fra vestkanten seff haha
As a Linguistics major it's hurts to watch their explanation
"As a Linguistics major it‘s hurts" 🤪
She actually performed well having no similarities with either language, good job!
Norwegian and especially Danish were very easy for me, but the Swedish was very confusing
Some norwegian (e.g. from Bergen) dialects and Swedish ones (e.g. Skånska/scanian) dialects sounds very different from the rest (they even sounds simiöliar to one and other). Finnish is from a different language group compare to the others.
As a Swedish person, this was painful to watch, but also adorable.
Just a kind reminder that the nordics include Finland and Iceland too :D Norway, Sweden and Denmark = Scandinavia.
Bjork taught me to read Danish scientific books to learn the truth and not let poets lie to me.
Are you Swedish or Norwegian? I can't put my finger on where of Bjork
@@miomip Well, Björk is Icelandic, but OP might be of any nationality, and just inspired by that epic ASMR video with her.
@@Henrik46 Thanks I just couldn't think oo where the name where from.
@@Henrik46Why does she look Asian? Are some Icelanders traced back to Asia? I guess most people could trace back to the Middle East right? Either the Middle East or Asia.
I’m learning Norwegian(bokmål) at the moment and I can’t believe I understood Danish faster than Norwegian 💀
Wait until the dialects hit you
First you learn Norwegian, then you have to learn the dialect where you are moving 😅 it is different everywhere.
Welcome to Norwegian dialect hell my man xD
In sweden we often say that norwegian is swedish but happier (and with some just wild card words) and danish is just norwegian but with a whole potato in your mouth.
Funny, most Norwegians thing Swedish is NOrwegian but happier. Ok then! Let's be happy together! SKÅL!
In Denmark we say that Sweden is just the worst part of Denmark
They should have called the video “skandinavian languages” because Finland and Iceland is also Nordic countries, and they a very different than Norway, Sweden and Denmark:))
But great video
It's fun watching as a Norwegian, since it's somewhat easy too understand what they are saying and what the language is.
Wish you threw in Icelandic or Farose. I learned Farose from my friend (whom was a neighbor) and begun learning Icelandic.
@Captain-Axeman Ah interesting, but I hear that Icelandic is actually different from the other modern Germanic Languages because it is more based on Old Norse language than modern Northern Germanic.
Most North Europeans could probably understand each other well enough. Depending on where they're from. If they're from some obscure Norwegian town then maybe they'd not really understand.
Denmark next to The Netherlands. 🇳🇱🇩🇰🤣 Yes of course and my country Spain is next to Germany.
It is just a country between us. 😂😂😂
as a german native speaker i understand and pick up some words from the scandinavian language. it's funny to hear in norwegian they say "Ja" in german also "ja" to yes and "nei", in german: "nein" to no :-)
Norwegian BOKMÅL is based on the Danish Language, and Norwegian NYNORSK was put together by Ivar Aasen. This are the two writing forms in Norway, but the people who live here talks in differnet dialects, there is a saying that Bokmål is Danish and Nynorsk is Norwegian. There are so many different dialects here and there can be different dialects with only a 20 minutes drive from where you are.
Also Norway, Danmark and Sweden all have the Æ,Ø,Å but they are a bit different in Swedish (I don't have them on my keybord though here)
Norwegians tend to understand Swedish very well when spoken, and are able to read Danish very well. But we can all communicate rather well with each other.
A typical Norwegian thing to do is to drive over to Sweden on a "Harrytur" and shop, because candy, soda, alkohol and some foods tends to be cheaper over there XD For me those are the best trips! It's so cozy, driving with either friends or family. Also a lot of Norwegians will go on a "Dansketur". where we take the boat over to Danmark, mainly to shop alkohol and candy on the boat and go straight home. and the trip will take about 8 hours or so :)
I feel like a genius as i study scandinavian studies
Scandinavian women are so pretty, the really blonde hair dark blue eyes goes deep into my soul every time.
I wouldn't really call Denmark a neighbor to The Netherlands. Our borders aren't connected and there's a pretty long trip through Germany to get to The Netherlands.
Not geographically, but our languages are similar due to a greater influence during the Dutch renaissance (or so I'm told). When I hear Dutch being spoken I sometimes have to check if I'm having a stroke, because it sounds like Danish, but it's also clearly not. Uncanny Valley effect, I guess :)
Alle danskere rystede på hovedet da hun sagde det. No 🧢
@@AskForDoodles Personally as a Dane I'd say Dutch sounds more like German with some weird words added to the mix.
@@JeppeBeier Where to start....I have met so many Danes in reallife living in The Netherlands that one thing is clear: Danes are so similar that on most occasions I never realised they were not Dutch. They talk fluent (I mean 99.9% fluent) in a very short time.
I never realised Jan Heinze was a Dane, a friend of mine had the exact same thing with Dennis Rommedahl. We both actually asked oneanother why either of them was not playing in the Dutch national team. Me in 1985 and he in 2000.
I think ti is really funny. When Americans mix us up and say Amsterdam is the capital of Denmark or Denmark is in The NEtherland both Dutch and Danes see it as a great example of how uneducated they are. Meanwhile we go to great lengths in saying how different we are. And we make the same mistake, also due to the lack of knowledge and basic lack of interest in eachother. Because the fact that Americans mix us up. for the wrong reasons does not mean that they are completely wrong. I have not seen one country in Europe that is even remotely as similar to my country as Denmark is.
But the fact (I think) is that we have no interest in Denmark or Scandinavia. We don't care about any country in Europe and feel no connection to any other country than our own. And Danes I guess are first and foremost Danes and then probably Scandinavians. I think they also have no interest in either Germany or The NEtherlands. Which means we know very little about oneanother, not even that for whatever reason we are culturally geographically and linguistically (very) close.
@@jaysimoes3705 Yeah our countries probably do have some similarities. I'd say Danes in general know more about Germany and has more relations with Germany than we do The Netherlands, so I don't know how similar Denmark and The Netherlands are.
Im so glad that the swedish girl had a swedish dialect that dont pronounce the rs that often. Like my own dialect, Småländska. Only happy because she said that swedes have the specific r.
Yes! Finally the Scandinavian countries came together.
More of the Swedes please! :D
as someone learning swedish i’m so happy i guessed the swedish girl right 😭
Well done. Why did you decide to study Swedish? 😊
@@Olivia-ny6nl cuz i’m useless and just want to be good at something 😭
@@effyshe Ahahaa I’m sure that’s not true. Lycka till med att lära dig svenska föresten. Ha kul! That’s the most important thing to have fun 🇸🇪
@@Olivia-ny6nl tack så mycket
Kul att du lär dig svenska, lycka till!!
I think with the Norwegian girl, since she is using an accent, it can sound a bit different from what Norwegian learners would learn in lessons, which is closer to the written language. As a Norwegian, even I at times have a hard time understanding some of the other accents than my own
Her accent is super clear for me as a Swede though! There are certain Norwegian accents I don't understand whatsoever but hers was really easy to get.
what kind of accent is it? I understood it really well as a dane
@@Augenatic I might not get the specific city right but Trøndersk is the accent I believe it is the closest to. I'm from the capital so I speak the accent that is the closest to the written language.
@@thespankmyfrank I agree! I am from Oslo so for me anything that is extremely different from the written language is hard for me to understand, but then again I have an easier time understanding Swedish and Danish actually.
@@helle_larsen It feels that you confuse accent with dialect. Accent is just the melody (prosody), while differences in vocabulary or full syllables missing/added/changed are dialectal.
I am so in love with Nordic languages ))
We have different ways of saying "r" in different parts of Norway (and Sweden too apparently) so a bit tough to recognize us by that.
Norwegian is often considered somewhat "sing-songy" though.
Both Norwegian and Swedish is semi-tonal languages, but I think that is more pronounced in Norwegian then Swedish.
I think Swedish is considered more sing-songy. It goes up and down more compared to Norwegian which goes up towards the end mostly (making it sound "happy").
Lot's of dialects in both Swedish and Norwegian though were the tone (sing-songing) varies a lot. In northern Sweden close to Finland we have some very monotonic speakers.
In the city of Gothenburg or the landscape of Värmland we go up more in tone towards the end of sentences more resembling Norwegian. People of Gotland have a very different tone too. As do Skåne.
And lets not forget about Dalarna. The Swedish chef that is singing in the muppets show was inspired from a Dalecarlian who visited USA in the 70:s and often guested a TV talkshow as, yes, a Swedish chef. He was bad at English and speaked with a very singy-songy Dalecarlian dialect when doing cooking presentations! (Extremely funny come think of it actually)
Danish is the the most monotone of all the Nordic languages though.
Can you make more videos with Norwegians in please?
7:08 Illa not getting Swedish right: NO!
Josefin:😏😏😏
would've been easier with Swedish if you'd let her speak a bit more))
as a swedish person this was HILARIOUS to watch!!
As a hilarious person, this was very Swedish to watch!
Scandinavian languages are more closely related to Hindi and Albanian rather than Finnish, one trick to find out is to look at numbers
That is the massivly big Indo-European language group which Finnish does not belong to.
Finnish has tons of Swedish loanwords though, which makes it a bit understandable. (Finland and Sweden was same country for 700 years up until 1809).
Missed the opportunity to bring on a Swede talking skånska. Would be so confusing but fun
I am Swedish I could tell where they came from by just looking before they even said anything.
i’ve always had more trouble distinguishing spoken danish and norwegian, other than sometimes danish sounds more swallowed but to me, swedish is the easiest of the three with that sj, almost like an H sound seen in sju (seven) that the other two don’t have. it’s also incredibly surprising to me still how many people think finnish sounds anything like the scandinavian languages. it sounds more like russian or estonian, naturally since it’s uralic, not germanic.
@chicky96 How the f did that happen?
Really dont understand how you can confuse finnish with the scandinavian languages. They are extremely different to Finnish. It has an entirely different linguistic background andd origin. It would be like confusing german with italian
Lack of exposure perhaps?
@@RabbitShirak complete lack of exposure* hear finnish and scandinavian languages ONCE and you should be able to tell they are wildely different
@@debrickashaw9387 not, if your exposure to those languages is small.
@@RabbitShirak yeah, completely non existent i agree. hear 1 word and that should be sufficient unless your parents are siblings
She said she’s never heard finnish
The way the Danes use their tongues is what makes it complicated for us swedes to understand them. But the most norwegian i think is no problem to talk with in our different languages and still understand eachother. All three languages is almost the same as you can se if you look at it in written form. We are one people in blod and share same ancestors. But the Finns are a total different etnicity with a total different language. But because our shared history ewen the Finns are part of our nordic family. They are the adopted sibling we love as mutch as we love our other familymembers.
As a Swede I could recognized Danish instantly
As a Norwegian I could recognized Swedish instant coffee from IKEA Edit: Sorry this will be my last joke for the day tjäna and skål!
Im also a Swede but i couldnt recognize Danish. Lol.
@@RONALDO_SUIIII07 yeah danish is the weardist language
As a person from Danmark do I understand danish
I could recognize that they were languages….
Thank you for taking us with you guys. Greetings from Finland...Would have been an easier game.
I really enjoyed this video a lot. I have a very extensive background in distinguishing Nordic Languages since I was young. I have always loved Nordic languages and have admired them in a lifetime. So it was very refreshing to watch Illa try and guess the languages she was presented with.
Danish - she did really well guessing Danish. Danish is very unique out of the 3 main Scandinavian languages. However, I still find it difficult to agree with the statement about how Dutch is similar to Danish. Dutch is West Germanic and has a different sounding pattern along with different consonants.
Swedish - I can see why Illa struggled with trying to recognize Swedish. However once I heard the “sjö” sound as well as “Tack så mycket”, it was a freebie for me.
Norwegian - Illa is very reliant on the “r” sound. There was also the moment she mentions Finnish. 🤦🏻♂️ I am happy she was was able to guess it right. However, for me right away I could recognize it easily as Norwegian. Norwegian is the clearest sounding to me out of all 3.
Great job! I really enjoyed watching it and also how beautiful they are also! 😊
Bokmål is not a spoken language though. Her dialect is not strong, but I feel she's from somewhere on the coast a bit south of Trondheim. Bokmål and Nynorsk is not dialects, but written standards. No one speaks either.
Thank you for the correction 😊
@@Floorman7285 A lot of people say Danish and Dutch sound similar. Normally, it's the people who speak neither. There are some similarities, of course, but to me (a non-native Swedish speaker) they don't really sound alike. They're almost equally unintelligible to me, this much I can tell.🤣
Off-topic: I'm curious what your "name" means.🤔
@@noneofyerbeeswax8194 haha yes that’s true. It’s definitely those who speak neither Dutch or Danish that say they are so similar. It makes sense though to non native speakers because of the geography and also Dutch and Danish starting with a “D”. Pronunciation wise, very different. I have practiced speaking both languages.
My name is a given nickname from staring down at the floor as a kid.
@@sveinstmobekken2175 most likely Trondheim, but watered out
already in the intro I can tell this is one of the more educated US Americans
Poor Iceland didn't even get a look-in here lol
It was so fun watching this vid, I’m from Sweden 🇸🇪 and I’m there rn,! I actually could understand Norwegian even tho I can’t Norwegian. Did you know that the year 1400-1700 Sweden owned Norway 🇳🇴
Swedish and Norwegian is beautiful languages
*are
I love Danes
"Nordic languages" but forgets Icelandic, Faroese, Greenlandic and Sapmi (even Sapmi is too much but it would be fun to throw in Meänkieli as a wild card)
This is cool because I am born in norway, my mom is swedish and my dad is Danish and I speak all of them!(i live in norway)
Hei, jeg er mexicansk men jeg vet snakker litt norsk og svensk 😊 jag talar en litte svenska också!!
Vad duktig du är 😊!
@@Roreytko Hej på dej 👋🏽 jag älskar språk!
@@SalveteOmnes1 me gusta 🙂
I think Norway has some linguistical influence on ireland from raiders in the past and I couldn't figure out the first two. Obviously knowing from the title them being the last one to go was norwigen but as soon as she said one (ien) its the same in irish XD dang I woulda got it if she were first XD
Yes, more Nordic videos 😁
Agree.
Yes!!!!!!! Agreed!! I’m obsessed with Nordic and Germanic Languages
Hey i am from norway. I think danish and norwegian is pretty similar too in some ways. I understand Danish if they talk slow. But that can also have something to do with alle the Danish series I watch, they make reallllyyyy good tv!!
Why not finnish in this video?
PS: Scandinavian languages would be a lot more accurate name for this video
At 2:00. This must be the first time I've ever heard anyone say that Danish is a beautiful language... In the rest of Scandinavia we say that Danish is a "speaking disorder". 😉😄 They have their porridge stuck in the throat... God bless Denmark though!! 😀
Norway have two languages,right!!
Yes!! Bokmål and Nynorsk
@@Floorman7285 writing is not a language. But yes we have another official language. And that is Sami in the North.
@@MrMKE100 thank you for the correction Morten. 😊
Two written languages. Not spoken.
@@Onnarashi Writing forms, not language. Language comes from Latin and means tongue and speech. Same with the Norwegian word Språk. It means speech with the tongue.