How does Russian have more linguistic ties to Finnish when Russian is another Indo-European language just like the North Germanic languages? Finnish has more loanwords of Germanic than Slavic origin. This is just the old Sweden vs Russia thing. We have to be with one or the other because that's how it's always been.
I often explain the similarities between the written languages of Denmark and Norway like this: (ignoring that Norwegian has two separate written forms.) If you want to translate a text between Danish and Norwegian (in either direction), just open a document written in one language with a word processor that is set to the other and run the spellchecker with accept all changes.
You failed to mention that there's a sizeable swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which is probably the main reason Swedish in mandatory in school. It's one of the official languages of Finland.
This is true, though I wanna point out for clarity that the minority takes up 5.2% of the population. Whether that's a lot or a little is very subjective.
@@ValpasKankaristo It is enough for the Swedish People's party to have representation in government (both National and EU level). Admittedly, it is dwindling in popularity, but it is still there.
It doesn't matter if Swedish is mandatory or not -- but it's a human right to have your name being able to be printed correctly in the official alphabet of your homeland.
@@ValpasKankaristo It's a big enough minority to run lots of servers on the Internet and some home computers, including mine. Linux was started by a Finland Swede.
I see your "Ö i Å" and raise you this sentence in a west-Jutish dialect: "A æ u å æ Ø i æ Å" which means "I am out on the island in the small river (creek)" 😅
As a Finn I never heard anyone put any further meaning to Å, just a letter to know for other languages along side with C, X, Z, Q, W. Swedish language remains in Finland because we got a sizable native Swedish speaking population, some have unique identity from Swedes and Finns and some are just Finns who speak Swedish. This is completely different from Russian speakers who are just Russians and often move in and out of the country and have no special cultural place in the nation. Swedish remained strong as it stayed as the language of government, nobility and well educated even when Finland was autonomous under Russian empire. Swedish rule is seen more positively as shared history while the 1800s are sen more as a occupation by Russia.
It's quite a bold statement to say Finnish-Russians have no significant cultural ties to Finland. A lot of Russians who've moved to Finland are Finnic or even Finnish people, who have just been russified and therefore speak Russian as their mother tongue. For instance, most of the Russian people who immigrated to Finland in the 90's were Ingrian Finns. In addition to them, a lot of Karelians and other Finnic people have immigrated to Finland with cultural ties much stronger than those of The Swedish-speaking population, despite the fact they don't speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Also, I think it's important to note that a lot of people in Finland have been fennicized and/or have hidden their Russian identity due to hostility after the Second World War.
IIRC Finnish was first used in Finland as official language during Russian Empire, not Kingdom of Sweden (even though Swedish still had its role). So Swedish rule looked more like an occupation. You may think like you do because of the war between Soviet Union and Finland and it's understandable, but let's face facts: Finland was a lot more autonomous during Russian rule (which led to the renaissance of the Finnish language).
In late 18th century there were a process to use finnish as semi official language, i.e. banknotes issued by the Riksbank and Riksgäld were bilingual, the Law was translated.
I’m Swedish and Norwegian is usually quite easy to understand (except for Bergen who have a really weird accent). But danish is quite hard if they’re not from Copenhagen, everyone else have such strong accents!
Good thing half of us basically speak the "Copenhagen accent". Since Sjælland, and especially the Copenhagen metropolitan area are so densely populated.
@@Alexandra-ip2by This joke was told to me... by a dane ;) ... She was talking about how people from Copenhagen, Aalborg and Odense speak different danish dialects...
I'm Finnish and I've never heard of anyone suggesting to replace mandatory Swedish with Russian. We might hate Sweden but it's friendly hate, we're frenemies. Russia on the other hand...
I think it's been suggested to let students choose between Swedish or some other language(s). As a Swedish speaking Finn, I would be happy to let people choose languages freely as long as it's still obligatory to learn a third language, and that language would be made mandatory in the matriculation examinations just like Swedish used to be. Of course, we would have to figure out how to make sure Swedish speakers can be guaranteed access to public services in their own language while not making it impossible for people who have not studied Swedish to work in these jobs. Ideally, more people should also learn a fourth language and students that are proficient in English should be able to test out of having to sit through unnecessary English lessons in order to learn another language instead.
I’m Swedish and I’ve been to both Norway and Denmark, and basically when it comes to understanding the other languages: I can pretty much understand all and any written Danish and Norwegian, I can understand most Norwegian speech, and Danish people sound like they’re extremely drunk Norwegians so it’s a bit harder but in the end you usually get there
That's really on his head. And in my opinion a very stupid one. Americans had an idiot who said: "This is how you spell things!", and then they did. American history is not. I mean that.
How I normally explain the pronounciation of the 3 extra vowels is like this: Å - like how an British person would pronounce the vowels in Bought or Straw Ä - like how an American person would pronounce the vowels in Rat or Bad Ö - there is no exact match, but the closest is the i in Girl or Bird
@@kentanggulung Do you mean how you pronounce 'rn' in swedish? It's basically a slightly different n. Ordinarily the tip of your tounge in an N is straight forwards towards your teeth, but when there's an R before the N, just pronounce the N with the tip of your tounge a bit more towards the roof of your mouth and you'll get the kind of typical swedish way of doing it. It's the same principle with the 'rt' and 'rd', the secret is to put the tip of your tounge just slightly further up/back in your mouth and then pronounce the D or T, and you get a kind of thicker version of those consonants that makes swedes hallucinate an R that actually isn't there.
@@stoferb876 I mean rn as slang for word 'right now', but thank you so muchh for the detailed explanation! It's easy to understand! Also to think about it again, i guess i actually need it too 😚
Problems with Swedish language in Finland aren't really about us feeling that they're invading our language or anything like that. It's mostly just that learning Swedish is time take from learning something "actually useful" like German, French, Spanish or Russian for people who live near the border. Also the fact that if you want to work for the government, you pretty much have to be able to speak Swedish at least to some degree even if the job is something where you'll never actually get/have to speak it annoys a lot of people.
And it's practically useless since it is of value only in southern Bothnia and Åland. Plus we can always speak english. I myself come from Middle Bothnia (keskipohjanmaa) and I haven't used swedish ever in my life. The only time I've ever used swedish was my holiday trip last year to Gotland and even then I spoke mostly english. It indeed is useless and a waste of time and money which could be spent more wisely.
I'm from Vaasa and speak Swedish as my first language, but I still think its pretty rediculous that finnish people have to learn swedish. I do however think that basic things like healthcare and customer support should be available in swedish. Our hospital in Vaasa, where people from the nearby swedish towns come to, almost stopped having major surgeries, and swedish speaking people from towns like Närpiö and Pietarsaari would have to be transfered to Seinäjoki where they barely know any finnish. Most people in need want to speak their first language, even if they know finnish. In the same way that finnish people say "but we have barely ever heard any swedish why should we learn it?", the same is said by people living in Närpiö but about finnish. Even here in Vaasa I can get by with only knowing swedish.
It's just what you need to do in any multi-lingual country, if you want whomever is the minority not feel disenfranchised. If you don't do something like this, then you can the kind of problems you have between Catalonia and Spain. In the Netherlands we have Frisian. But don't make me start about Belgium. >.
In danish « Ø,ø » means island, and « Å,å » means smaller river. In Icelandic we also do have single letter words for example « Á,á » means small river too.
As a swede I can understand written and spoken Norwegian (standard Norwegian, that is) easily but Danish is a little bit harder. If a Danish person speaks slowly and articulate their words then it should be okay. Normally we just use English if we find the inter-lingual conversation difficult.
4:03 All three claims here are false. I'm Finnish, and I've NEVER heard anybody suggest that Russian should be compulsory. Additionally, there are far more Swedish speakers here than Russians, and it's not even close, and our linguistic ties with Sweden are far greater than with Russian. I have no idea where you got this info from, but I'm happy to correct it in any case.
Also, the cumpulsory Swedish is indeed a big deal here. It's hotly debated, but because of the Swedish People's Party is a single-issue party willing to join any government coalition that supports the status quo, I don't see the status of Swedish here eroding anytime soon.
I live in Kouvola have actually heard people say that Russian should replace Swedish as mandatory. There have even been talks by low-level political figures(kunta/kaupunki tasolla) that maybe split Finland and have east learn mandatory-Russian while west has mandatory-Swedish. Main points being that Swedish is useless in east unless you work for government-organization where you have to have some Swedish skills. Most people here push for Swedish being same level as German and Russian so voluntary 3rd language instead of mandatory. Many people were really f*n happy that Swedish wasnt required anymore in Ylioppilas-tutkinto(matriculation examination). - Personally I am against mandatory-Swedish mainly because I hate the language. Never been good with it and never needed it outside of school. Just dropping Swedish to voluntary would make me very happy. Also Russian is way more useful language than Swedish if we just look at number of speakers world wide. I understand that it is needed in Swedish speaking areas but why should person in Eastern-border town have to learn it instead of Russian?
@@samuelsilver8077 I'm swedish but my maternal grandparents are swedish-speaking Finns who moved to sweden for work when they were young, and I still have some family in Finland. I agree that the "split" would make a lot of sense, as I know it is very hard for my relatives to get government help (such as healthcare and bank stuff) in swedish, but I see no need for people in other areas to know swedish. Like you say, we all speak english here and theres only like 10 million of us anyways, spanish or other world languages make way more sense. I also wonder if finnish-swedish is slowly going away. I hope not, bc it is a very different dialect to rikssvenska and it is connected to a different culture, but I know that many of my relatives either know finnish fluently and/or their kids grow up bilingual. My family has been in Finland for about 800 years (we think), so it would kinda suck if that history/culture went away, but I guess most things integrate at the end.
Why have certain letters make certain sounds when you can just put 4 letters together and pronounce none of them? THIS COMMENT WAS MADE BY THE IRISH GANG
None of y'all understand the extent to which Irish pushes it. In English, Qeue is Kyoo and Thorough is Thur-oh. Sure. But in Irish? Labhraionn = law-ren Go raibh maith agat = go ra ma gat Dia duit = dia hwee And much more
@@danielbishop1863 my native language's distant cousin Language is truely a unique fella . Even us Bengalis are not used to packing so many silent pronunciations into Single words/sentences
I'm swedish, and about two years ago I spent five weeks in Denmark as part of my university studies. In Denmark I had a Danish student helping me around, and she also introduced me to a Norwegian student doing the same thing as me. Although us three didn't meet up much, when we did we could talk to each other without much problem. Of course some words means different things, so you might have to explain some things, but other than that it's actually not that hard for us three languages to understand one another
I'm from Lofoten, and Å is basically just down the road from where I grew up. I live in the UK now and a few years ago I brought my husband and a few members of his family to Å and they all thought it was so funny with this place with this funny one letter that " no one knows" as its name. They all had to have their photos taken by the sign that said "Å" 😁😁😁😁
Nah, Finland and Iceland are not "considered to be Scandinavian". They are simply not Scandinavian. They're Nordic just like the actual Scandinavian countries. Just because people constantly get it wrong doesn't mean that they are Scandinavian.
@@ZenobiaSE Totally, and you would think a channel like Name explain would know Scandinavia is named after the Scandinavian Mountains, or Scandes, and not make up some lame story about "Scandinavian languages".
@@emmamemma4162 yeah, I was honestly really disappointed by that. Especially since it's not the first time he has made videos relating to Scandinavia as well
Many of the Finnish coastal towns and cities are named by rivers. That's why you get places like Borgå, Ingå and Sjundeå. Last one literally means "seventh river". Their Finnish names are just phonetically "translated" as Porvoo, Inkoo and Siuntio.
I'm swedish and my dad told me a interesting story about he was once working with a icelandic guy who lived in denmark for a few years before moving to Sweden and he spoke perfect swedish. My dad asked him how he did that and he answered he just mixed icelandic and danish to speak swedish! I always found that really interesting! :)
I studied Swedish at university. In one of my literature classes, my professor had me read Ibsen in Norwegian, which I did not speak and had never studied. He told me I’d be fine, and he was right.
Fun fact: There is a town in southern Sweden called Råå, and in that town there is a small river, an 'å'. Now some people in Sweden joke about there being eels in this river, but why would they do that? Well, the Swedish word for eel is 'ål', which in turn makes the eels in the river 'Råååål' which literally translates to 'Råå river eel'. Because the Swedish language rarely allows more than two of the same letter in a row, 'Råååål' is the word with the highest amount of the same letter in a row.
Well. A Norwegian from Oslo can easily be understood by a Swede around Stockholm and vice versa. But all variations and dialects of our languages makes them harder to understand depending on where you are from and what you are used to. Danish however is the odd language out. At least we swedes have a very hard time understanding Danish. Some people understand it better tough, like the population in Skåne (southern tip of Sweden). Great video btw
Closest Finland gets with place names is II, (two "i"s) which comes from Sami languages and means "night". Now by Finnish spelling standards it's two "i"s, but that's just the way Finnish marks long vowels, so speculating about things it could have been just "i".
I'm a Swedish-speaking Finn, and yeah a lot of Finnish people feel pretty strongly about Swedish and the way it's taught in schools, and would like to see it gone from the educational system in favor of something they feel is more useful, though the usefulness varies heavily from region to region. There are many municipalities in mainland Finland that are heavily bilingual and some that are majority Swedish-speaking. It's weird how Swedish-speaking Finns were largely swept under the rug in this video (though you did at least acknowledge Åland). We make up 5% of the total population and maintain a strong linguistic and cultural identity distinct from both other Finns and from Swedes, though a lot of foreigners have no idea we exist, and a lot of Finnish-speaking Finns don't like us. What I'm trying to say is that Swedish is not just some random detached language that Finnish school children are bugged with and forced to learn for no reason, as this video might have you believe. It's an official language in our country the mother-tongue of a native linguistic minority of Finns. The letter Å might not serve a purpose in the Finnish language but it does serve a purpose in the country of Finland overall. But yeah. Just wanted to share my perspective. 4:04 Also, the claim that there are more Russian-speakers than Swedish-speakers in Finland is pure nonsense! There are about 280 000 people with Swedish as their native language and about 80 000 with Russian. 1:37 Also, also, not part of any group?? Ever heard of the Nordic countries? The Nordics is not an obscure group at all and it's baffling to me that it wasn't mentioned.
it’s not like finnish speakers don’t like swedish speakers, it’s just that we do want to see swedish as an optional language and not compulsory. why would every finn need to cater to a measly 5% of the population, when all that time could be spent more usefully. also, compulsory swedish makes it so easy to start hating language learning, which is bad for finland’s future. optional swedish would result in better swedish through the country because only the people who have interest would study it.
Finn here. The way I understand the whole ''why is Å in the finnish alphabet'' thing, is because why would we have a completely seperate alphabet for swedish if the difference is 1 letter AND swedish is also an offical first language of Finland. Might as well just work with a single alphabetical system.
@@Ettibridget You're right of course but the Danes tend to be in on the joke themselves.What happens is that the Danes soften most consonants a lot. So hard consonants like k and t becomes g and d and soft ones like g and d and r Are often barely pronounced at all. This makes it ratehr hard to understand for other Scandinavians who aren't used to it even though the written languages are very similar.
4:10-4:43 not finnish, but i am close being estonian and we have a literal section of our alphabet named the "võõrtähed" or "foreign letters", which aren't really used outside of loan words.
Think also that Japanese also has an entire alphabet called Katakana which is also almost entirely devoted to foreign loan words. It has other uses and esoteric connotations too, but by far and away the main use of Katakana (Which is pronounced the exact same way as the standard alphabet, Hiragana btw) is just to denote foreign loan words.
About the 'Having a letter that you have no use for': Here in the Netherlands we only really use the Q for loanwords. A lot of 'qu's already turned into 'kw'. All mainly Germanic languages are in a similar situation. The current alphabet is a Latin invention, after all. English has enough French and Latin influence to make it work well, but even then those letters are sparse. Frisian ditched Q and X all together, and reduced a single C to its phoneme (S or K). There are some beautiful Akwadukts here. And funny that you mention Japanese scripts for your example because extended Katakana is filled with symbols that basically aren't used. The 'We' symbol exists, but 'Ue' is used in basically every single case. These symbols aren't even exographs. And more Dutch: We have the word 'Aa' for for a small river, but also 'E' for dammed Aas. Edam is a Dam on the E. That's where that cheese comes from.
Portuguese used to consider K, W and Y as "foreign" letters up until very recently. We still only use those letters in loanwords or words derived from them.
Well but I have to say that it is funny that the German language influenced modern Latin script through the printing press which has led some languages like English to replace certain letters with others do to the cost and inconvenience of having to fabricate special letters for the presses that were imported from southern Germany.
@@cedrickropp And I'm still holding that against them as a non-native English speaker. The þ is a super useful letter. I thought 'th' was an aspirated t for many years. Þ would have saved me a lot of trouble learning English.
@@deldarel Yeah, but the th is also really pretty in my mind, maybe not as beatiful as a þ, but still a great thing if you write with cursive hand writing. German also has a word with th, but it is pronounced as a t, in thron. Also the th was at some point fairly common in early german writing, in which one would seldom see a d, as in teuton, or theodisce, as nowadays deutsch.
Holy molly I was in a town called Å in Lofoten and it was such a cool and beautiful place .... and I have a good laugh on the name too :) thanks for this vid
I'm glad you liked the place. :-) The whole of Lofoten is stunningly beautiful but Å is a true gem even by that high standard. We used to do gigs there fairly regularly back in the days when people still went out to dance to live music and it was always one of the highlights on our route.
"Å" is a fairly recent letter. It's predecessor "á" is still used in Icelandic and Faroese, as well as in some inofficial writing systems for the more unusual language variants found in northern Sweden. As the sound of "á" changed, writing changed to "aa". To save space in handwritten documents, one letter was put above the other. The same thing happened with the other Scandinavian letters. "Ae" became "æ" or "ä", and "oe" became "ø" or "ö". The Icelandic "ö" replaced the old letter "ǫ". "Å" entered Swedish when the printing press was introduced in the mid 1500's. It didn't enter Norwegian until they stopped using the Danish writing system in 1917. Danish introduced the letter in 1948.
Swedish is actually more widely spoken than Russian is in Finland with 5% speaking it as their native language and another 40% speaking it as their secondary language and, Russian isn't related to Finnish at all and Russian is actually distantly related to Swedish and there more Swedish loanwords in Finnish than there are Russian ones, but in eastern Finland there's some Russian speakers and no Swedish speakers so it makes sense for them to learn Russian, and as a Finnish-speaking Swede I find it pretty ridiculous that Finns are forced to learn Swedish Pakkoruotsi, also Swedish Danish and Norwegian are practically the same language just different language standard forms. P.S. Perkele
That "40% speaking it as their secondary language" is inflated number because it is mandatory language in schools. I imagine that without mandatory stuff number would be 15~20%(total questimate based on things I know and have heard). Then English would climb high in secondary language numbers as I think that 50% of adult Finns can at least have basic conversation in English.
3:05 Depends on dialect and willingness to attempt. When talking Swedish is easier to understand than Danish for a Norwegian speaker. While written danish is easier than written Swedish for the Norwegians that write in Boomål (Written Norwegian originally based on the language of the Norwegian upper class after the union with Denmark) (This is my own experience as a Norwegian, so I won’t speak on behalf of others)
Neither Q, W, or Z, are used in any native Swedish words. It’s even unclear if W is even in the alphabet. (Edit: Q is used insanely rarely, but it does in fact happen.)
I can't say for Swedish, but in Denmark it is because of archaic spellings. Q = K W = V or U Z = S or SJ (our largest island "Sjælland" used to be spelled "Zealland" in Danish too. X = KS (Words that today would be spelled with ks such as "vokse" would be spelled "voxe"
Also Å is a pretty new letter, AA was the old way to write it, so many places are going back to the old names, to honour old tradition. (Edit: according to wikipedia, we only started using the letter in 1948.)
I live in Aalborg, and almost everyone here gets mad if you spell it Ålborg. It's because when the letter was officially introduced to the Danish alphabet in 1948, it was required by law, that Aalborg changed its spelling to Ålborg. However, many people here resented this change, and in 1984 the original spelling was reintroduced, so now we have two official ways for spelling the 4th largest city in Denmark... soooo, I guess we can kinda relate to the Finns then... hei suomalaiset ;)
@@karlmarxii1898 The names Turku and Åbo have two completely different origins though, Turku means "the market place" while Åbo means "the settlement by the river (whose name is Aurajoki/Aura å)"
Also, it's exactly the same sound as the letter O in finland which is why the finnish doesn't use it. They don't need to. And finnish is pretty much the only language in the world where literally everything is consistently spelled as it is pronounced. So it's not like in swedish where the letter O can sometimes be pronounced like Å, and sometimes not and it's really impossible to tell unless you already know in advance.
4:05 Russia definitely isn't more spoken than Swedish in Finland, and Russian definitely doesn't have more linguistic ties to Finnish than Swedish does. Boo.
"Finnish definitely doesn't have more more linguistic ties to Finnish than Swedish does" I beg to differ. Finnish definitely has more more linguistic ties to Finnish than Swedish does.
@@xezmakorewarriah This is a really interesting subject, as well. You are 100% right that Finnish is in the Finno-Ugric language family, which is nothing like the Indo-European family gramatically speaking. But did you know that Finnish has a massive amount of loan words that come from Indo-European languages? Most of the words in the Finnish language are loan words, though especially older loan words have been completely adapted to the Finnish language system. The earliest loans words, such as suola (salt) and porsas (pig), are from when the Finno-Ugric people lived in the area around the Volga river. There are also words such as Kuningas (from the Germanic word Kuningaaz; king or ruler) that have been lost from the Indo-European languages but are preserved in the Finnish language. The biggest group of loan words, around 50% of them, are of Swedish origin. A lot of Finnish words are very similar to Swedish words, such as the word for stairs (sv: Trappa fi: Rappu) or the word for trousers/ pants (sv: hosor fi: housut). As I hope I've been able to demonstrate, there are some deep ties between the Finnish and the Swedish languages and similarly the cultural ties are quite strong.
As a Norwegian, I understand spoken Swedish fully and spoken Danish almost fully. In writing, I understand them both fully. As you showed in the video, "Å i Lofoten" means "Å in Lofoten", so "i" is single-letter preposition in Norwegian, and in fact in all three Scandinavian languages. It just means "in". But Danish, specifically, also has a single-letter personal pronoun, and just as with English, it's always capitalized: "I". The difference is that while the English pronoun is used to refer to oneself, the Danish pronoun is used to refer to other people, specifically it is the second person plural subject pronoun. I thought it was funny that both Danish and English both ended up with this strange capitalization of the letter "i" when used as a pronoun -- but not when used as a preposition.
2:53 This is false. No one understands Danish but the Danish, and then barely. (more serious answer: yes, to some degree, with huge asteriskes for Swedes understanding Danes (with their insane counting system). SE+NO mostly no problem. Though in the corporate world everyone is using English now, so I think we're slowly drifting away from this mutual comprehension, but I'm not a linguist.)
"No one understands Danish but the Danish, and then barely." I am Danish and that statement is not far from the truth, in my honest opinion; I was born in a town called Odder, not far from Århus, which is on the east coast of Jutland. At some point in my adult life I had to work with a fellow from the very north-west of Jutland, and i must admit that his dialect was utterly incomprehensible to me. Add the fact that the fellow had a very short temper, and the recipe for disastrous commmunication was complete. 😂 As for me understanding Swedish, that certainly depends on where the Swedish speaker is from, but for the most part i find it pretty difficult. It should be noted that I live a fairly long way away from Sweden, which means that i don't get to hear it very often. Those Danes who live closer to Sweden will often have a much better understanding of the Swedish language. The same caveats (in reverse) probably apply to the Swedes themselves too, I suppose. As for Norwegian, i find that _much_ easier to understand, at least the version called Bokmål (book language). This is because for a long time, Norway was ruled by Danish monarchs, and the official language during that period was Danish. Tis has resulted in the Bokmål being failry close to Danish, at least in spellinig. There _is_ however another version of Norwegian called Nynorsk (New Norwegian) which is only spoken by a somewhat smaller part of the Norwegian population. Even many Norwegians themselves say that Nynorsk is difficult to understand. Needless to say that I don't understand Nynorsk at all. lol
My parents generation grew up with a single danish television channel and some had a couple of german and others a couple of swedish, so a lot of comprehension from that time stemmed from television.
@@LordMarlle Something tells me that I'm from the same generation as your parents! I'm 67 and I too grew up with a single danish TV channel. Btw my family moved to the south of Funen (Sydfyn) when i was around 5½~6 years old, and so we had access to three german TV channels in my childhood.
The way you pronounce "Å" sounds at times more like how you could, in some cases, pronouce "Ö". However, think of how when you say the word "Always" or "All". The A's in those words when you pronounce them are very similar to the correct pronounciation of "Å".
Well there's "Á" in Icelandic which is basically the same letter except the top part is different, both letters mean the same thing and are pronounced alike (considering "å" has way more variatuons due to dialects)
The situation of Swedish in Finland is a bit complicated. The main reason Finland still uses Swedish is that historically Swedish has been the dominant language of education, governance, commerce and the upper class because of Swedish rule. However, after Finland was transferred to Russia, it was granted autonomy meaning that the Swedish speaking elite continued on with what they were doing and was never replaced. There was even a period of language strife between the svekomans and fennomans on whether or not Finnish should be an official or even a recognized language of Finland. Ultimately it was agreed later on that Finnish would be put on equal ground with Swedish after which it shortly became the overwhelmingly dominant language of the country in almost all fields. It's mostly because of this that mandatory Swedish exists in schools and universities. It is widely unpopular. Swedish is next to useless in Finland. If you don't live in a Swedish speaking area or don't have Finland-Swedish family members, it's highly unlikely you'll ever learn/need to speak Swedish fluently ever. Even in Sweden where Finns often go for a vacation trip, Finns use English because Swedes, like Finns, are avid English speakers. I have never heard of anyone saying we should replace mandatory Swedish with Mandatory Russian though. That would make little sense to throw out one language forced upon Finland historically for another language that people tried to force onto Finland in a different point in History (see Russification of Finland). Overall Finnish society views mandatory Swedish in a similar light to national Conscription (where men once they turn 18 must go to the military for a period of time from 3 or 5 months to almost a year). Once people are done with mandatory Swedish and/or military service, they become apathetic to the issue. "Why should you not be forced to learn Swedish, if I was forced to?" Similarly, the removal of mandatory Swedish isn't really discussed a lot outside right-wing nationalist politics.
I thought it was strange saying Swedish should be replaced with Russian. After the whole winter war I can’t imagine Fins would be too happy having to learn Russian, I would imagine that would be even more unpopular than learning Swedish, however I’m not Finnish so I might be completely wrong!
@@Druchii There are Russian (day)tourists and people who cross border to Finland to buy stuff that's higher quality and bring to back to Russia, in Eastern Finland. So it's hypothesised learning Russian instead of Swedish might be better for economy there.
6:53 I think that the reason that only small villages have the name Å is because it is the name for a Small river and not a big river. Because for a small village a small river would be a significant feuture so they decide to name it after the fact that there is a small river there.
The reason why cities like Aarhus and Aalborg ditched the Å is to become more globally accessible. They argued that the Å would be too difficult for foreigners to understand, which could deter tourism and businesses, so they changed their names. However, the municipals of the cities consider both to be correct.
The funny thing is that both towns were originally written with "Aa" until the "Å" was introduced, then they changed the spelling to "Århus" and Ålborg" respectively, but as you say, when tourism became more widespread - not to mention when the internet became a thing, they reverted back to the old spelling in order to be more easily understood abroad.
I am Norwegian, and in my experience Sweeds, Danes, and Norwegian people, can understand each other, whit only minor difficulties. Norwegian is more simular to Swedish when you speak, while when you write Danish is extremely simular to Bokmål (in Norway there are to written languages (not including the Sami languages) Bokmål and Ny-Norsk (English: New Norwegian). Bokmål is based on danish, while Ny-Norsk is based on the many local dialects in Norway. Bokmål is slightly more popular than Ny-Norsk. Bokmål is written mostly in eastern and northern Norway, while Ny-Norsk is predominantly written in western Norway. In the Norwegian school you most learn both (which is very unpopular among students.)) Norwegians are in general better at understanding Swedish than vise versa (often when I speak to Swedish people I most speak in English to be understood, while them can speak in Swedish), probably on account that Norway is the smaller country and a lot of the culture (films, books, etc...) are in Swedish. Danish is spoken kinda funny (sounds like they have a potato stuck in their throat), so it is generally a bit harder to understand for Norwegians and Sweeds, but not impossible. That’s my rant about being Norwegian...
1:28 While it technically is true that Estonian is closer to Finnish than any of the languages of Scandinavia, I think that it's worth mentioning that the Saami languages of the northern parts of the peninsula are also in the Uralic language family. And from my understanding, Finland is considered separate from Scandinavia for geographic reasons more than linguistic ones.
I'm from Finland and I speak Finnish as my first language. I did not learn any Swedish because I did not care about Swedish... I'm born and raised in Savo (Savonia) so basically no one speaks Swedish where I'm from. I did live four years in Pietarsaari/ Jakobstad, a city that mainly has Swedish speaking residents (around 56% Swe, 34% Fin, 10% other). Pretty much the only thing I knew in Swedish was "en öl, tack" when I moved to Pietarsaari. I did learn little bit while working as a a practical nurse in a bilingual nursing home. At the moment I study Russian and would have been happy learning Russian back in school.. Why can't we choose from few, maybe like Swedish, German or Russian, "pick your poison". Something like that.
In Norwegian “Æ e i A” and “Æ e i A æ å” are actual sentences(if you speak the North-Norwegian dialect), it basically means: “I am in A(the way we divide school classes in Norway are by letters, so it is like: I am in the class of A)” and “I am in A too”
There's a west jutish dialect that does the same "A æ u å æ Ø i æ Å" (I am on the island in the river) i have some knowledge of it and i did once encounter a north Norwegian person who wrote in-dialect, i managed to decipher it, but it is insanity.. beautiful insanity. Spoken north Norwegian throws me off though, hv = k, i like it though, 'hvad?' is the funniest word in north Norwegian 'KA?!'
The letter Å is originally from northern Germany, where it was and is used in certain Low Saxon writing systems. It has been living in a small niche there, but for some reasons it really caught on in Scandinavia.
In Sweden we have a joke that Danish sounds like someone trying to speak Swedish with a hot potato in their mouth. We can understand each other pretty well, but were in the country you live also play a role. If you live near the Norwegian border you'll have an easier time understanding of them, and if you live in the south you have an easier time with Danish. On the other hand someone from the south might struggle with Norwegian and so on.
Å basically makes the English "O" sound. As in when you say the letter "O". Just without the other part of the sound. When you say o you actually make two sounds. You start with the Scandinavian "Å" sound and then it turns into a Scandinavian "U" sound.
I'm finnish, and yes, Swedish is a debated subject in Finland, but not the biggest issue. It is actually teached because around 6% of finns speak Swedish as a mother tongue, but as you can see, that's really not the biggest number. (Also, many finns including me live in areas where virtually no people speak Swedish) I think the biggest thing is it takes away from other languages, but I don't think most people would like to have it replaced by Russian, since it's spoken by a pretty small number of people in finland, so it has less use than Swedish. (Also, you should compare Finland's relation with Sweden vs Russia, a big thing why finns wouldn't like to have mandatory Russian)
There's a Scots kind of poem , that has no consonants, in its six lines. Oo?, Aye oo, Ae oo?, Aye ae oo , Aw ae oo? , Aye aw ae oo. ( translation :- Wool ? Yes wool , One wool? Yes , one wool. All one wool? , Yes all one wool ! )
@@LordMarlle Well, the city, where I came to this small river (Herford), was in the Hanse. Maybe, this was the reason. But it is very far from Skandinavia.
Also in The Netherlands there are a lot of brooks and streams called Aa and one river called Aa. And in Friesland there is a river called Ee. In Amsterdam you have the river IJ. In Dutch that is seen, often written (not typed, it’s not on the keyboard) and spoken as one letter, but isn’t officially one letter. It a digraph. There is also a town called IJmuiden (mouth of the river IJ), downstream of Amsterdam. You can see that the town name starts with a capital IJ, or two capitals as you wish.
The letter Å is orginally a German invention which was introduced wtihn the printing press in Swedish at least as early as 1526. In Norwegian it was adapted as a mandatory replacement (except most prominently in personal and placeI in the SPELLING reform of 1917 for aa; Danish did the same in 1948. The ring at the top of the a has developed from an a on top of the, well, a. The aa functioned both as a long a as well as å. The pronunciation is close to the English o in North; in French eau is a good approximation, in German o will do. In addition to Å = small river, in Norwegian it is also the infinitive marker (as in, to speak), and this can also be heard in informal spoken Danish (and possibly Swedish) (In writing it' at/att respectively) Ô and Ø is the same sound in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish; the difference is just a graphic convention
Well the think with Finnish school teaching Swedish is like in the UK they would teach Welsh in your school just because you have shared history. In Finland you really don't need Swedish because it's only spoken in west Finland and Åland, but still most of them understand Finnish. And you begin to learn it in 7th grade and get only 3 year to learn it. So it just mostly feel's like a waste of time :D
@@kristoffer-2614 Why not? Swedish is still an offical language there (altough nationalistic finns tries to eradicate it, and everything Swedish from their culture and government). Also, the Scandinavian mountain range reaches well into Finland, just as it does into Norway and Sweden. Denmark does not have these Scandinavian mountains though... :D
As a Dane, apart from contractually having to hate swedes (jk. ;) ), I can sorta understand my fellow scandinavians, if I listen hard and they speak slowly (though, the swedish pronounciation of chocolate throws me for a loop every time. I mean, how does something as lovely as chocolate get turned into "HROKLARD"?)
I don’t agree with you : the sound « o » in the french word « eau » is not the same but in the french word « pomme » it is similar to the scandinavian Å.
I live in Århus. Det next biggest city in Denmark. A few years ago it was change to be spelled Aarhus, to make it easier for tourists. But as you said Aalborg is know as double A. Århus is known as the worlds world's smallest, big city. It's also know as the city of smiles.
As a Finn: Yea I'd love to get rid of the forced upon Swedish, and so do most of the people I've talked with about it. I've never heard someone say they'd prefer Russian to be an obligatory language in school tho. Sadly the government has recently only added more obligatory Swedish in schools.
But would you be OK with learning another language (of your choice) instead and would you be OK with having to learn Swedish as an adult if you wanted to get a job where it was required?
@@emmamemma4162 Well I already went through 9 courses of Russian in high school so yes. I've grown to have such a disgust towards Swedish so I'd do it only if I absolutely must
@@TheRrandomm How strange, I could never imagine hating a language. I studied Finnish for 10 years and almost didn't graduate because it was so difficult for me to learn. I never hated it, in fact I'm getting better and better at it and I think it's a fantastic language that I'm so happy to have learnt. Aaaanyhows, I think all students in Finland should be made to learn a third language. If that language is Swedish or something better suited their needs and interest isn't as important.
We do usually learn three languages. Finnish, Swedish and English. I'd be willing to change the system to having Swedish as an elective, just not mandatory. Many would still choose to learn it but it would get less hate :)
@@tiinakarmala633 Do you mean students would study Finnish, English and a third language of their choice, or would it be optional to study more than two languages? Do you think English should be mandatory to learn as the first foreign language or would it be OK to start with another language and possibly even skip English altogether?
There are a few big towns in northern Sweden that you missed that are all named after their rivers. The biggest are the cities “Piteå”, “Luleå” and “Skellefteå” which means “pite river”, “lule river” and “skellefte river” respectively.
This bugs me so much, because I always read the word "Stargate" as Stargott because they use this Viking letter as the point of origin rune. AaAaAaaAaAAaaaAAAaaAaAAaaAAAaa
In Denmark there is a village called "No". And here is a sentens in West Jutlandish : A æ u å æ ø i æ å. Meaning : I am out on the island in the river.
In the Värmland dialect of Swedish you have the slightly shorter but similar Å i åa ä e ö (And in the stream is an island). It's also possible to construct a whole sentence with only vowels in Romanian: Oaia aia e a ei, eu i-o iau "That sheep is hers, I will take it" In Czech/Slovak you can use only consonants to say Strč prst skrz krk, which means "Stick a finger through your throat" 😄
"Three people could be having a conversation in Swedish, Danish, and Norweigian at the same time and understand each other" HAH! Good luck with that one... I'm Swedish and I can understand Norweigian quite well because I used to spend a lot of summers there as a kid, I do not however understand one bit of Danish to be honest. I can figure out some Danish in written text but not spoken Danish what so ever. Also, Scandinavia is Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Named after the Scandic mountain range between Norway and Sweden. The Nordic countries however includes Iceland, Finland and The Faeroes Islands. I'm sure a lot of my fellow nordic people already pointed this out in this comment section but I can't be asked checking.
you probably could if you tried, i feel like swedes are very arrogant when it comes to the language issue - i have a harder time understanding swedish than norwegian, but if i really try and listen i catch a lot more of it than i otherwise would've...
I am Norwegian and have been to Å (in Lofoten) multiple times (my grandparents live close by), and it is a nice place, which I would recommend visiting, not for the name, but for the amazing nature.
I live in Finland (Turku/Åbo) and I can say without a doubt your assessment of Finnish opinion of Swedish and Russian is really off. I know a lot of natural born Finns that speak no Finnish but speak Swedish fluently, but I know absolutely no Finns that speak better Russian than Finnish. There is even a Swedish Speakers party in government, and I work at Åbo Akademi, an entirely Swedish speaking university (I myself am from Canada). So there is absolutely no one calling for Swedish to be replaced by Russian as the second national language.
DU GAMLA DU FRIA DU FJALLHÖGA NORD- DU TYSTA DU GLADJERIKA SKÖNA JAG HALSÄR SIG VANÄSTE LAND UPÅ JORD DIN SOL, DIN HIMMEL, DINA ANGDER GRÖNA (im not swedish did i memorize this right lol-)
In Finland roughly 5% of the population is swedish speaking, thats WAY, more than russian speakers and thats why swedish is a official language in Finland. Compulsory swedish isnt too popular in school but no one outside the populist right is advocating its for its abolishment and certainly no one is advocating for compulsory russian. Some do think that students should be free to pick what languege they wish to study, beyong English that is. I've never heard of anyone being pissed off about the existance of 'Å' in the Finnish alphabet, it doesnt exist in any Finnish words, not even loan words. (Surnames can have the letter though). There really is no resentment in Finland against the swedish language, with the exception of students and the populist right.
I speak Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish and have a basic understanding of Faroese and å is á in both Icelandic and Faroese with the same meaning
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
If you had to name somewhere after just one letter, which letter would you choose?
Wait you're not involved with the mafia
h
Æ :b
How does Russian have more linguistic ties to Finnish when Russian is another Indo-European language just like the North Germanic languages? Finnish has more loanwords of Germanic than Slavic origin. This is just the old Sweden vs Russia thing. We have to be with one or the other because that's how it's always been.
Probably Å, Norway, NE of Sorland
We have a saying in Norwegian. The danes can write it, and the Swedes can speak it.
I often explain the similarities between the written languages of Denmark and Norway like this: (ignoring that Norwegian has two separate written forms.)
If you want to translate a text between Danish and Norwegian (in either direction), just open a document written in one language with a word processor that is set to the other and run the spellchecker with accept all changes.
In Sweden we sometime says that Norwegian is Danish spoken with a Swedish accent 😂
exactly
@@tonyjohansson7567 you mean Norwegian is Danish spoken in a comprehensible way :))
@@vulc1 more like danish is a throat disease.
You failed to mention that there's a sizeable swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which is probably the main reason Swedish in mandatory in school. It's one of the official languages of Finland.
This is true, though I wanna point out for clarity that the minority takes up 5.2% of the population. Whether that's a lot or a little is very subjective.
@@ValpasKankaristo It is enough for the Swedish People's party to have representation in government (both National and EU level). Admittedly, it is dwindling in popularity, but it is still there.
@@ValpasKankaristo Why would ppl want Russian to be mandatory if the USSR was way worse to the Finns than Sweden.
It doesn't matter if Swedish is mandatory or not -- but it's a human right to have your name being able to be printed correctly in the official alphabet of your homeland.
@@ValpasKankaristo It's a big enough minority to run lots of servers on the Internet and some home computers, including mine. Linux was started by a Finland Swede.
Your Ö was perfect, but Å needs practice
Indeed
This is sö true.
its prpobebly his interpertasion of the Danish pronaunsiasion
I agree, but when he said "Ålesund" and "Åland" it was much closer to the correct pronounciation.
@@hermanmortensen Lol 😋
"ö i å" means "island in small river" in swedish.
Same in danish ø i å
I see your "Ö i Å" and raise you this sentence in a west-Jutish dialect: "A æ u å æ Ø i æ Å" which means "I am out on the island in the small river (creek)" 😅
Wouldn't it be small river in an island?
så ä d
@@BertGrink Gothenburgish: Ö, e ä å i ö å/ä ö i å.
English: You, is it small river in island and/or island in small river.
As a Finn I never heard anyone put any further meaning to Å, just a letter to know for other languages along side with C, X, Z, Q, W.
Swedish language remains in Finland because we got a sizable native Swedish speaking population, some have unique identity from Swedes and Finns and some are just Finns who speak Swedish.
This is completely different from Russian speakers who are just Russians and often move in and out of the country and have no special cultural place in the nation.
Swedish remained strong as it stayed as the language of government, nobility and well educated even when Finland was autonomous under Russian empire. Swedish rule is seen more positively as shared history while the 1800s are sen more as a occupation by Russia.
It's quite a bold statement to say Finnish-Russians have no significant cultural ties to Finland. A lot of Russians who've moved to Finland are Finnic or even Finnish people, who have just been russified and therefore speak Russian as their mother tongue. For instance, most of the Russian people who immigrated to Finland in the 90's were Ingrian Finns. In addition to them, a lot of Karelians and other Finnic people have immigrated to Finland with cultural ties much stronger than those of The Swedish-speaking population, despite the fact they don't speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Also, I think it's important to note that a lot of people in Finland have been fennicized and/or have hidden their Russian identity due to hostility after the Second World War.
IIRC Finnish was first used in Finland as official language during Russian Empire, not Kingdom of Sweden (even though Swedish still had its role). So Swedish rule looked more like an occupation.
You may think like you do because of the war between Soviet Union and Finland and it's understandable, but let's face facts: Finland was a lot more autonomous during Russian rule (which led to the renaissance of the Finnish language).
Åland speaks almost only Swedish...
In late 18th century there were a process to use finnish as semi official language, i.e. banknotes issued by the Riksbank and Riksgäld were bilingual, the Law was translated.
And none of the many Swedish loan words use Å anyway, so it's not a letter you need to worry about. You only need it in some Swedish surnames etc.
"Imagine having a letter in your alphabet that serves no purpose" Well as a Dane I can think of several "Q", "W", "X", and "Z" come to mind.
But Wessel?
@@sikanuasamanjit3014 vessel, there, i fixed it
Edit: V and W are pronounced the same in scandinavian languges. Same for q -> k and z -> s.
I’m Swedish and Norwegian is usually quite easy to understand (except for Bergen who have a really weird accent). But danish is quite hard if they’re not from Copenhagen, everyone else have such strong accents!
Yeah bergen’s R dialekt
Good thing half of us basically speak the "Copenhagen accent". Since Sjælland, and especially the Copenhagen metropolitan area are so densely populated.
@@gasmaskerobin1560 Yeah it's cause Bergen had some German influence in the past
That's grand words from someone sharing a country with the working class Malmö dialect...
@@dabtican4953 yeah the importing times
Swedes and Norwegians can understand themselves mutually. Danes, however, no one can understand them - even other danes.
I know that last part is a joke, but as a Dane, it's kinda true
@@Alexandra-ip2by This joke was told to me... by a dane ;) ... She was talking about how people from Copenhagen, Aalborg and Odense speak different danish dialects...
Swedes do understand bornholmsk
Mini English grammar lesson:
- "Understand themselves" = Swede understand Swedes, & Norwegians understand Norwegians.
- "Understand each other" = Swedes understand Norwegians, & Norwegians understand Swedes.
@@sterichardsson Thanks, English is not my mother tongue. I assumed the word mutually there would be the correct usage. Is it incorrect?
I'm Finnish and I've never heard of anyone suggesting to replace mandatory Swedish with Russian. We might hate Sweden but it's friendly hate, we're frenemies. Russia on the other hand...
I think it's been suggested to let students choose between Swedish or some other language(s). As a Swedish speaking Finn, I would be happy to let people choose languages freely as long as it's still obligatory to learn a third language, and that language would be made mandatory in the matriculation examinations just like Swedish used to be. Of course, we would have to figure out how to make sure Swedish speakers can be guaranteed access to public services in their own language while not making it impossible for people who have not studied Swedish to work in these jobs.
Ideally, more people should also learn a fourth language and students that are proficient in English should be able to test out of having to sit through unnecessary English lessons in order to learn another language instead.
There have been suggestions that students in eastern Finland would be allowed to choose between Swedish and Russian.
I’m Swedish and I’ve been to both Norway and Denmark, and basically when it comes to understanding the other languages: I can pretty much understand all and any written Danish and Norwegian, I can understand most Norwegian speech, and Danish people sound like they’re extremely drunk Norwegians so it’s a bit harder but in the end you usually get there
I feel its Hard to understand swedish, its sounds like you Guys Are mubleing:/
True
@@syynimaa9562 håller med t 100 bror
@@syynimaa9562 ja
Have a question tho what does drunk danes Sound like?
4:16 "Imagine having a letter in your language that serves no purpose"
Spanish speakers: you mean *H*
Basically the same as in French, only useful when following another letter. But still, that is a use.
Or q in swedish.
I speak a bit of Spanish here in Texas and I believe the dish enchiladas and the name Pancho and the phrase "Hecho en Mexico" use H's!!
That's really on his head. And in my opinion a very stupid one. Americans had an idiot who said: "This is how you spell things!", and then they did.
American history is not. I mean that.
K or z in Portuguese
How I normally explain the pronounciation of the 3 extra vowels is like this:
Å - like how an British person would pronounce the vowels in Bought or Straw
Ä - like how an American person would pronounce the vowels in Rat or Bad
Ö - there is no exact match, but the closest is the i in Girl or Bird
The ö is like saying ee but with your lips rounded at the same time
It can be the "e" in "the" in certain accents (it doesn't sound like "e")
Thank you for the explanation! Im currently learning swedish rn and this really helpful, cause i got really confuse over the pronunciation
@@kentanggulung Do you mean how you pronounce 'rn' in swedish? It's basically a slightly different n. Ordinarily the tip of your tounge in an N is straight forwards towards your teeth, but when there's an R before the N, just pronounce the N with the tip of your tounge a bit more towards the roof of your mouth and you'll get the kind of typical swedish way of doing it. It's the same principle with the 'rt' and 'rd', the secret is to put the tip of your tounge just slightly further up/back in your mouth and then pronounce the D or T, and you get a kind of thicker version of those consonants that makes swedes hallucinate an R that actually isn't there.
@@stoferb876 I mean rn as slang for word 'right now', but thank you so muchh for the detailed explanation! It's easy to understand! Also to think about it again, i guess i actually need it too 😚
Problems with Swedish language in Finland aren't really about us feeling that they're invading our language or anything like that. It's mostly just that learning Swedish is time take from learning something "actually useful" like German, French, Spanish or Russian for people who live near the border. Also the fact that if you want to work for the government, you pretty much have to be able to speak Swedish at least to some degree even if the job is something where you'll never actually get/have to speak it annoys a lot of people.
And it's practically useless since it is of value only in southern Bothnia and Åland. Plus we can always speak english.
I myself come from Middle Bothnia (keskipohjanmaa) and I haven't used swedish ever in my life. The only time I've ever used swedish was my holiday trip last year to Gotland and even then I spoke mostly english. It indeed is useless and a waste of time and money which could be spent more wisely.
I'm from Vaasa and speak Swedish as my first language, but I still think its pretty rediculous that finnish people have to learn swedish. I do however think that basic things like healthcare and customer support should be available in swedish. Our hospital in Vaasa, where people from the nearby swedish towns come to, almost stopped having major surgeries, and swedish speaking people from towns like Närpiö and Pietarsaari would have to be transfered to Seinäjoki where they barely know any finnish. Most people in need want to speak their first language, even if they know finnish. In the same way that finnish people say "but we have barely ever heard any swedish why should we learn it?", the same is said by people living in Närpiö but about finnish. Even here in Vaasa I can get by with only knowing swedish.
It's just what you need to do in any multi-lingual country, if you want whomever is the minority not feel disenfranchised.
If you don't do something like this, then you can the kind of problems you have between Catalonia and Spain.
In the Netherlands we have Frisian.
But don't make me start about Belgium. >.
@@rogerwilco2 well finns dont have to learn any other minority languages (saami/karelian) that are indigenous unlike swedish 🤔
@@larrywave There is like 5 saamis left in total so not much of a need and isnt karelian from karelia in russia (rightful fiinish land)
In danish « Ø,ø » means island, and « Å,å » means smaller river. In Icelandic we also do have single letter words for example « Á,á » means small river too.
As a swede I can understand written and spoken Norwegian (standard Norwegian, that is) easily but Danish is a little bit harder. If a Danish person speaks slowly and articulate their words then it should be okay. Normally we just use English if we find the inter-lingual conversation difficult.
4:03
All three claims here are false. I'm Finnish, and I've NEVER heard anybody suggest that Russian should be compulsory. Additionally, there are far more Swedish speakers here than Russians, and it's not even close, and our linguistic ties with Sweden are far greater than with Russian. I have no idea where you got this info from, but I'm happy to correct it in any case.
Also, the cumpulsory Swedish is indeed a big deal here. It's hotly debated, but because of the Swedish People's Party is a single-issue party willing to join any government coalition that supports the status quo, I don't see the status of Swedish here eroding anytime soon.
@@millero15 And the other parties are much more into other things.
I live in Kouvola have actually heard people say that Russian should replace Swedish as mandatory.
There have even been talks by low-level political figures(kunta/kaupunki tasolla) that maybe split Finland and have east learn mandatory-Russian while west has mandatory-Swedish.
Main points being that Swedish is useless in east unless you work for government-organization where you have to have some Swedish skills.
Most people here push for Swedish being same level as German and Russian so voluntary 3rd language instead of mandatory.
Many people were really f*n happy that Swedish wasnt required anymore in Ylioppilas-tutkinto(matriculation examination).
-
Personally I am against mandatory-Swedish mainly because I hate the language. Never been good with it and never needed it outside of school.
Just dropping Swedish to voluntary would make me very happy. Also Russian is way more useful language than Swedish if we just look at number of speakers world wide.
I understand that it is needed in Swedish speaking areas but why should person in Eastern-border town have to learn it instead of Russian?
@@samuelsilver8077 I'm swedish but my maternal grandparents are swedish-speaking Finns who moved to sweden for work when they were young, and I still have some family in Finland. I agree that the "split" would make a lot of sense, as I know it is very hard for my relatives to get government help (such as healthcare and bank stuff) in swedish, but I see no need for people in other areas to know swedish. Like you say, we all speak english here and theres only like 10 million of us anyways, spanish or other world languages make way more sense.
I also wonder if finnish-swedish is slowly going away. I hope not, bc it is a very different dialect to rikssvenska and it is connected to a different culture, but I know that many of my relatives either know finnish fluently and/or their kids grow up bilingual. My family has been in Finland for about 800 years (we think), so it would kinda suck if that history/culture went away, but I guess most things integrate at the end.
Why have certain letters make certain sounds when you can just put 4 letters together and pronounce none of them?
THIS COMMENT WAS MADE BY THE IRISH GANG
Yeah, Enlgish too kinda
And French.
But Tibetan is probably the worst offender with silent letters.
@@danielbishop1863 yesss Tibetan has so much silent letters
None of y'all understand the extent to which Irish pushes it. In English, Qeue is Kyoo and Thorough is Thur-oh. Sure. But in Irish?
Labhraionn = law-ren
Go raibh maith agat = go ra ma gat
Dia duit = dia hwee
And much more
@@danielbishop1863 my native language's distant cousin Language is truely a unique fella . Even us Bengalis are not used to packing so many silent pronunciations into Single words/sentences
Oh, let's hear some mispronounciations
Edit: you were actually better than I thought with Ö
I'm swedish, and about two years ago I spent five weeks in Denmark as part of my university studies. In Denmark I had a Danish student helping me around, and she also introduced me to a Norwegian student doing the same thing as me. Although us three didn't meet up much, when we did we could talk to each other without much problem. Of course some words means different things, so you might have to explain some things, but other than that it's actually not that hard for us three languages to understand one another
I'm from Lofoten, and Å is basically just down the road from where I grew up. I live in the UK now and a few years ago I brought my husband and a few members of his family to Å and they all thought it was so funny with this place with this funny one letter that " no one knows" as its name. They all had to have their photos taken by the sign that said "Å" 😁😁😁😁
Nah, Finland and Iceland are not "considered to be Scandinavian". They are simply not Scandinavian. They're Nordic just like the actual Scandinavian countries. Just because people constantly get it wrong doesn't mean that they are Scandinavian.
This.
It's mad how often people get that wrong.
@@KristerL ikr, it irks me so much as a Swede who also happens to be a geography nerd
@@ZenobiaSE Totally, and you would think a channel like Name explain would know Scandinavia is named after the Scandinavian Mountains, or Scandes, and not make up some lame story about "Scandinavian languages".
@@emmamemma4162 yeah, I was honestly really disappointed by that. Especially since it's not the first time he has made videos relating to Scandinavia as well
And saying finland isn’t in any group? They’re a nordic nation, just like iceland and the scandinavian countries
Many of the Finnish coastal towns and cities are named by rivers. That's why you get places like Borgå, Ingå and Sjundeå. Last one literally means "seventh river". Their Finnish names are just phonetically "translated" as Porvoo, Inkoo and Siuntio.
Esp(e)å -> Espoo -> Esbå.
Cool fun fact
@@peccantis it's Esbo in swedish, not Esbå lol
I'm swedish and my dad told me a interesting story about he was once working with a icelandic guy who lived in denmark for a few years before moving to Sweden and he spoke perfect swedish. My dad asked him how he did that and he answered he just mixed icelandic and danish to speak swedish! I always found that really interesting! :)
I studied Swedish at university. In one of my literature classes, my professor had me read Ibsen in Norwegian, which I did not speak and had never studied. He told me I’d be fine, and he was right.
I had to read him too. The text came with a small word list.
Fun fact: There is a town in southern Sweden called Råå, and in that town there is a small river, an 'å'. Now some people in Sweden joke about there being eels in this river, but why would they do that? Well, the Swedish word for eel is 'ål', which in turn makes the eels in the river 'Råååål' which literally translates to 'Råå river eel'. Because the Swedish language rarely allows more than two of the same letter in a row, 'Råååål' is the word with the highest amount of the same letter in a row.
If I ever decide to do a roadtrip around sweden, I'll add that to my list
Well. A Norwegian from Oslo can easily be understood by a Swede around Stockholm and vice versa. But all variations and dialects of our languages makes them harder to understand depending on where you are from and what you are used to.
Danish however is the odd language out. At least we swedes have a very hard time understanding Danish. Some people understand it better tough, like the population in Skåne (southern tip of Sweden).
Great video btw
I'm from Skåne and been in Denmark loads. Still hard to understand danish and if it is anything but common phrases I rather just turn to english.
Skånsk is very similar to the dialect spoken on Bornholm :)
The word "å" comes from the same root as Latin "aqua" and French "eau". There is an Old English cognate "ēa".
French teacher: "À quelle ville habites-tu?"
Student: "J'habite à Y."
Teacher: "Non, on dit *j'y habite"*
Except that 《Y》 on its own is 《ee grek》
@@DeRien8 Even the name of the town?
@@sohopedeco
Good question
what does *j'y* mean?
Ça me plaît beaucoup. Hehehe
😂😂
Closest Finland gets with place names is II, (two "i"s) which comes from Sami languages and means "night". Now by Finnish spelling standards it's two "i"s, but that's just the way Finnish marks long vowels, so speculating about things it could have been just "i".
I'm a Swedish-speaking Finn, and yeah a lot of Finnish people feel pretty strongly about Swedish and the way it's taught in schools, and would like to see it gone from the educational system in favor of something they feel is more useful, though the usefulness varies heavily from region to region. There are many municipalities in mainland Finland that are heavily bilingual and some that are majority Swedish-speaking. It's weird how Swedish-speaking Finns were largely swept under the rug in this video (though you did at least acknowledge Åland). We make up 5% of the total population and maintain a strong linguistic and cultural identity distinct from both other Finns and from Swedes, though a lot of foreigners have no idea we exist, and a lot of Finnish-speaking Finns don't like us.
What I'm trying to say is that Swedish is not just some random detached language that Finnish school children are bugged with and forced to learn for no reason, as this video might have you believe. It's an official language in our country the mother-tongue of a native linguistic minority of Finns. The letter Å might not serve a purpose in the Finnish language but it does serve a purpose in the country of Finland overall.
But yeah. Just wanted to share my perspective.
4:04 Also, the claim that there are more Russian-speakers than Swedish-speakers in Finland is pure nonsense! There are about 280 000 people with Swedish as their native language and about 80 000 with Russian.
1:37 Also, also, not part of any group?? Ever heard of the Nordic countries? The Nordics is not an obscure group at all and it's baffling to me that it wasn't mentioned.
it’s not like finnish speakers don’t like swedish speakers, it’s just that we do want to see swedish as an optional language and not compulsory. why would every finn need to cater to a measly 5% of the population, when all that time could be spent more usefully. also, compulsory swedish makes it so easy to start hating language learning, which is bad for finland’s future. optional swedish would result in better swedish through the country because only the people who have interest would study it.
Finn here. The way I understand the whole ''why is Å in the finnish alphabet'' thing, is because why would we have a completely seperate alphabet for swedish if the difference is 1 letter AND swedish is also an offical first language of Finland. Might as well just work with a single alphabetical system.
Yeah, and if Å is out, there is really no reason to keep B in the Finnish alphabet, either.
@@emmamemma4162 Wrong, letter B must be kept in the Finnish alphabet, koska pidän banaaneista.
That makes no sense, what's the problem with a seperate alphabet for each language?
@@se6369 Place names and last names in Finland often contain the letter Å.
@@emmamemma4162 Finnish or Swedish place names and last names?
Im norwegian and me as a norwegian listening to a danish, sounds like drunk gibberish.
We're not the only ones who think so. A Danish linguist once described Norwegian as "Danish with correct pronounciation" ;-)
I think it was in My Fair Lady that French was described as English, but pronounced correctly.
That was not a nice thing to say about your neighbor...
@@Ettibridget You're right of course but the Danes tend to be in on the joke themselves.What happens is that the Danes soften most consonants a lot. So hard consonants like k and t becomes g and d and soft ones like g and d and r Are often barely pronounced at all. This makes it ratehr hard to understand for other Scandinavians who aren't used to it even though the written languages are very similar.
We Swedes agree. :-)
4:10-4:43 not finnish, but i am close being estonian and we have a literal section of our alphabet named the "võõrtähed" or "foreign letters", which aren't really used outside of loan words.
Think also that Japanese also has an entire alphabet called Katakana which is also almost entirely devoted to foreign loan words.
It has other uses and esoteric connotations too, but by far and away the main use of Katakana (Which is pronounced the exact same way as the standard alphabet, Hiragana btw) is just to denote foreign loan words.
About the 'Having a letter that you have no use for':
Here in the Netherlands we only really use the Q for loanwords. A lot of 'qu's already turned into 'kw'.
All mainly Germanic languages are in a similar situation. The current alphabet is a Latin invention, after all. English has enough French and Latin influence to make it work well, but even then those letters are sparse.
Frisian ditched Q and X all together, and reduced a single C to its phoneme (S or K). There are some beautiful Akwadukts here.
And funny that you mention Japanese scripts for your example because extended Katakana is filled with symbols that basically aren't used. The 'We' symbol exists, but 'Ue' is used in basically every single case. These symbols aren't even exographs.
And more Dutch:
We have the word 'Aa' for for a small river, but also 'E' for dammed Aas.
Edam is a Dam on the E. That's where that cheese comes from.
In Finnish we have loads more useless letters than just Å (B, C, F, Q, W, X and Z are only used in loan words as well)
Portuguese used to consider K, W and Y as "foreign" letters up until very recently. We still only use those letters in loanwords or words derived from them.
Well but I have to say that it is funny that the German language influenced modern Latin script through the printing press which has led some languages like English to replace certain letters with others do to the cost and inconvenience of having to fabricate special letters for the presses that were imported from southern Germany.
@@cedrickropp And I'm still holding that against them as a non-native English speaker. The þ is a super useful letter. I thought 'th' was an aspirated t for many years. Þ would have saved me a lot of trouble learning English.
@@deldarel Yeah, but the th is also really pretty in my mind, maybe not as beatiful as a þ, but still a great thing if you write with cursive hand writing. German also has a word with th, but it is pronounced as a t, in thron. Also the th was at some point fairly common in early german writing, in which one would seldom see a d, as in teuton, or theodisce, as nowadays deutsch.
Holy molly I was in a town called Å in Lofoten and it was such a cool and beautiful place .... and I have a good laugh on the name too :) thanks for this vid
is it near Å?
@@hermanmortensenthanks for the letter now i gonna fix it :) xD
I'm glad you liked the place. :-)
The whole of Lofoten is stunningly beautiful but Å is a true gem even by that high standard. We used to do gigs there fairly regularly back in the days when people still went out to dance to live music and it was always one of the highlights on our route.
"Å" is a fairly recent letter. It's predecessor "á" is still used in Icelandic and Faroese, as well as in some inofficial writing systems for the more unusual language variants found in northern Sweden. As the sound of "á" changed, writing changed to "aa". To save space in handwritten documents, one letter was put above the other. The same thing happened with the other Scandinavian letters. "Ae" became "æ" or "ä", and "oe" became "ø" or "ö". The Icelandic "ö" replaced the old letter "ǫ". "Å" entered Swedish when the printing press was introduced in the mid 1500's. It didn't enter Norwegian until they stopped using the Danish writing system in 1917. Danish introduced the letter in 1948.
Swedish is actually more widely spoken than Russian is in Finland with 5% speaking it as their native language and another 40% speaking it as their secondary language and, Russian isn't related to Finnish at all and Russian is actually distantly related to Swedish and there more Swedish loanwords in Finnish than there are Russian ones, but in eastern Finland there's some Russian speakers and no Swedish speakers so it makes sense for them to learn Russian, and as a Finnish-speaking Swede I find it pretty ridiculous that Finns are forced to learn Swedish Pakkoruotsi, also Swedish Danish and Norwegian are practically the same language just different language standard forms. P.S. Perkele
That "40% speaking it as their secondary language" is inflated number because it is mandatory language in schools.
I imagine that without mandatory stuff number would be 15~20%(total questimate based on things I know and have heard).
Then English would climb high in secondary language numbers as I think that 50% of adult Finns can at least have basic conversation in English.
3:05 Depends on dialect and willingness to attempt. When talking Swedish is easier to understand than Danish for a Norwegian speaker. While written danish is easier than written Swedish for the Norwegians that write in Boomål (Written Norwegian originally based on the language of the Norwegian upper class after the union with Denmark) (This is my own experience as a Norwegian, so I won’t speak on behalf of others)
I am Danish, and i find Norwegian much easier to understand than Swedish, precisely because of Bokmål* Well, aside from Nynorsk, that is.
@@BertGrink Some other Norwegians i know would very much agree with you about Nynorsk.
Neither Q, W, or Z, are used in any native Swedish words. It’s even unclear if W is even in the alphabet.
(Edit: Q is used insanely rarely, but it does in fact happen.)
W and Q is useful when it comes to archaic spelling.
Almost not in norwegian too
The letters c, q,w, and z has no own sound in the Swedish language, athough c is used as first k in spelling a long k.
I can't say for Swedish, but in Denmark it is because of archaic spellings.
Q = K
W = V or U
Z = S or SJ (our largest island "Sjælland" used to be spelled "Zealland" in Danish too.
X = KS (Words that today would be spelled with ks such as "vokse" would be spelled "voxe"
Also Å is a pretty new letter, AA was the old way to write it, so many places are going back to the old names, to honour old tradition.
(Edit: according to wikipedia, we only started using the letter in 1948.)
When trying to say ”Å” its more like the sound you do when you see some thing cute ”Aww”
I live in Aalborg, and almost everyone here gets mad if you spell it Ålborg. It's because when the letter was officially introduced to the Danish alphabet in 1948, it was required by law, that Aalborg changed its spelling to Ålborg. However, many people here resented this change, and in 1984 the original spelling was reintroduced, so now we have two official ways for spelling the 4th largest city in Denmark... soooo, I guess we can kinda relate to the Finns then... hei suomalaiset ;)
The Finnish city of Turku likewise has two spellings, Turku in Finnish and Åbo in Swedish
@@karlmarxii1898 The names Turku and Åbo have two completely different origins though, Turku means "the market place" while Åbo means "the settlement by the river (whose name is Aurajoki/Aura å)"
"Å" is literally just pronounced like "awe". No more complicated than that.
Also, it's exactly the same sound as the letter O in finland which is why the finnish doesn't use it. They don't need to. And finnish is pretty much the only language in the world where literally everything is consistently spelled as it is pronounced. So it's not like in swedish where the letter O can sometimes be pronounced like Å, and sometimes not and it's really impossible to tell unless you already know in advance.
In danish, "Å" is pronounced more like if you say the letter "O" out loud in english, but you choke halfway through
Unless youre american lol
Danish Å sounds like the O in Toast
It’s like the a in hall or the au in audio.
4:05 Russia definitely isn't more spoken than Swedish in Finland, and Russian definitely doesn't have more linguistic ties to Finnish than Swedish does. Boo.
true
There was a lot of misinformation in this video...
"Finnish definitely doesn't have more more linguistic ties to Finnish than Swedish does"
I beg to differ. Finnish definitely has more more linguistic ties to Finnish than Swedish does.
neither swedish or russian have linguistic ties to finnish they're not even in the same language family
@@xezmakorewarriah This is a really interesting subject, as well. You are 100% right that Finnish is in the Finno-Ugric language family, which is nothing like the Indo-European family gramatically speaking. But did you know that Finnish has a massive amount of loan words that come from Indo-European languages? Most of the words in the Finnish language are loan words, though especially older loan words have been completely adapted to the Finnish language system. The earliest loans words, such as suola (salt) and porsas (pig), are from when the Finno-Ugric people lived in the area around the Volga river. There are also words such as Kuningas (from the Germanic word Kuningaaz; king or ruler) that have been lost from the Indo-European languages but are preserved in the Finnish language. The biggest group of loan words, around 50% of them, are of Swedish origin. A lot of Finnish words are very similar to Swedish words, such as the word for stairs (sv: Trappa fi: Rappu) or the word for trousers/ pants (sv: hosor fi: housut).
As I hope I've been able to demonstrate, there are some deep ties between the Finnish and the Swedish languages and similarly the cultural ties are quite strong.
As a Norwegian, I understand spoken Swedish fully and spoken Danish almost fully. In writing, I understand them both fully.
As you showed in the video, "Å i Lofoten" means "Å in Lofoten", so "i" is single-letter preposition in Norwegian, and in fact in all three Scandinavian languages. It just means "in".
But Danish, specifically, also has a single-letter personal pronoun, and just as with English, it's always capitalized: "I". The difference is that while the English pronoun is used to refer to oneself, the Danish pronoun is used to refer to other people, specifically it is the second person plural subject pronoun. I thought it was funny that both Danish and English both ended up with this strange capitalization of the letter "i" when used as a pronoun -- but not when used as a preposition.
2:53 This is false. No one understands Danish but the Danish, and then barely.
(more serious answer: yes, to some degree, with huge asteriskes for Swedes understanding Danes (with their insane counting system). SE+NO mostly no problem. Though in the corporate world everyone is using English now, so I think we're slowly drifting away from this mutual comprehension, but I'm not a linguist.)
"No one understands Danish but the Danish, and then barely."
I am Danish and that statement is not far from the truth, in my honest opinion; I was born in a town called Odder, not far from Århus, which is on the east coast of Jutland. At some point in my adult life I had to work with a fellow from the very north-west of Jutland, and i must admit that his dialect was utterly incomprehensible to me. Add the fact that the fellow had a very short temper, and the recipe for disastrous commmunication was complete. 😂
As for me understanding Swedish, that certainly depends on where the Swedish speaker is from, but for the most part i find it pretty difficult. It should be noted that I live a fairly long way away from Sweden, which means that i don't get to hear it very often. Those Danes who live closer to Sweden will often have a much better understanding of the Swedish language. The same caveats (in reverse) probably apply to the Swedes themselves too, I suppose.
As for Norwegian, i find that _much_ easier to understand, at least the version called Bokmål (book language). This is because for a long time, Norway was ruled by Danish monarchs, and the official language during that period was Danish. Tis has resulted in the Bokmål being failry close to Danish, at least in spellinig.
There _is_ however another version of Norwegian called Nynorsk (New Norwegian) which is only spoken by a somewhat smaller part of the Norwegian population. Even many Norwegians themselves say that Nynorsk is difficult to understand. Needless to say that I don't understand Nynorsk at all. lol
My parents generation grew up with a single danish television channel and some had a couple of german and others a couple of swedish, so a lot of comprehension from that time stemmed from television.
@@LordMarlle Something tells me that I'm from the same generation as your parents! I'm 67 and I too grew up with a single danish TV channel. Btw my family moved to the south of Funen (Sydfyn) when i was around 5½~6 years old, and so we had access to three german TV channels in my childhood.
@@LordMarlle P.S. Your name reminds me of an Award-winning planetary designer who was very fond of Fjords. 😉
Not even the Danish understand Danish. :D
The way you pronounce "Å" sounds at times more like how you could, in some cases, pronouce "Ö". However, think of how when you say the word "Always" or "All". The A's in those words when you pronounce them are very similar to the correct pronounciation of "Å".
Your way of saying "always" begins with a near perfect Swedish Å.
Well there's "Á" in Icelandic which is basically the same letter except the top part is different, both letters mean the same thing and are pronounced alike (considering "å" has way more variatuons due to dialects)
The situation of Swedish in Finland is a bit complicated. The main reason Finland still uses Swedish is that historically Swedish has been the dominant language of education, governance, commerce and the upper class because of Swedish rule. However, after Finland was transferred to Russia, it was granted autonomy meaning that the Swedish speaking elite continued on with what they were doing and was never replaced. There was even a period of language strife between the svekomans and fennomans on whether or not Finnish should be an official or even a recognized language of Finland. Ultimately it was agreed later on that Finnish would be put on equal ground with Swedish after which it shortly became the overwhelmingly dominant language of the country in almost all fields.
It's mostly because of this that mandatory Swedish exists in schools and universities. It is widely unpopular. Swedish is next to useless in Finland. If you don't live in a Swedish speaking area or don't have Finland-Swedish family members, it's highly unlikely you'll ever learn/need to speak Swedish fluently ever. Even in Sweden where Finns often go for a vacation trip, Finns use English because Swedes, like Finns, are avid English speakers. I have never heard of anyone saying we should replace mandatory Swedish with Mandatory Russian though. That would make little sense to throw out one language forced upon Finland historically for another language that people tried to force onto Finland in a different point in History (see Russification of Finland).
Overall Finnish society views mandatory Swedish in a similar light to national Conscription (where men once they turn 18 must go to the military for a period of time from 3 or 5 months to almost a year). Once people are done with mandatory Swedish and/or military service, they become apathetic to the issue. "Why should you not be forced to learn Swedish, if I was forced to?" Similarly, the removal of mandatory Swedish isn't really discussed a lot outside right-wing nationalist politics.
Also, Russian isn't any closer to Finnish linguistically than Swedish
I thought it was strange saying Swedish should be replaced with Russian. After the whole winter war I can’t imagine Fins would be too happy having to learn Russian, I would imagine that would be even more unpopular than learning Swedish, however I’m not Finnish so I might be completely wrong!
Linus Torvalds, who created Linux, was a Swedish speaking Finn. BTW, he now is in the US.
@@Druchii
There are Russian (day)tourists and people who cross border to Finland to buy stuff that's higher quality and bring to back to Russia, in Eastern Finland. So it's hypothesised learning Russian instead of Swedish might be better for economy there.
6:53
I think that the reason that only small villages have the name Å is because it is the name for a Small river and not a big river. Because for a small village a small river would be a significant feuture so they decide to name it after the fact that there is a small river there.
The reason why cities like Aarhus and Aalborg ditched the Å is to become more globally accessible. They argued that the Å would be too difficult for foreigners to understand, which could deter tourism and businesses, so they changed their names. However, the municipals of the cities consider both to be correct.
The funny thing is that both towns were originally written with "Aa" until the "Å" was introduced, then they changed the spelling to "Århus" and Ålborg" respectively, but as you say, when tourism became more widespread - not to mention when the internet became a thing, they reverted back to the old spelling in order to be more easily understood abroad.
For the same reason Bergen changed it's name From Bjørgvin
Århus is just a copycat. It will never be AA in my book. We are the rea AA here in Aalborg
@@TheBarser
Aabenraa: Am I a joke to you?
@@BertGrink yes. Aalborg is the real AA in jutland. Aabenraa is a littlebrother while Århus is a new copycat 😊
I am Norwegian, and in my experience Sweeds, Danes, and Norwegian people, can understand each other, whit only minor difficulties. Norwegian is more simular to Swedish when you speak, while when you write Danish is extremely simular to Bokmål (in Norway there are to written languages (not including the Sami languages) Bokmål and Ny-Norsk (English: New Norwegian). Bokmål is based on danish, while Ny-Norsk is based on the many local dialects in Norway. Bokmål is slightly more popular than Ny-Norsk. Bokmål is written mostly in eastern and northern Norway, while Ny-Norsk is predominantly written in western Norway. In the Norwegian school you most learn both (which is very unpopular among students.)) Norwegians are in general better at understanding Swedish than vise versa (often when I speak to Swedish people I most speak in English to be understood, while them can speak in Swedish), probably on account that Norway is the smaller country and a lot of the culture (films, books, etc...) are in Swedish. Danish is spoken kinda funny (sounds like they have a potato stuck in their throat), so it is generally a bit harder to understand for Norwegians and Sweeds, but not impossible.
That’s my rant about being Norwegian...
Finland is Nordic, together with Scandinavia, Faroe Islands and Iceland (and sometimes Greenland)
That is true.
1:28 While it technically is true that Estonian is closer to Finnish than any of the languages of Scandinavia, I think that it's worth mentioning that the Saami languages of the northern parts of the peninsula are also in the Uralic language family. And from my understanding, Finland is considered separate from Scandinavia for geographic reasons more than linguistic ones.
1:49 perfect pronounciation of Ö, but you messed up Ø, even though they have the exact same pronounciation...
I'm from Finland and I speak Finnish as my first language. I did not learn any Swedish because I did not care about Swedish... I'm born and raised in Savo (Savonia) so basically no one speaks Swedish where I'm from. I did live four years in Pietarsaari/ Jakobstad, a city that mainly has Swedish speaking residents (around 56% Swe, 34% Fin, 10% other). Pretty much the only thing I knew in Swedish was "en öl, tack" when I moved to Pietarsaari. I did learn little bit while working as a a practical nurse in a bilingual nursing home. At the moment I study Russian and would have been happy learning Russian back in school.. Why can't we choose from few, maybe like Swedish, German or Russian, "pick your poison". Something like that.
In Norwegian “Æ e i A” and “Æ e i A æ å” are actual sentences(if you speak the North-Norwegian dialect), it basically means: “I am in A(the way we divide school classes in Norway are by letters, so it is like: I am in the class of A)” and “I am in A too”
There's a west jutish dialect that does the same "A æ u å æ Ø i æ Å" (I am on the island in the river) i have some knowledge of it and i did once encounter a north Norwegian person who wrote in-dialect, i managed to decipher it, but it is insanity.. beautiful insanity. Spoken north Norwegian throws me off though, hv = k, i like it though, 'hvad?' is the funniest word in north Norwegian 'KA?!'
Me: Where do you live?
Scandinavian: Å
Me: Which one?
The letter Å is originally from northern Germany, where it was and is used in certain Low Saxon writing systems. It has been living in a small niche there, but for some reasons it really caught on in Scandinavia.
In Sweden we have a joke that Danish sounds like someone trying to speak Swedish with a hot potato in their mouth.
We can understand each other pretty well, but were in the country you live also play a role. If you live near the Norwegian border you'll have an easier time understanding of them, and if you live in the south you have an easier time with Danish. On the other hand someone from the south might struggle with Norwegian and so on.
Det stämmer
Kul att se en annan svensk som kollar på PhilosophyTube för övrigt!
When europeans talk about the south :
Mediterranean sun.
When the Swedes talk about the south :
Some beach in scania on the baltic coast.
south Norwegen dialects are also more simular to spoken Dainsh
Å basically makes the English "O" sound. As in when you say the letter "O". Just without the other part of the sound. When you say o you actually make two sounds. You start with the Scandinavian "Å" sound and then it turns into a Scandinavian "U" sound.
7:28 is the other way around. Before 1948 the letter å/Å was not a part of the Danish alphabet, and was instead spelled Aa/aa
I'm finnish, and yes, Swedish is a debated subject in Finland, but not the biggest issue. It is actually teached because around 6% of finns speak Swedish as a mother tongue, but as you can see, that's really not the biggest number. (Also, many finns including me live in areas where virtually no people speak Swedish) I think the biggest thing is it takes away from other languages, but I don't think most people would like to have it replaced by Russian, since it's spoken by a pretty small number of people in finland, so it has less use than Swedish. (Also, you should compare Finland's relation with Sweden vs Russia, a big thing why finns wouldn't like to have mandatory Russian)
My friend
What's your favorite singer ?
Me : its complicated
what does this mean
There's a Scots kind of poem , that has no consonants, in its six lines. Oo?, Aye oo, Ae oo?, Aye ae oo , Aw ae oo? , Aye aw ae oo. ( translation :- Wool ? Yes wool , One wool? Yes , one wool. All one wool? , Yes all one wool ! )
There is a smaller river in Germany, too, with the name "Aa". Has it something to do with that? (In Northrhine Westphalia.)
Å (or written in the old style, Aa) simply means small river in danish, so it would definitely seem so
@@LordMarlle
Well, the city, where I came to this small river (Herford), was in the Hanse. Maybe, this was the reason. But it is very far from Skandinavia.
Also in The Netherlands there are a lot of brooks and streams called Aa and one river called Aa. And in Friesland there is a river called Ee. In Amsterdam you have the river IJ. In Dutch that is seen, often written (not typed, it’s not on the keyboard) and spoken as one letter, but isn’t officially one letter. It a digraph. There is also a town called IJmuiden (mouth of the river IJ), downstream of Amsterdam. You can see that the town name starts with a capital IJ, or two capitals as you wish.
There are actually a few small rivers called Aa in Germany.
In France too : the river Aa is a small river between Calais and Dunkirk (Dunkerque)
The letter Å is orginally a German invention which was introduced wtihn the printing press in Swedish at least as early as 1526. In Norwegian it was adapted as a mandatory replacement (except most prominently in personal and placeI in the SPELLING reform of 1917 for aa; Danish did the same in 1948.
The ring at the top of the a has developed from an a on top of the, well, a. The aa functioned both as a long a as well as å.
The pronunciation is close to the English o in North; in French eau is a good approximation, in German o will do.
In addition to Å = small river, in Norwegian it is also the infinitive marker (as in, to speak), and this can also be heard in informal spoken Danish (and possibly Swedish) (In writing it' at/att respectively)
Ô and Ø is the same sound in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish; the difference is just a graphic convention
"Å" in norwegian also means "to", as in to do. (it is pronounced similarly to the spanish o)
Well the think with Finnish school teaching Swedish is like in the UK they would teach Welsh in your school just because you have shared history. In Finland you really don't need Swedish because it's only spoken in west Finland and Åland, but still most of them understand Finnish. And you begin to learn it in 7th grade and get only 3 year to learn it. So it just mostly feel's like a waste of time :D
Video: is supposed to be about Scandinavia
Also video: contains 1 and 1/2 - 2 minutes of Finnish stuff
*what ?*
When it's over, he's Finished :-)
@@dcarbs2979 You think you are funny, don't you? Because you'd be correct!
Well, Finland was originally just a part of Sweden. This was the case for over half a millennia.
@@herrbonk3635 True, it was. But Finland today is not Scandinavian.
@@kristoffer-2614 Why not? Swedish is still an offical language there (altough nationalistic finns tries to eradicate it, and everything Swedish from their culture and government). Also, the Scandinavian mountain range reaches well into Finland, just as it does into Norway and Sweden. Denmark does not have these Scandinavian mountains though... :D
As a Dane, apart from contractually having to hate swedes (jk. ;) ), I can sorta understand my fellow scandinavians, if I listen hard and they speak slowly (though, the swedish pronounciation of chocolate throws me for a loop every time. I mean, how does something as lovely as chocolate get turned into "HROKLARD"?)
The letter Å is pronounced like eau(water in french).
At least it is pronounced like that in Skåne
I don’t agree with you : the sound « o » in the french word « eau » is not the same but in the french word « pomme » it is similar to the scandinavian Å.
I live in Århus. Det next biggest city in Denmark. A few years ago it was change to be spelled Aarhus, to make it easier for tourists. But as you said Aalborg is know as double A.
Århus is known as the worlds world's smallest, big city.
It's also know as the city of smiles.
As a Finn: Yea I'd love to get rid of the forced upon Swedish, and so do most of the people I've talked with about it. I've never heard someone say they'd prefer Russian to be an obligatory language in school tho. Sadly the government has recently only added more obligatory Swedish in schools.
But would you be OK with learning another language (of your choice) instead and would you be OK with having to learn Swedish as an adult if you wanted to get a job where it was required?
@@emmamemma4162 Well I already went through 9 courses of Russian in high school so yes. I've grown to have such a disgust towards Swedish so I'd do it only if I absolutely must
@@TheRrandomm How strange, I could never imagine hating a language. I studied Finnish for 10 years and almost didn't graduate because it was so difficult for me to learn. I never hated it, in fact I'm getting better and better at it and I think it's a fantastic language that I'm so happy to have learnt.
Aaaanyhows, I think all students in Finland should be made to learn a third language. If that language is Swedish or something better suited their needs and interest isn't as important.
We do usually learn three languages. Finnish, Swedish and English. I'd be willing to change the system to having Swedish as an elective, just not mandatory. Many would still choose to learn it but it would get less hate :)
@@tiinakarmala633 Do you mean students would study Finnish, English and a third language of their choice, or would it be optional to study more than two languages?
Do you think English should be mandatory to learn as the first foreign language or would it be OK to start with another language and possibly even skip English altogether?
The Austrian town of "Fucking" renames itself to "Fugging" next year, because the town sign got stolen so often and tourists had s#x in front of it...
“Finland can’t be a part of any group”
Sweden: “hold my empire”
There are a few big towns in northern Sweden that you missed that are all named after their rivers.
The biggest are the cities “Piteå”, “Luleå” and “Skellefteå” which means “pite river”, “lule river” and “skellefte river” respectively.
æ ø å to you:)
Å is also very similar to the point of origin symbol on the Giza stargate. :-)
Probably Stargate fans stealing that sign. :P
Hahaha that didn't occur to me, but you're absolutely right, it does sound likely lol
This bugs me so much, because I always read the word "Stargate" as Stargott because they use this Viking letter as the point of origin rune.
AaAaAaaAaAAaaaAAAaaAaAAaaAAAaa
Stargåte! Sometimes Finns pronounce the "gåte" part as if it were Swedish for humorous effect.
Stargåte är bäst!
In Denmark there is a village called "No". And here is a sentens in West Jutlandish :
A æ u å æ ø i æ å. Meaning : I am out on the island in the river.
In the Värmland dialect of Swedish you have the slightly shorter but similar Å i åa ä e ö (And in the stream is an island).
It's also possible to construct a whole sentence with only vowels in Romanian: Oaia aia e a ei, eu i-o iau "That sheep is hers, I will take it"
In Czech/Slovak you can use only consonants to say Strč prst skrz krk, which means "Stick a finger through your throat" 😄
I want to go to A so much.
Å
You mean Å?
If you don't have Å on your keyboard you can just wright Aa
My family's cabin is called Åbua, which just means "shack by the river / lake".
Yeah we do understand each other, but its harder the understand the danes, for both us norwegians and Swedish i have heard
"Three people could be having a conversation in Swedish, Danish, and Norweigian at the same time and understand each other" HAH! Good luck with that one... I'm Swedish and I can understand Norweigian quite well because I used to spend a lot of summers there as a kid, I do not however understand one bit of Danish to be honest. I can figure out some Danish in written text but not spoken Danish what so ever.
Also, Scandinavia is Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Named after the Scandic mountain range between Norway and Sweden. The Nordic countries however includes Iceland, Finland and The Faeroes Islands. I'm sure a lot of my fellow nordic people already pointed this out in this comment section but I can't be asked checking.
you probably could if you tried, i feel like swedes are very arrogant when it comes to the language issue - i have a harder time understanding swedish than norwegian, but if i really try and listen i catch a lot more of it than i otherwise would've...
As a Swede I can understand Norwegian but Danish is really hard to understand
I am Norwegian and have been to Å (in Lofoten) multiple times (my grandparents live close by), and it is a nice place, which I would recommend visiting, not for the name, but for the amazing nature.
I live in Finland (Turku/Åbo) and I can say without a doubt your assessment of Finnish opinion of Swedish and Russian is really off. I know a lot of natural born Finns that speak no Finnish but speak Swedish fluently, but I know absolutely no Finns that speak better Russian than Finnish. There is even a Swedish Speakers party in government, and I work at Åbo Akademi, an entirely Swedish speaking university (I myself am from Canada). So there is absolutely no one calling for Swedish to be replaced by Russian as the second national language.
Finland is part of the Nordic group. Not a linguistic one but hey it’s a group.
As is iceland
2:36 me being proud he used a Swedish alphabet
Du gammla du fria intensifies
DU GAMLA DU FRIA
DU FJALLHÖGA NORD-
DU TYSTA DU GLADJERIKA SKÖNA
JAG HALSÄR SIG VANÄSTE LAND UPÅ JORD
DIN SOL, DIN HIMMEL, DINA ANGDER GRÖNA
(im not swedish did i memorize this right lol-)
Almost! 👍
DU GAMLA, DU FRIA,
DU FJÄLLHÖGA NORD.
DU TYSTA, DU GLÄJDERIKA SKÖNA.
JAG DIG VÄNASTE LAND UPPÅ JORD.
DIN SOL, DIN HIMMEL, DINA ÄNGDER GRÖNA.
(Finnish uses the same alphabet)
In Finland roughly 5% of the population is swedish speaking, thats WAY, more than russian speakers and thats why swedish is a official language in Finland. Compulsory swedish isnt too popular in school but no one outside the populist right is advocating its for its abolishment and certainly no one is advocating for compulsory russian. Some do think that students should be free to pick what languege they wish to study, beyong English that is. I've never heard of anyone being pissed off about the existance of 'Å' in the Finnish alphabet, it doesnt exist in any Finnish words, not even loan words. (Surnames can have the letter though). There really is no resentment in Finland against the swedish language, with the exception of students and the populist right.
Why not just call them the Nordic?
Possibly your best video yet!
0:23
DetRIOT
Well spotted, SIr or Madam, well spotted indeed.
I speak Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish and have a basic understanding of Faroese and å is á in both Icelandic and Faroese with the same meaning
0:25 You spelled Detroit wrong
We must riot at the misspelling😠😂
@@Lcngopher yessss lol
There’s a place in lofoten Norway that is called  and its said how you would pronounce Ae
The ö letter just looks surprised all the time
6:13 Å does mean river but in north sweden we also use it as a word for "and". You could say "Du å jag" which means "you and me"