American was shocked by Nordics' English Differences!! (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian)
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- Опубликовано: 10 янв 2023
- Can American identify the difference between Nordic English Accent?
Today we had our American pannel Illa try to guess the Nordic languages just by listening to them
Hope you enjoy
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🇺🇸 Illa - illairl?ig...
🇩🇰 Sophia - / sophiagrane
🇸🇪 Josefin - / josbf
🇳🇴 Benni - / w._.benni 
Развлечения
Imagine if Finland was also there:
In English we say "sun".
In Norwegian we say "sol".
In Swedish we say "sol".
In Danish we say "sol".
In Finnish we say "aurinko".
Sometimes I just want Finnish to come and fuck up the expectations and throw everyone in a loop if they expect us to sound similar
Finnish is in the Uralic family while the others are Germanic, so big difference.
@@Gazer75 Yes I know that but Finland is counted as a nordic country, the title should have mentionned scandinavian countries.
aurinko paistaa -feels way too hot
I like when Sweden and Norway are in the videos
Just one thing, the Norwegian girl said PC stood for "portable computer" which is not correct, it stands for "personal computer", however, since laptops have become the norm for many of the younger generation, it is a bit understandable that she would make such a mistake.
I've also never heard of the distinction between "PC" and "stationær" in Danish. It's usually a distinction between "bærebar" and "stationær" while "PC" covers all computers.
Until recently at least, you would be expected to know the difference between PCs (personal computers which are an IBM invention) and Apple/Macintosh products. In any case, it's wrong to say that PC means "portable computer" as a PC can be both portable and stationary. But the reluctance to use the word "computer" is interesting. Danish is one of the few languages in the region using the word "computer".
The generic term for a computer is datamaskin or just data, so Benedicte is doubly wrong. However, a PC is often denoted as such in cases where an English speaker would just say computer, when we are referring to a specific computer.
Stick å brinn
@@GigasoftProductions Which is one of the reasons I'm critical towards all these language videos because the premise often seems to be that the people participating are experts in their own language. In fact, they rarely are.
It wasn’t about English accents, but about vocabulary in each country.
Indeed! Koreans, or at least the people making these videos, seems to belive that all European languages are "English"...
Yes, my first thoughts too.
I always find it hilarious how Norwegians and Swedish understand each other so easily while many struggle with understanding Danish. Even tho Norway was under Dane rule for 400-ish years.
On the flipside, write the same sentence in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk and you will see some wild similarities in Norwegian Bokmål and Danish. :)
As a Dane, I find it pretty easy to understand Norwegian, but Swedish is much harder.
Written Norwegian is quite easy, almost like Danish.
The word "Sol" is not only spelled similarly between these three languages, it's the same thing in Spanish and Portuguese, Sol, despite the different pronunciation
And italian
Iirc “sol” is Latin for “Sun”. They were a bit off regarding French, which is “Soleil”. Close enough though.
Pronunciation:
Spanish = Sol (Light L)
Portuguese = Sou (L turns into W)
@@jsphat81 that's on brazilian accent
@@elitestarquake3597 I think it is the diminutive form that took the place of the normal one
As a Norwegian I found this video hilarious! Understanding everything of whats being said hits different
Yes me too i am Norwegian. I know it's almost one in the morning. Sorry...
As a dane i agree lol, it’ rlly fun to see how others would say different things :)
Well, I'm a little confused about the "computer" one. Because I've lived in Norway, and I'm pretty sure most people said "data" or "datamaskine", not "PC"! 🤔 I also remember the computers at my Norwegian schools being extremely outdated, compared to what I was used to from my Danish school, or at home for that matter.
But then again, that was more than 20 years ago... things could have changed since then 🫣
@@svahilaful No you have right it's "data" or "datamaskin" too so you got it right 😊 I live in Norway that's why i say you got right because you got it right 😉
Samma her/same here
Knife, like Sword, Eye, Nose, Ear, Boat, Sail, Sea, Stone, Tree, Wheat, Seed, Bread, Milk, Cow, are all very old words that date back from the time England and the Nordic countries sort of shared a common vocabulary, before being influenced by other languages.
Correct. Also, words like window, sister, brother, father, mother also have Norse roots. Fun fact: "window" comes from the literal Norse translation of "wind eye", i. e. "vindaugi".
@@Onnarashi sister, brother, father and mother are absolutely not derived from old norse, they are basic indo european words.
@@KaliMaShaktiDevi Sister is derived from Old Norse systir, which again came from from Proto-Norse ᛊᚹᛖᛊᛏᚨᚱ (swestar), from Proto-Germanic *swestēr and from Proto-Indo-European swésōr.
Their word is kniv, our word for many is knives. So, it's not hard to go from kniv to knife then to knives.
@@youn1700 One knife, two knives - en kniv, to knive. Old Norse is knif.
finnish 🇫🇮
computer = tietokone
sun = aurinko
water = vesi
reindeer = poro
bag = laukku
knife = veitsi or puukko
Jk, love all of our neighbours ❤️
Estonian
computer = arvuti
sun = päike
water = vesi
reindeer = põhjapõder
bag = kott
knife = nuga (old word for knife is also väits still in use in some dialects)
Esperanto
computer = Komputilo
sun = sunon
water = akvo
reindeer = boaco
bag = sako
knife = tranĉilo
As a bilingual French and English speaker, I was amused at how often the Nordic words sounded closer to French than English (e.g. Norwegian pronunciation of PC was identical to a French person saying PC, Swedish word for reindeer was phonetically identical (reine in French), Sol is obvious to any Romance language speaker since it's the Latin root for our words for sun). I really wasn't expecting that with northern Germanic languages (although once in a while a German word is obvious to me because it's a cognate to something in French).
The confused look on Ella at the K in the Nordic cognates of knife being pronounced was amusing. We English speakers are used to tons of random seeming silent letters but historically those were pronounced (same with all the silent letters in French), so the shared Old Norse root word of knife clearly had a pronounced K.
Such as a important and universal consept as "Sun" have probebly some early Indio-Europan root. Hence both Latin and Germanic have the same orgin for the Sun.
That properly because The Normandi was sold to the vikings so they would stop raiding
Mother tongue doesn’t count
Norwegian is so so so similar with Brazil pronunciation in some ways.... Wow, it was a surprise..., and why all the Nordic Girls are so gourgeous and charming oh gosh
The Stockholm, Oslo & Copenhagen dialects are quite easy to understand for most scandinavians. However, if you get to more rural parts of these countries it’s a whole different story. I’m Swedish and I’ve hade moments when it’s been hard understanding another swede
I would say Copenhagen Danish is one of the more difficult "dialects" to understand and - especially - to learn. There is a lot of glottal stop in the Copenhagen language and many soft d's - both things are among the hardest to cope with for foreigners.
@@jatojo I agree. I finished my Danish language courses and I have a hard time understanding people from Copenhagen than from Aarhus.
@@EeveeTinna And it would be even easier if we could go 40-50 years back in time. Pronunciation has become a real mess in Danish in recent decades.
@@jatojo Yup. I'm Norwegian, and I understand older Danes just fine. Younger Danes not so much. Subtitles when watching Danish tv shows are a must. I don't need them at all for Swedish.
@@Neophema If only the Norwegians and Danes would go back to the language of the 1970's, the two populations would understand eachother better. ;)
There are so many interesting similarities between Scandinavian and English. One of my favorite things is how originally English and Old Norse had a bunch of words with the sk/sc sound. The English words eventually became sh words, and sometimes English would borrow back the sk word from Old Norse, but with a slightly different meaning. Some examples: shatter and scatter, dish and disk, shirt and skirt.
Fun fact, Shirt and Skirt are both words from Norse. And so is Cake, Death, Knife, Warrior, Fight, and your mom.
Skit and sh*t. Sky and shy.
My favourite English word is "Scathed" ("Unscathed").
It's fairly often used, it has retained its proper Norse pronunciation (for real) and it's also close to my Norwegian "Skade" (to hurt) but practically IDENTICAL to the modern Danish pronunciation.
(random fun fact: I only recently, after 25+ years of knowing English, learnt that it's not "pronOUNciation" but "pronUNciation". I always thought it would retain the "noun" part heh)
Yes that's true. Fish and fisk. Shine and skinne. Shame and skam. Wash and vaske...
Shouldn’t be surprised at the amount of Scandinavian words in the English language. The Vikings spent quite a bit of time in the UK. We have words but also many place names. For example any place where it’s name ends in “by” Grimsby for example, by is the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish word for “town” so literally Grim’s Town.
Yes, "by" just means "city" or "town" in modern Norwegian. Other examples are "wick" or "vik" ("bay") and "kirk" ("kirke" or "church"). A good example of the former would be Jorvik and Lerwick, and for the latter it would be Dunkirk. On Shetland they maintain some Old Norse practices, like Up Helly Aa, coincidentally at Lerwick.
Some more similarities can be found in modern Scots, such as "bairn" which means "child(ren)". In modern Norwegian, it's "barn". I think the Scots word for "vacuum cleaner" is basically identical woth modern Norwegian too. We say "støvsuger", and in Scots they say something very similar. I could be wrong.
Some of the words which are similar are not borrowed from Scandinavian, they simply have a common Germanic origin.
"Norwegian, Swedish and Danish word for “town” so literally Grim’s Town."
In Norwegian and Danish "by" means city or town, but in Swedish "by" means just mean village (we call a city or town "stad").
To a Swede it sounds so cute when they calls a big city like London or New York a "by".
What is Old Norse? 1066 and you all do not speak French ?
It's surprising few in the young generations that know this
This does not seem to be about how English is spoken differently by Nordic people, as the title implies. This seems to be more a lesson in a handful of Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish vocabulary words. Still interesting.
Search up "Rune Nilson Engelsk"
@@FluxTrax Petter Solberg english 👏
I have studied Swedish at school (in Finland) and because of that I usually understand signs, ads etc. texts in Denmark and Norway, but understanding speech is very hard. Simple sentences in Norwegian can sometimes be understandable but Danish is quite impossible for me.
I would guess that depends a lot on the specific dialect of Danish you hear. I (a naive Swede) have had a discussion with two Danes in which all three of us spoke our respective native languages: they spoke Danish and I spoke Swedish. We got along fine, with minimal misunderstandings. But I have also heard Danish dialects that sound like double-Dutch to me.
@@xpqr12345 that dialect thing is possible of course, but I'm natively a Finnish speaker, so I hear those languages differently like you do. I think you understand what I mean.
In Norway we say that spoken Swedish is easier compared to spoken Danish, while written Danish is easier compared to written Swedish.
@@Onnarashi that makes sense!
@@Onnarashi This is so true. I speak to, have collegues and customers in all these regions and try to tell people. It's not that difficult.
Fun fact. The English word "bag" comes from Old Norse originally. And in Norwegian they say "bag" too but only because it's been reimported from modern English to Norwegian as a loan word.
Challenge Complete!
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Please do more videos with these scandinavian ladys. That´s awesome!
I live in the North West of England where there are loads of place names and words that are Old Norse in origin from the time the Vikings were here. Also Latin-derived names, such as Lancaster, Manchester etc from the Roman period. Old Norse and Old English both developed from Old Germanic hence the large amount of shared etymology.
Brought to you by the peaceful Scandinavians
You would be totallt amazed by how many of our basic "Scandinavian" words you "mysteriously" already "know", even though you unfortunately can't hear it straight away typically.
It's as if we by magic are already speaking an older simplistic ( OE + ON ) core Pseudo English in advance, when we start learning English and then "just" have to fill in all the gaps and climb a few hurdles here and there.
D Kan du ( "thu" orig.) høre [h'oe'r-e] dem komme over til os [us]? - se, de [dee*] ( "dey") er [air] allerede her(e) [heir] nu [noo*]!
E Can you (thou] hear them coming ('come') over to us?
look (see), they are already here now!
D Hvad skal vi [ve] give ham [hAm] / dem for hans /deres første [first-e] fine [fee-ne] sang [sAng] for os [us]?
E What shall we give him / them for his / their(s) first fine song for us?
And so on and on ... 🤗
The history of English is incredibly fascinating, in that it was greatly simplified when lots of different peoples shared the island, but it’s simultaneously incredibly rich because of its many influences. Kind of the best of both worlds, as it were. I saw that a new theory emerged that claims English is a Nordic language. But I guess that would depend on your perspective. :)
Old Germanic (and Germanic) is just a parent grouping, it does not denote origin. It is not a time-scale, it's a geographical one, so to say.
Old Norse and Old English *WAS* Old Germanic.
I think you are confusing "German" with "Germanic", it is *NOT* the same.
@@SebHaarfagre you’re right, I should have just put “Germanic”, no need for the “Old”. I meant that Old Norse and Old English (from Anglo-Saxon) have a common ancestor, although there is a temporal aspect to that as well as a geographical one. But I take your point. Also, iirc, the main split between Norse and English was North Germanic - which became West Old Norse (ancestor of Icelandic and Faroese) and North Old Norse (ancestor of Norwegian, Swedish and I think Danish, which is why they have more mutual intelligibility than with Icelandic) - and Western Germanic, from which Frisian and English derived, amongst others.
1:37
Actually, she's wrong about the "p" part in "PC" it stands for *Personal* computer (as opposed to a mainframe used at work back then, although technically a work laptop isn't necessarily a "PC" either, we've started calling them that as it's essentially just the word for "computer" for us these days)
Funny how the Norwegian and Swedish girls look like sisters and the Danish girl looks like a distant cousin. They look like how their languages sound.
Its funny because we norwegians can better read danish than swedish, but when someone talks we better understand swedish than danish
@@vegardnybakeri8148it is funny because I am danish and I know a lot of Norwegians who understands danish better than Swedish when talking
@@sissemark9720 Might be because they are your friends. Generally norwegians understand swedish a lot better
@@vegardnybakeri8148 It may also have a connection with where in Norway they are from. I am from the north, and understand Swedish best, but my husband is from the coast in south, Sørlandet, and he understands Danish best. Now I live in Sørlandet, and after getting used to the dialect here, I understand Danish better than before. There even is an island outside of Kristiansand which they used to call "Little Denmark" because of the dialect.
@@vegardnybakeri8148 It's not that funny. It's because you where under Danish rule and we imposed our written language on you. Norwegian bokmål is super easy for Danes to read, because it's (basically) just Danish worked over by Norwegian spelling. Nynorsk or older dialects of Norwegian are a lot trickier.
Many silent letters weren't silent at one point in the English language, but as it evolved it dropped those sounds.
In Malaysia 🇲🇾 we say:
1. Mcdonalds : Mekdanel 🍟
2. Computer : Komputer 💻
3. Sun : Matahari ☀
4. Water : Ayer 💧
5. Reindeer : Rusa Kutub 🦌
6. Bag : Beg 👜
7. Knife : Pisau 🔪
Once with some friends, we asked a Swedish girl to read a Danish user manual, and what came out of her mouth sounded Norwegian. That was a cool test!
Sun (English) - Sunce (Serbian)
Stone - Stena
Snow - Sneg
Swine - Svinja
Bush - Busen
Berg - Breg
Water - Voda 🚰
Wave 🌊 - Val
Leaf - List
Day - Dan
Nightmare - Nocna Mora
Beowulf - Beovuk
Gardener - Gradinar
And a lot more... 🇷🇸😎
The reindeer wanted to stay a little longer 😂
He probably wanted to explain that he is not actually a reindeer but a red deer.
@@balthazarbeutelwolf9097 Deer comes from old English Deor that means Animal not just Deer compere Eng Deer Old Eng Deor Nor Dyr Swe Djur Den Dyr,
@@Anderssea69 I know. My point was that the animal in the photo was not a reindeer - different species.
Or maybe it wanted to become "Veskan".
@@balthazarbeutelwolf9097 I do agree and was confused there. The animal in the picture is a red deer but the Swedish woman was speaking about reindeer. Translating the word correctly but showing the wrong species.
As a Finn and linguist, I don’t know why but for me that introduction in Danish sounded Finnish. I heard she said "minä olen", which is "I am" in Finnish. Since Finnish and Danish aren’t related at all even though they are both Nordic, that is very interesting! 🤓
Danes pronounce everything so weirdly that it becomes Finnish
Last summer I was on a train down from Stockholm to Hamburg. In Denmark this couple stepped on and sat down in front of me and started talking to each other. At first I thought they were speaking danish, but the more I listened in the less I understood. At some points the melody sounded almost like finnish. I was super confused, but then we started talking and it turned out they were from the Faroe Islands! So what they were speaking was closer to icelandic than anything I knew. They were really surprised when I told them that their language had a very similar melody to finnish 😁
Does not sound similar to me 😅she said mit navn er - my name is, and then jeg er - I am 🙂
@@EeveeTinna Yeah, I knew that because before I posted the comment, I Google Translated "mitt namn är" from Swedish to Danish and got "mit navn er". I just omitted it from my comment though because it was googled. 😅 Apparently, it was the device for me because I heard Finnish on my computer & TV, but then when I switched to my phone, I could clearly hear Danish. 😊Sorry, I mean undskyld for all the Danes out there. 🤗
@Antti Rytkönen no worries, was not a critique, just could not hear it 😁 I am not Danish though 😂 just living in Denmark, and loving languages in general 😊
3:51, the subtitles are wrong. "vaska" means "to pan" (as in "to pan for gold"). The correct spelling for "bag" is VÄSKA (the second letter is an Ä and not an A, theres a difference)
At least they don't say "boksesekk" lmao
Last time I checked PC did not stand for ”portable computer”
Beat me to it. Personal Computer.
Lots of people in the US say PC, maybe she been in Korea to long.
The rein part of reindeer once meant reindeer. The deer part (deor in Old English) once meant animal, any animal. So reindeer simply meant rein animal. At some point Middle English borrowed animal (of Latin Origin) from Old French. Djur still means animal in Swedish. A computer in Swedish is dator, because it processes data, (information). Knife was probably borrowed by Old English from Old Norse, and until around the time of Shakespeare the k was still pronounced. As were the k at the beginning of many English words were it is now silent, like knock, knave, know, knight, knee, knot, knob, etc. As for the mutual intelligibility of Scandinavian languages, Norwegian and Danish writing is more similar to each other because Denmark ruled Norway for many centuries, and the educated elite were hugely influenced by Danish. However, Norwegian is usually classified as a West Scandinavian language, along with Icelandic and Faroese, while Danish and Swedish are both East Scandinavian languages. Despite this, Swedes and Norwegians generally understand each other better than either understands Danish, and Danes usually understands Norwegian and Swedish better that Norwegians and Swedes understand Danish. I believe this is because spoken Danish has changed more than the other two, and have dropped consonants in many words. Kind of like how English dropped the k at the beginning of a lot of words.
Something really weird is Dutch. Maybe they were the original language equalizers (and changed some nordic dialects/languages) Old Dutch for swedes are (at least for me (Swede) really understandable at least in written form) but old English not as much. Maybe the Dutch spread their language by trading 1400-1600 to Sweden and we (Swedes) mixed our nordic (Danish/Norse/Swedish language) more with Dutch then Norway/Denmark.
Almost impossible to know how our Nordic (for some dialects, and for us Languages) got as diverse as it is today (the similarities is because of location ofc) but for me I guess the Dutch had something to do with it...
Today I can not understand Dutch (well not much anyway) but old Dutch (even Frisian) I do get...
I have also noticed the similarity between so many Dutch and Swedish words. You expect Dutch to be always similar to German, but then occasionally there's those words that differ considerably from German but are instead almost the same as Swedish.
Edit: your theory seems plausible, thank you!
the reindeer one was confusing because thats not a reindeer in the picture they showed!!! atleast not at all what they look like here in the nordics.
@@audhumbla6927 It is very common for people from other parts of the world to mix up reindeers with deers, which I think it was. You can even see it in Christmas decorations in Norway, they mark it as "reinsdyr" while it is a deer. I also will add that in Northern Norway the word used is "rein", not "reinsdyr", similar to the Swedish "ren".
@@ahkkariq7406 not necessarily in northern norway, i would guess its more to do with how common they are in the area, i live in northern oppland and we use rein nearly exclusively
Fun fact! Dyr/djur is the same word as deer, deor! In english it just ended up sticking for deer/rådjur instead of all animals, as the latin influence caused "animal" to get that spot (from anim, animated, alive, moving).
As a faroese person I found it amusing how little difference there is between scandinavic mainland languages. Us and Iceland have departed a bit from the other languages, but supposedly have closest roots to old norse.
Thanks for the video.
Yes. In many way it are you that have had a slower development or less amount of outside influence of your language due to the natural isolation your geographic location creates. I guess it are us that have changed our language more. If we go back to the Viking age where we began to trade and unite I think it were closer than today. It are my impression that the last 30 years of internet have had massive impact on your lifestyle and thinking/worldview. As a Dane, I think it are great that we now, as members of the Kingdom, can communicate and exchange thoughts on contemporary events, person to person. I often look at Greenlandic news and Faroese news, just to see how things are going. I do not know exactly how, but I think we should be able to be even closer on a daily basis than we are now. I guess we forget to say this, so I will use the opportunity to express that I love that we are one Danish, Faroese and Greenlandic family. Even more in times like these, were we see POOtin´s Russia and Xi´s China use illegal aggression and landgrabbing. I hope you in Faroe Islands and Greenland are just a little proud of the active role Denmark have taken to aid Ukraine. A sidestep from the original subject, but hope you forgive and understand 😊
probably mentioned but PC or computer in english is also called Datamaskin in norwegian, not only PC.... it all depends on how general you wanna be, like you don't call a Mac a PC for example... then you probably would say Apple or Mac og a more general that covers all ... a Datamaskin.
It's almost as if people have forgotten the english language is heavily influenced by old nordic since the days when the Vikings invaded Britain.
Even our week days are named after the old northern gods, Tyr, Odin, Thor and Freyja.
English syntax (word order) is much closer to Norwegian than to the other Germanic languages.
@@ktipuss The syntax is the same for swedish norwegian and danish.
It's not just influence, English _is_ a Germanic language so even without Nordic influence, there would still be common words that sound similar and mean the same thing.
We kind of have 3 words for "bag" in swedish, something like a handbag is a "väska" and then a plastic/paper bag is a "påse" or "kasse".
Bag is interesting, because it arrived in English from Old Norse _bagga._ Today Norwegians will say _bag_ with English pronunciation, so it's gone full circle.
I'm from the United States and I don't know where she got "bag" from.
Well we usually use “bag” for a gym bag. I at least don’t use it for anything else unless I forget the word for it
I think the old term was "baggir".
@@ahkkariq7406 Just different declinations of the same word.
By the way 'old girl' Americans speak English differently too. 😁
You need to checkout the Danelaw in
7th and 8th century England.
The very word England comes from Denmark, like most of the inhabitants.
👍 🇺🇸 🇩🇰 🏴
Even though spoken Norwegian is easier to understand for Swedes, Swedish is actually closer related to Danish than Norwegian. The similarities between Danish and Swedish are quite obvious if you look at written Danish vs written Swedish. I often use Danish wikipedia when it doesn't exist a Swedish one. It's just the Danish pronunciation which is very weird compared to Swedish/Norwegian :P
As a Norwegian I have to say it is very easy to read Danish. It is very similar to Norwegian. Swedish not so much, but it is totally understandable. I just have to focus a little bit.
@@ahkkariq7406 I wouldn't say that I feel a big difference between the difficulty between written Norwegian vs written Danish. But just for the meme I'll say that Danish is easier to understand. (where the meme being that the hardest Scandinavian language to understand orally is the easiest for Scandinavians to read :P )
@@eriksahlin8853 Presumably there is something about the wording that is common between Swedish and Danish that makes it easier, something that also appears in the video. We can use the same in Norwegian, but it sounds a bit old-fashioned.
@@ahkkariq7406 Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are best described as national varieties of a common 'scandinavian' language. At least I think so.
@@joelthorstensson2772 I agree, and some linguists do, too.
i dont know if anyone has said this, but pc doesnt mean "portable computer" pc means "personal computer"... a pc can be a laptop or a desktop not just a laptop
Amongst language specialists and historian researchers many argue that the English language could infact be considered a ''Scandinavian'' language in many ways. The norse language had a whole lot of influence on old English that have stuck around till this day. While alot of words in the English language today is heavily influenced by French due to William the Conqueror's conquest of England after the Viking Age ended, many argue the modern English language could be considered a Scandinavia one for several reasons. This includes about half of the English language being influenced by Scandinavian words, but also as important is the way the English language build and structure it's sentences and how or where specific words in a sentence is used, because it's in the same fashion of Scandinavian languages, comparred to how example modern German, French and other ''European'' languages builds their sentences differently from the Scandinavian and English language. This might also be the reason why Scandinavians have a much easier time learning to speak English than what Germans, or people other places in Europe who also at the same time of learning the basics of a new language, needs to cope with entirely different sentence structures aswell.
Pretty much half of the English language is derived from Old Norse / Germanic, while the other half lends its roots to Latin (which is also shared to some degree in Old Norse). Definitely English is much more closely related with Scandinavian languages, than many of the mid/southern European languages are.
The nordic countries don't dub tv-series unless it's for children so you hear English everywhere. Same goes for the Dutch and they are also generally said to be good at English.
In Germany everything is dubbed and people speak worse English even though German is still very close to English, as a comparison Finnish people speak about as good English (if not better) than Germans and Finnish isn't even related to any Germanic languages at all, (although you have to keep in mind that some that take part in those tests are probably Swedish speaking finns/bilinguals that grew up with both Finnish and Swedish and they would probably have an easier time learning English.)
My point: English is for sure related to northern germanic languages but I think not dubbing has a bigger impact on how well people learn English, otherwise Finland should have the same level of English proficiency as Japan or any other country with a majority language not related to Indo-European languages.
@@wilmab4120 Oh by far, what you point out is correct. Scandinavian countries certaintly have a HUGE advantage in learning English comparred to people in Germany. Because in Scandinavia they don't dub things, they are English speaking with Norwegian caption. Not to mention video games, music, and other media that is in English for Scandinavian countries. My point is however, that some language specialists have made the argument that ''English is infact a ''Scandinavian-ish'' language, more so than it's modern roots from French would suggest. This is in part of many of it's loan words from Scandinavian languages, aswell as how English builds up it's sentences comparred to other countries that build their sentences differently from how Scandinavian languages and English does. Both of course have roots from Germanic, but I am refering to more ''recent'' arguments in ''recent'' times, aka after England was invaded and overtaken by William the Conqueror, and the old English language was ''cast aside'' and a more modern English language with heavy influence from French started to evolve.
Same language families. For me there is clear common origin.
For computer we also these words in Norway:
Data, datamaskin, stasjonær(desktop computer), bærbar pc(laptop)/laptop
So I feel like the words would match with both the Swedish and Danish words
In Danish we have datamat (very rarely used, but was quite common when computers were new), computer, bærbar, laptop, stationær, PC. Seems like many of the words are the same, although maybe different ones are more or less common. I think "computer" is by far the most common as a catch-all in Denmark.
datamaskin is probably dator in Swedish, some just say "data" which should be more similar to English "data". data=data, dator=computer
Stationär dator
bärbar dator, maybe you don't need to add dator to those 2.
or i think dator would more strongly imply a desktop but could say stationär to clarify it, while laptop is usually just bärbar or laptop.
think laptop and pc is may be used as well in swedish nowadays.
Again, half of Nordic "English Differences" are missing. Where are the Finns, the Icelanders, the Faroese? No one knows :)
I suppose it is quite difficult to find people from Iceland or Faroer in Korea. And then you also have to find people who want to participate.
@@DontPanick My point is rather that they should call this for what it is. Scandinavian differences. I would not call a comparison between a Scottish, Irish and British English for British commonwealth differences. That is what they basically do in this and the last video by calling it Nordic differences when the only nationality represented are Scandinavian nations.
@@johnnorthtribe so you feel Scandinavian languages are NOT nordic languages? And if they put together French, Italian, Polish, and Greek people, that's not a comparison between European languages?
Does it read somewhere "ALL Nordic languages"? I didn't see or hear that at all...
@@gerohubner5101 this is clearly a video about the Scandinavian languages and they do not know when to use the correct term. If you look through other comments under this and the last video, there are som Finns reacting to this as well. We who actually live here in North Europe would never call this a "Nordic English Differences" and exclude the third biggest country in Norden. And Nordic is not a language group either so no I would not even use the term "nordic languages". I would say Scandinavian languages and Finnic-Ugric languages. Nordic or "Norden" is a political union and not a geographical location. But Europe is a geographical location.
Im an Australian and my knowlegde on the subject is very small, I've only recently become interested in different cultures and languages. So if anything I say is wrong, then feel free to correct me, all I want to do is learn. But I would have to say I agree with John, I can understand how some people might not see anything wrong or misleading by the title because technically its not wrong, but it's probably not the best term to use.
If I'm not mistaken, Johns comment doesn't mean he is implying that Scandinavian languages are not Nordic languages, I think he just means that the only languages included in the video are Scandinavian, there are no languages in the video that are Nordic that aren't Scandinavian. So I would think it would make more sence to use the term "Scandinavian" in the title rather then "Nordic".
If Nordic languages are seperated into 2 categories, and this video is comparing English to "Nordic" languages, wouldn't you expect the languages being compared to fall under both categories. Sure by using the term "Nordic" in the title, it doesn't imply that every single Nordic language is going to be compared, but when all the languages being compared belong to only one side of the Nordic languages, it does seem like the other half is missing, therefore wouldn't it be better to use a term that is more specific to the languages that are being compared.
Out of all languages I find Russian, Finnish & Farease the most intriguing (I'm activelty learning Russian and Finnish at the moment) and the only reason why I clicked on the video was because I thought that they may have included finnish in the comparison. I still enjoyed the video, but it would have been more interesting with a fin. I probably would have never bothered watching the video if they referenced "Scandinavian" in the title.
Besides the "Nordic" term the title is also a little misleading, the girl from the US, states a word and then the others repeat that word in their own language, the video is comparing english words to the other languages, where as the title (to me) implies they are comparing how the other nationalites pronounce english.
I speak English and Portuguese, and as I speak Portuguese, which is a language that derived from Latin, I can see that a lot of words used in English also came from Latin. I believe the Nordic languages remained "pure", whereas the English language received a lot of French and Latin words. For instance: The verb "to start" in English can also be "To commence", in POrtuguese we say "começar"..pretty similar.
To give up can also be "to desist" , in Portuguese "desistir" and there are many more.
I am french and danish, and i can tell you that many words in danish were taken from french, exemple:
Umbrella in danish : Paraply, in french : Parapluie (barely different prononciation)
Environnement in danish : Miljø, in french : Milieu (mostly used as the word Middle in french)
Driver in danish : Chauffør, in french Chauffeur
Subscribtion in danish : Abonnement, in french : Abonnement
And some other i can't recall at the moment. I'm not sure where that happened, but i think that comes from when french was used among noble families and royalty few hundred years ago 🤔
@@III-VI THe words are very different in Danish.
As a Dane I completely agree with Sofia. Written Norwegian is easy. At one and the same time it is just badly spelled Danish, but it also looks like Norwegians just spell the words like they say them. Whereas in Danish we spell words, and then say them completely differently. I also agree with her that oral Norwegian is easy to understand, but Swedish is, as we say in Danish "en by i Rusland" (litt.: a city in Russia).
The title made it look like, they were gonna pronounce English words, not the translated words into their native languages
Sol surprised me, same as the Latin word.
Knife was also surprising, so different from German/Dutch (Messer/mes)
In Tromsøværing (a Norwegian dialect) we say _Vattn._ So closer to Swedish, but really closer to Old Norse, which is _vatn,_ or _watn._ Compare this to Ukrainian _води (vodi)._ Hell, even Latin _aqua_ is related to the same root! It's a very Indo European word. :)
Aqua does not have the same root as water, vatten and voda, but Italic languages do have a cognate word from P.I.E - Unda (wave)
@@henriquealmeida8511 Well aqua comes from the Porto-Indo-European root *akwā, while water comes from PIE root *wed. As far as I know, neither has been traced back any further, but it certainly would not surprise me if in ancient Proto-Indo-European, the two conceptually similar roots had a common ancestor.
Even us Finns say 'vesi', which is not that far off
In my Finland Swedish dialect it's vaten, like how a finnish speaker would say it but slightly more melodic, if you have the finnish voice in google translate say it, it sounds very similar.
It's sort of interesting to see the small changes that happened over time and how dialects conserved certain forms of words that died out in other dialects or related languages.
I love the Norwegian girl she’s so cute and the Norwegian language sound so happy too
For me as spanish speaker, the most easiest language is swedish
The silent k's in English were all pronounced until 400-500 years ago and nearly all the words with silent k's were imported from the Nordic languages. Norse.
I guess I am not the only one but we have "rådjur"(a roe deer) in Sweden. But the one on the picture is not a raindeer( a ren) it is a deer and to that one we say "hjort". The ones that Americans call elk is a "vapiti hjort". And then it is different kinds of "hjortar". And the family name is "hjortdjur" which roe deer and moose(elk😉) is part of too.
I'm glad that I can learn new Norsk words, but some words like Reindeer or water I know already
In US "Reindear drinks whateer"
I went last year to Skåne in Sweden. I spoke to a owner of a B&B hotel. He was a really nice man! He speaks fluent English! Most Swedish, Norsk, Danish people speak very fluent good english!
We usually compare us as siblings. We squabble around eachother but in the longrun We kinda like eachother and We help eachother If there are problems somewhere. And then the Swedish King and the Danish Queen are first cousins and the Norwegian King is i think first cousin once removed to the others i think. But the languages have been coloured by Sweden and Denmark occupying eachother and Norway in centuries.
So cool as these three languages all are related to eachother.They have changed not to much since they diverged. Well alot also but still cognate to eachother mostly.
As a dane, I have to say. "Computer" in danish is not synonymous with laptop. Laptop in danish is "bærbar" (portable) and desktop is "stationær" (stationary). Computer is both.
The PC is Personal Computer in every country. That girl got it dead wrong with her portable computer. Its actually also known here in denmark as a stationær ie a stationary computer. Its not supposed to be moved like a laptop. Its not meant to be moved once you set it up. Thats the whole point.
I guess she's not the sharpest kniv in the skuff, as we say here in Norway. ;)
@@Neophema i think she is very forvirret in the hoved 😂
Old English and Old Norse were closely related languages. There are lots of English words of old Norse origin. I'm currently trying to learn old Norse, and we still use a lot of words similar to old Norse here in the Nordic countries as well.
Yes. From what I've seen by people who've spent their whole lives dedicated to this, Old English and Old Norse was mutually intelligible (to at least some degree).
We also have practical examples of this of course, can be done with some Googling I guess.
Apparently Doggerland was a landmass which flooded aeons ago, there's been found evidence of (land) connections to the British mainland a long, long time ago.
Either way, some contact was kept between seafaring peoples.
I have no idea why Dutch (Holland) is so distinct, Frisian is very close to Norse and Norman also has quite a bit of Norse influence.
(I mean Dutch DOES sound similar phonetically to some North Germanic languages but it IS quite distinct)
Learn icelandic first as base because that is 99% similar to old norse
også på Norsk Språk er Datamaskin / (Data Machine)
Brazilian Portuguese:
computer = computador
sun = sol
water = água
reindeer = veado
bag = bolsa
knife = faca
Spanish:
Conputadora
Sol
Agua
Venado, reno
Bolsa, mochila
Cuchillo
@Julián In European Spanish, computer is ordenador, not computadora like across the Pond. Not suggesting that European Spanish is better, but your statement is just a bit too absolute. ;)
computer is pc in portuguese brazil
ok but can we talk about how the inbuilt captions are so wrong?!😭 like even their names and a lot of the words are written completely wrong or are just straight up another word?
Yeahh like bag and buksesmekk haha, I was actually looking for this comment.
If you visit the far south in Norway, the dialects sound quite similar to Danish. Other than that, Norwegian tends to sound more like Swedish (Makes sense from a geographical standpoint). Norway was under danish rule for roughly 400 years, so "Bokmål" (Which is the most widely used variation of written Norwegian, but we also have "Nynorsk") is based on Danish. We were also under Swedish rule for around 100 years after the napoleonic war. This is most likely why Norwegian is considered an in-between of Danish and Swedish 😊 We understand Swedish better than Danish when spoken, but we read Danish most easily.
o: i learn something new everyday
@@giselIxo the more you know!
5:11
Well, the vikings actually conquered half of England at one point, and a lot of vikings settled in England, Scotland and Ireland, so that of course left quite a mark on the languages there.
No, old norse and old english shared a lot of similar words back then😉👌 They are related to a common language.
@@annki3837 Yes, they're related, but that's not the reason why they have adopted a lot of *our* words.
That relationship is quite old, the conquest isn't.
Yes, and the Vikings setteled in Normandy, and then the Vikings from there went to England, so there you go England is basically a scandinavian country.
Norway and Sweden is more similar in vocals and more with Denmark on writing, due to the union with Norway and Denmark. Me as a Norwegian struggle to understand a danish person or a Swedish person with a dialect.
"K is silent in English":
Kid, key, kind, koala, kiwi, kick, King, kit, kitten, kangaroo, keyboard, kitchen, kayak...
What people don't tell you is that is silent only with N.
Knife, Knight, Knot.
With other consonants is not:
Kremlin, Khaki, Klan, Klaxon.
Amazing video
As for laptop, it is also very common to call it “bærbar” in Danish which means portable or portable computer.
Im loughing so hard😂😂😂😂 i cant spell things right today
Kn-words in English, like knife, knot and knight often have similar words in other germanic languages where the K isn't silent. Probably it wasn't silent in English if you go back a couple hundred years, which is why it's still spelled that way.
In part, English has quite a few loan words from Old Norse (Early Medieval Norse charter tourists, called 'Vikings' by some, seem to have made an impression), and some of the French words were brought over by the Normans, who spoke a French that was influenced by Norse. However, most of the similarities go back to the Angle and Saxon languages, both of which were north Germanic, and closely related to Old Norse. In fact, part of the original homeland of the Angles were in current day Denmark. Then, of course, the English decided to ditch most of their words, substituting them with French, Latin, and Greek words. The Danes decided that consonants made it too easy to understand what they were saying. Norwegians went another route, and complicated things by practically having a distinct language for every tiny settlement. It worked brilliantly; the Swedes still haven't figured out what happened. All four languages ditched a lot of cases, and replaced them with a grammar based on sentence structure. All four languages were originally very similar; similar enough that the Vikings and the English vic..., um, let's call them 'locals', could understand much of what the other side was saying, right from the start.
Those are all still Germanic-based languages, which English has as well.
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are all Scandinavian (also Nordic), BUT Finland is not Scandinavian.
Finland is only Nordic since their language is not Germanic-based. It is most similar to Hungarian from what I know. Did Attila the Hun (Asia Minor?) actually make it that far up to Northern Europe, maybe? (Fins also look more Asianic with their epicanthic eye fold shape.)
The video title would be better suited to use Scandinavian vs Nordic. Just saying. If you’re going to use Nordic, should have also included a Finnish person.
Finland is not Scandinavia because Scandinavia is a physical location and also a cultural location (because of Norse vikings). Nordic is just a political Union between Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Faroe Islands, plus the two autonomous Greenland and Åland where we co-operate about different topics and strive for the same goal.
And Finalnd is mostly related to Sami and Estonian language and some few near and inside Russia. These poeple also came to north Europe long long long before Attila the Hun even was born.
In the English speaking world, "Nordic" and "Scandinavian" are basically synonymous.
All of these countries are Nordic though, so the title isn't necessarily wrong. They're ALSO known as Scandinavia but that doesn't mean calling them Nordic without including all other Nordic countries is wrong. Imagine if the title was "Europeans' language differences" or whatever, that wouldn't necessarily mean all 40+ countries would be compared.
Finnish has nothing to do with Attila the Hun.
Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, which are spoken in Northern Europe and East Siberia. Other examples for those languages would be Hungarian and Estonian. Although Hungarian is a bit of an outsider geographically speaking. There are a lof of regions in Russia where people originally spoke those languages. Some are dying though.
The Sámi language is also part of this family. The Sámi people are from Northern Norway, Sweden, Finnland and also from Russia.
Together we Samoyedic they are called Uralic languages. Samoyedic people are from Siberia as well.
@@JonassoeDepends. If you're into Political Science the naming matters, also in the Anglosphere. Saying "the Nordics" makes people expect that there will in the least be some Finn there, but there wasn't. Thus when there are "only" Norwegians, Swedes and Danes there, it's more _precise_ to say Scandinavia. Strictly speaking the Nordics include all countries with Scandinavian and Finno-Ugric heritage, so in the broader sense it could also include the Baltics and even parts of Scotland.
PC does not stand for Portable Computer. It stands for Personal Computer. Lol.
Norwegian,Swedish and Danish vs American English is like meeting ur cousin after a long time and he changed a lot
In Norwegian we also use "data" and "datamaskin" for "PC", there's also one more word, but I forgot.
Computer in Norwegian is "Datamaskin", shortened to "Data".
I'm from Sweden and could pronocnce all languages just fine, don't really know why I could pronounce danish words because it's not so similar to Swedish. PS. Love these videos!
Fellow dane here! I live in france and i definitely hear how danish might've been influenced by french in its vowels sounds and many other things.
Thousands of English words origin’s from Nordic languages. Some linguists have recent years argued that English is not a language of its own, but is a Scandinavian language.
It has never really been considered as its own family, it is a part of the West Germanic branch of the proto-Germanic language family (a distant, ancient relative to modern German - particularly northern Low German - Dutch, Frisian, Luxembourgish) with strong North Germanic/Scandinavian influences and of course, a lot of French and Latin vocab, which sets it a bit apart from other proto-Germanic languages.
Actually, in Norway we use the word "datamaskin" for "computer" and some times ew also use the word "computer". PC means "personal computer" and is a small computer that you can have in your home or carry with you. In the latter case we tend to call it laptop (computer(.
I guess she is young and that is why she use "PC" to mean computer since most computers most people encounter today are PCs but the correct term for computer is either "datamaskin" (translated "data machine") or computer.
And the Swedish "Dator" is really the modern version of "Datormaskin" that we also used back in the 60:s and 70:s in Sweden before it just became "Dator". I think we maybe even used "Datamaskin" also.
"Data" is or should I say was used to describe IT in general in Sweden. It was about everything concerning computers and computing! A person that was good at IT could be sadi to "Be good at data" (Vara bra på data)!
@@Magnus_Loov Pretty much same in Norway, except "dator". But that is when informal Norwegian is used. In a formal Norwegian the only correct word is "datamaskin", because the offical meaning of data is: "collected information".
@@Magnus_Loov Much the same here, we use "data" to refer to "generally IT related stuff". Some people also refer to a computer as "dataen" - same as dator for all purposes. So same here, if you said "Han er god på data" eller "bra på data" it means exactly the same.
No one say ‘datamaskin’
The only time I have ever heard the word "computer" used like that in Norwegian, was in a really bad dub of an American instructional video for PCs, which we were shown in elementary school in the late 90s. Saying computer with a Norwegian pronounciation like that was EXTREMELY old fashioned and archaic back then, so if you are telling me that ppl in elementary schools are now talking like that, that's some great trolling.
Popular Swedish opinion.
Danish is not a language. It's a speech impediment.
But we love you anyway.
Why do I feel like the Danish girl was getting sorta third wheeled more than necessary lol
The similarities between the various Scandinavian languages is striking. Written danish is almost like Norwegian (Bokmål) but it is easier to understand the Swedes when they are talking. For a Norwegian it sounds like the Danes have a potato stuck down their throats when they are speaking. However the way numbers are said is the biggest difference between Norwegian and danish. Frankly many Norwegians don’t have a clue when Danes start talking about numbers.😊
I mean, Danes are worse than even the infamous French when it comes to their number language. I'm not sure even the Danes themselves fully understands when they talk numbers. 😅
@@Runegrem Most probably don't understand the etymology, but at the end of the day the numbers have names, and we know the names. That seems to do the job.
@@jacobrichter Yeah, naturally. But I'm not gonna let that get in the way of a friendly jab from a Swede to a Dane. 😉
The Danish language has about 40 sounds whereas Eng, Nor, and Swe, only have about 15 sounds. That's why Danish sometime sounds funny to everyone else.
"Deer" comes from the Old English word "deor" which was a generic term for "animal", just as it's Norweigan cognate still does.
As far as English words stealing from Nordic languages, Old English was a sister language with Old Norse and the two were very similar, possibly almost mutually intelligible. Norway and England were one kingdom at one time. English got a lot of words and some pronunciation from French after the Norman invasion. But then the Normans were also Scandinavians who had settled in France. There were also contributions from Latin during the Roman occupation and even some, mainly place names, from the Brythonic/Gaelic languages.
I’d like to find one person in Norway saying mc donalds and not «mækkern». Don’t think I would tho 😂
Swedes call it "Donken".💀
In the North of Norway we say Mækkdonalds. Burger King is just Be-Kå. I guess Mækkern would be kind of like saying MacDee in English.
In Sweden we don’t say ”Mc Donald’s”
We say Donken😊
"Gyllene måsen" om man tar med frugan😉
In Finland a slang word for McDonalds is "Mäkkäri".
Well, the only ones i know using McDonald's is teens and so on, and ni one says that wordm. You say, lets go to MacD. So we all use that now. Way faster...
korvmoj säger vi å går ned till "italienaren" o käkar libanesisk kebab - Halal
@@lucone2937 Or just "Mäkki"
Pls do more vids with sweden ❤️
English: Bag
Norwegian: Pose
Subtitles: BOKSESEKK
Wow this is really interesting
Ngl I was confused for a little while when you had the image of a deer on the reindeer part lol
Also as a finn it's always painful to see how everyone uses the term "Nordic" when referencing to Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Those are the Scandinavian countries. Nordic refers to Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland as well as Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland islands.
The danish girl puts a lot of pressure on the words that you wouldn’t normally would
Agree with you more than syvoghalvtreds, almoust syvoghalvfjerds procent
Knife also entered English from Old Norse _knífr,_ but along the way the _k_ became silent. Possibly not so long ago, since the _k_ is kept in writing.
I think the most likely explanation for the silencing of the _k_ is that it's far more of a pain to enunciate the _kn_ digraph properly. :)
@@nobbynobbynoob I should add that we enunciate the _kn_ in the Norwegian word _kniv._ The _i_ takes on an _ee_ sound, though, instead of _ay_ in English _knife._
As I understand it (pieced together from the random bits of information that might be rattling around in my brain)
Old Norse and Old English (This is Vikingy times) were very similar. Maybe it would be like comparing modern day Canadian and Australian. (if not even closer)
There were differences, but communication was mostly effortless.
Things change over 1000 years. But I think we can still trace a lot of the same roots. Like Knife.
I know other words are spelled the same. And pronounced somewhat similarly. But the meanings are different (although can be adjacent).
Gate.
From English this describes an entry point of a wall (simplified). From Norwegian it would translate to street.
I think this is one place we can see that somethings have been altered a bit and changed meaning over time. (I haven't checked an old version of the word to see who are closest)
Edit: Tried to make some things a bit clearer.
Wrong subtitle for "Bag" in Norwegian. It is supposed to be "Pose", and that is what she is saying!
McDonalds in Sweden is also commonly named Donken.
Agree with you, halfway to Max
Actually we use both PC and data in Norwegian, depending on generation, and dialect as well as where in Norway you're from. And we to used to use stasjonær about the main computer, not the lap top. And lap top is the same.
Still waiting for Australians and Spaniards together 😊
In Denmark we use various names for a Computer, we say, obviously, Computer, PC, Bærbar (carriable/laptop) and Stationær (stationary/desktop) sometimes PC or Computer is added to Bærbar (not so much, if at all PC though)/Staitionær (mostly computer) after those 2.
Examples
Stationær PC
Stationær Computer
Bærbar Computer
"bag" is actually borrowed from Old Norse ( bagga) and so is "knife" / "kniv" ( ON knifr ).
And you do say "knives" in E btw. 😊