after watching the Pusher films I began to love danish! I can't understand a thing they saying but it sounds nice. Norwegian I understand alot better even if it kinda sounds silly and nearly comedic sometimes
Swedish is my second language, but honestly, despite the fact that I can't understand Danes outside a 1-1 conversation context (ie. films/tv Im just lost), I find it quite pleasantly chill.
Which implies Norwegian is the "proper" Scandinavian? 😂 Don't forget about the age gap. Millennials and older generations grew up learning other Scandinavian languages through television, children's shows and the like. Younger generations don't learn the other Scandinavian languages this way and often have a harder time to understand their neighbors abroad.
@@simonliland927 Yes, largely because most of them could see our tv broadcasts back in the day, but usually not the other way round. (But historically also because Sweden has been more dominant, for centuries.)
@@herrbonk3635 The "silly" norwegian is typical for the south east part of the country, the area around Oslo, and since Oslo is the capital of Norway this dialect is often identified as some kind of "standard norwegian", although there is no "standard norwegian", to my knowledge (contrary to Sweden, where the accents in Nyköping and Enköping are dubbed to "rikssvenska" = official standard swedish). For instance, the Bergen accent sounds very different from Oslo accent, not silly at all, and the accent in Bodö is surprisingly close to swedish. It´s my experience that Norway, although with half as many inhabitants as Sweden, has a far greater dialectal variety. Probably even greater than the whole of USA.
@@ingemarsjoo4542 I didn't mention Oslo here. But where I did, it was because that's an easy reference to grasp for outsiders. Yes, Bergen is indeed very different from Oslo. But so what? :) Did I suggest otherwise? And yes, some dialects are close to Swedish, for sure. "Nyköping and Enköping dubbed to "rikssvenska" is just nonsense though :) They both have particular dialects... especially 50 years ago and back, and especially Enköping (I live very close, in Uppsala). Rikssvenska is the accent people moving in from other parts of Sweden were taught (up until 1975) when moving to Svealand in order to work for media, government, as teachers, etc. It was very close to the natural accents of Mälardalen at the time, but without the most rural or uneducated forms.
As a half-Norwegian Swede who grew up in Sweden with a father from Bergen, I can assure you that the "sounds silly in an overly happy way" does not apply to all accents. The way my father answered the house phone with an angry-sounding "Hallo, det er meg" even became a sort of meme among my brother's friends because of how aggressive it sounded.
As a Bergenser (Bergenser = Someone from Bergen) I have been asked "why are you so angry/mad?" when I'm really not, it's just how we speak. Many of our R's is not "rolling R's, but hard R's like the Dutch or Germans". I can go to Oslo and I'll have to speak slowly to make myself understood. and sometimes even having to use their rolling on the tounge R's for them to understand. Ofc Bergensere understand Swedish or Danish perfectly fine, it's a bigger problem for them to understand us. I think Oslo sounds like they are singing too, and if i try to speak like that it just sounds wrong and stupid. In Oslo the R is one of the last sounds the kids learn as babies, but in Bergen the R is one of the first sounds a child can make. Swedish also sounds soft and singing like to me, but the Danish just sounds like someone shoved a potato down their throats. :)
As a norwegian it's funny because it is the exact same way for us. at least for me. Swedish is INHERENTLY funny. Also fake pseudo science side note that i made up but i stand by 100%: there are two types of swedish ways to speak and every swede can be sorted into these two extremes on a spectrum. the spectrum goes from A: Baby voice , to B: Problematic alcoholic uncle voice.
I agree. He mentions at the end that Norwegian and Swedish probs sound similar to native english speakers like me. But I can confirm that I know they're Swedish if they have a weird baby cartoon voice.
That is interesting. The Baby-Voice I have been noticing also, starting to appear around Stockholm about 10-15 years ago. I left my home in Sweden 24 years ago, and only come back once or twice a year. The language has evolved over this time-period, with the baby-voice one of the most notable changes.
Dane here: Norwegians sound silly and happy, Swedes sound silly and haughty. My mouth is open and ready to receive your potatoes. btw. I think at least some of it has to do with the different tones in their respective pitch accents. The Swedish tone 2 sounds overly concerted to me. I'm not saying Danish sounds good, but we at least sound angry when we are. As a boy, I once got scolded by a Norwegian, and I just couldn't take it seriously and began laughing because it sounded funny.
I can assure you that I sound very angry when I'm angry. The ones around and in Stockholm sound silly even to Swedes though. I do think Danish has a lot of silliness to it as well, but I'd probably and unfortunately have to agree with you that it's the least silly sounding, at least when comparing the capital dialects.
@@CottidaeSEA yes exactly, there's a wide range of tonal patterns in different regions of both sweden and norway that have completely different connotations than the usual ones, but since most people outside scandinavia are only ever exposed to the prestige dialects of both capitol areas, they will just assume that the rest of both countries will sound the same. best example of this i think is comparing finnmarks dialect with oslo dialect, completely different vibes. unfortunately for me my värmland dialect can't escape the "silly sounding"-label from either side of our border, other swedes will tell me i sound stupid, hillbilly and always jolly like a norwegian, meanwhile norwegians say i sound stupid, hillbilly but also gay like the rest of sweden. oh well, at least i'm glad i'm not speaking östgötska
@@Timber2k I'm from Sweden and I actually asked someone once from northern Norway to scold me just to hear what it sounded like and it was not silly sounding at all. I actually believed him. :) It also sounded somewhat more like Swedish, at least the intonation.
As an Icelander, I always thought Swedish sounded very happy and sing-songy, always rising and falling in tone. But that might be some other Scandinavian language, I was quite shocked when you said Swedish was depressing lol.
As a Norwegian I agree about the Swedish language sounding happy and sing-songy, always rising and falling. Probably since it does in other patterns than Norwegian. My dialect does not have the "up-at-the-end" pattern many Swedes finds funny about Norwegian.
Totally depends on the accent, I would say. Some people in Norrland (and Skåne too) actually sound a little sad, passive aggressive or depressing, while other accents or sociolects almost nearby can sound even more happy and upbeat than standard rikssvenska in central Svealand (where Stockholm is).
As a Finnish person having learned Swedish in school, Norwegian pretty much sounds to me like a dialect of Swedish. Danish on the other hand is utterly incomprehensible.
Respect. You know it. Funny fact though is that Swedish and Danish (east-old-norse) was the same language in Viking times, while Norwegian was the different one (west-old-norse). Meaning that 1000 years ago, a Swede and a Dane understood each other better than a Swede and a Norwegian. Today it has flipped. Idk why.
I'm a second language German speaker. I've always found the continental Scandinavian languages to be fun--jovial perhaps. Pitch accent and their intonation patterns are what make it for me. To me, languages are just funny and silly in their own unique way; Swedish and Norwegian for their intonation, French for its ..everything.
German is silly because of the way you can just smash words together to make a new one. Pflanzenkraftwerkmanufakturarbeiterschutzgesetzautor. That would mean "author of the plant power plant manufacture worker protection law" and consists of the words Pflanze (plant), Kraft (power/force), Werk (factory/work, combined with Kraft as Kraftwerk, it means power plant), Manufaktur (noun version of manufacture), Arbeiter (worker), Schutz (protection), Gesetz (law) and Autor (author).
As a norwegian i think its super confusing that someone finds swedish depressing. I usually think of it as a way happier and sing songy language. Its fun to hear that swedes make as much fun of us as we do of them though
It depends on the dialects though. We have a literall dialect belt called "Gnällbältet" where it actually sounds like they are "whining" or complaining all the time. People from Gothenburg sounds really jolly as do people from Dalarna. People from the northern part don't use as many words and they go down in pitch and may actually be the ones sounding more depressed.
@@Magnus_Loov Yes, Northern Swedish sounds quite a bit more like Finnish in the way they speak, who are known for sounding depressed. Honestly, living that far up in the cold and darkness, I wouldn't expect anything else.
Personally I think Swedish sounds a lot more like German, without the harsher sounds of the language. Quite sterile, neutral and academic. While Norwegian sounds a lot more lively and jolly.
@@-RXB- Just parts of Norrland (mainly Norrbotten and mostly the western part of it) have a Finnish tone. Norrland overall have may different dialect variants but the most common denominator is that they often don't use as many words or cut the words off makig them shorter to the point that sometimes even a "yes" is just them "breathing in" with a slight whistlig tone sounding like a very fainit "Ju". or "Ssiu" . For that kind of passive "yes" they don't even bother to speak out, they just inhale in a kind of "I agree but don't care that much" way! And the mentioned "going down in tone" (for the last syllable),
As a Norwegian: Obligatory comment about how no, _your_ language sounds funny and happy and... weirdly feminine? Also, a note about intonation patterns: The "up-at-the-end" pattern only exists in Eastern and Central dialects. In the west and north of the country, the intonation pattern is flipped, and most sentences end with a _downward_ intonation. I'm sure this is all great fun for those poor souls trying to learn our language.
weirdly feminine. lol. as a German I kinda get it, but I feel like this about Swedish and Norwegian, not Danish btw, probably because it's a tad more similar to German.
as a Swede I find this interesting! I wondered how you perceive our language. I'm from Östergötland and our dialect(östgötska) sound horrible. It's the ugliest dialect ever 🤢
@@Martin_likes_beer don't be like that, your dialect is wonderfully funny! if you can sing Bjällerklang in östgötska you can instantly send most people into a laughing fit
Having worked in the oil business I (a Swede) had to take a multitude of courses in Edinburgh/Scotland. As it happened, I met up with a Dane and a Norwegian who I spent time talking with in the free time we had. It blew the minds of Scots/Englishmen when they found out that we spoke our respective languages and still managed to make ourselves understood...
I'm an exchange student in Vienna rn, and just yesterday at some welcomingg party all the Scandinavian people somehow found each other and spent most of the night speaking to each other, in our own languages (and some English to my 2 very social Dutch friends whenever they circled round back to us lol)
I think the best equivalent for English speakers is all the Dutch that goes viral on twitter for sounding funny - think the headline ‘Hitler dood wat nou’ or ‘we hebben een serious probleem’
I remember seeing some meme with 'spank me daddy' being 'geef me een klap papa' in Dutch and thought that was the funniest shit ever; even thought I'm not native English speaker (but Polish, and in Polish spank is also klap/klaps, but of course in English clap has also similar meaning).
As a Norwegian who moved to Sweden in 2013 and achieved equal fluency in both languages, I can see this from both sides. My Norwegian brain thinks that Swedish sounds silly often times, whereas my Swedish "indoctrination" sheds new light on which parts of my native tongue sound silly, or plain weird (like certain grammatical structures). The similarities are indeed what causes this, widely different languages will automatically take room on opposite ends of the cognitive housing - but this is like sharing a living room and disagreeing on which channel to watch. I find that, after a visit to my family in Norway (I was there in July and May of this year), Swedish is a bit alien and odd-sounding. When arriving in Norway, the Norwegian is jarring and borderline silly, especially the dialect I speak (middle-Norway, your second audio example). Great video, we talk about this all the time at work!
Vet du om det är något särskilt som får svenska att låta löjligt? Han i videon trodde att det är (öst-)norskans betoning som får det att låta löjligt för svenskar. Jag undrar om där är någon liknande sak som gör svenska löjligt för norrmän.
@@vhil364 För min del handlar det mest om orden i sig, en del av dem låter 'barnsliga'. "Spindel", till exempel, eller "bebis", det blir mjukt och barnaktigt. Detsamma gäller vissa böjningar, exempelvis "mammor", "pappor", "sköterskor", "sångerskor" etc. , det ger en känslan av någon som inte helt lärt sig hur man pratar. Det som stör mest är dock alla förkortningar, smeknamn, och is-ar och or-ar - att Lars blir Lasse, Hugo blir Hugge, Anders blir Adde, Leif blir Leffe etc. Det skulle aldrig fungera att ha programledare vid namn "Babben" på norska, till exempel. Fralla, frulle, frilla, allt sådant låter märkligt med norska öron. Detta samt Stockholmares tendens att is-ifiera precis allting (Medis, Rålis, Mellis, Fiskis, Fjärris, Skådis, Timmis, Veggis). Med det sagt så tycker jag väldigt om svenskan; ordvitsar, slang och annat roligt ligger en mil före norskan. Jag har även lärt mig att tycka om dess mer precisa skriftspråk, trots lite krångel.
To be "dead" correct, Märtha was Olav's wife while he was a crown prince. They married in 1929. She passed away from cancer in 1954. Olav became king as a widower in 1957, after his father, the Danish born king Haakon VII died. The Danish prince Carl who could never speak Norwegian, although being chosen as king of Norway in 1905. Still much admired and respected, I might add. Anyway, was Märtha's sister Astrid, who if my memory serves me right, was killed in a car accident in Belgium or thereabouts, sometime in the later 1930s?
To English speakers, Dutch is definitely the "silliest" sounding language. So many words are the same except for different, unnatural (to us) vowel sounds. And the main consonants they have that are different from ours are ch and g, which sound guttural and very weird to us. I love Dutch though.
yeah English is my native language and I know German pretty well too so Dutch sounds funny to me in multiple ways. It sounds like silly children’s language from the English direction, and from the German direction is sounds like they’re slurring all their words like they’re drunk or something
@@fruustlesthat's exactly how it sounds to me as a native English speaker. It's like if they just spoke louder or more clearly maybe I'd understand them, but no, it'll never happen. To me Dutch sounds like someone who speaks no English is trying to convince me that they speak English well.
It's a "intonation continuum" all over Scandinavia too, not just dialect. Eastern Norway is where it peaks with the high-pitch endings. In Bergen, Norway we have the opposite intonation (and I'm not exaggerating), which is much closer to the intonation in Skåne or Stockholm in Sweden. I mean, people from Gøteborg are much more "cartoonish sounding" than we in Bergen are, but ofcourse not as much as in Oslo, or Eastern Norway in general, (where again, the high ending intonation peaks in Scandinavia). Trøndelag is much like Eastern Norway as well, but Northern Norway is not, they speak in the exact same intonations as in Northern-Sweden.
Eyo, Norwegian here. From our viewpoint about 95% of what you said is correct for our view on Swedish too. Swedish sounds off, cute, funny, uncanny. I personally don't think of it as "depressed" and haven't heard that before, but maybe some people think that?
I think the mutual intelligibilities between the Germanic (especially North Germanic) languages is very interesting. I don't speak any Scandinavian languages - just English, German some Old English, but last year, I watched "The Rain", which is a Danish Netflix programme and it was such an interesting experience. I obviously couldn't understand anything much, but there were bits and pieces I caught. Mainly just single words and short sentences and by the time I realised I'd understood it, it had moved on. Interestingly, there was one bit where a character spoke in Swedish, and despite all the differences I'd expected to pick up on, I couldn't notice the shift. I can generally distinguish the three of them in isolation, but for some reason, it was giving be real grief when I tried there. :)
The "silly valley" is a great way to phrase it. I can think of a bunch of examples at the top of my head: Dutch and Low German to German-speakers, Belarusian to Russian-speakers. It's also common with regional varieties, like how Americans find Canadian accents adorable. It isn't lost on me that it's usually the less spoken or less prestigious language that sounds silly to speakers of the more common or more prestigious language, and that the feeling is often not mutual.
Pretty much this i don't hear anything weird when listening to languages like Chinese because it's completely unrelated and different compared to my own. But when it's my own language (Dutch) and i hear German it sounds super funny because it's very close but different (to me it sounds like they have trouble pronouncing words in general💀) It's even weirder when hearing a dialect like Flemish which is just the same language as Dutch but sounds slightly different and use some different words so there you really like hyperfocus on the minimal differences.
As a Swede I can't hear much difference between Canadian and American English. Except if they Canadian bring in a "Ay?" (or "Eh?") at the end of the sentences. In fact many times I have learnt that famous actors or other famous people actually were from Canada. Jim Carrey, for example. I can't hear that in his voice. In fact I can hear much more dialects that are much more different in the states compared to the "standard American accent" or the Canadian English accent. The Brits are in a class of their own when it comes to differences in regional accents though. Great variety in such a small area!
As a Spanish speaker, PORTUGUESE is THE FUNNIEST language in the world. They're just superior with phonetics and word endings. I love you and your language ❤🇵🇹🇵🇹🇧🇷
Portuguese is objectively a little bit funny. Brazilian Portuguese even a bit more funny. Someone being pissed off and eloquent in Brazilian Portuguese is just amazing to listen to as long as you are not the reason they are pissed off. Love the sound of Portuguese.
@@rustknuckleirongut8107 You know those stupi ultraconservetive takes on pronouns? "I don't use pronouns!", "There are no pronouns in the Bible.", etc.? Brazilian Portuguese took it to heart.
What do you think about Italian though? I've learned some Spanish and the vocabulary is astoundingly similar to Italian in some cases. Idk just a random thought of mine (love your language, wish I'd speak it better than I do)
I am a native Spanish speaker too, and for me the funniest language has to be Italian, with Portuguese as a close second. But Portuguese probably has the funniest word: guardanapos (napkin), because it almost means nape-keeper in Spanish.
@@beth5627As a Spanish native speaker I find Italian very easy to hear (although not as easy to understand), not funny or strange, since it has the same sounds. I feel I could write what I hear and understand more than 80%. Romance languages outside Spain tend to have very stark pronounciation differences (French, Romanian, Portuguese) while the ones in Spain sound similar (Spanish, Galician, Catalan-Valencian-Balearic, Basque and Bable). Italian sounds more similar to the Spanish, even though it is less inteligible than Portuguese to a native Spanish speaker.
I like how you hit on the tonation of Norwegian. It's one of the things foreigners usually never get correct. We have very specific tonations based on your dialect, and when a foreigner speak, they either fuck it up completely (which is fine, dw about it. We still understand you), or they mix tonations from different dialects. For example. I have a friend from Hungary, who speaks Norwegian extremely well. However, he has some words he uses the "wrong tonation" for his dialect, and it instantly throws you off. We make fun of him a lot.
the word order "bilen min" is quite common in parts of sweden as well. i grew up in northern sweden (ångermanland) and it was very common to hear that word order in every day conversations.
Or rather.. shifting focuse between "the car that I own" , to me and my car/cars that I use or own! Its a shift of posseision I think.. frome the car to the possesion of that car.. even its not yours! In anyway.. its often easy to understand Norweigan for a swede.. its still in swedish vocabulary.. its like "my car" or "the car of mine"!
@@Malfredsson @Malfredsson In Norrland where i come from we say "Vi tar bilen min" and "Nu far vi till köket" I don't talk like that much since i've lived in Stockholm for 10 years but sometimes i slip.
Being a Norwegian I'd say Swedish sounds happy and jolly, rather than depressing. It's the best language for comedy films. Similarly I also find that "standard" south east norwegian sounds childish, and sort of fake and unnatural compared to other dialects around Norway.
It’s the same here in Sweden. We think you sound happy and almost dumb like you can understand bad things. And where I’m from in Skåne and many other places in Sweden we think the Stockholm area accent sounds dumb posh and childish.
@@Nxmsei Du förstår väl att Stockholm är den stad med flest dialekter i Sverige? Så när du säger ”Stockholms dialekt” vilken menar du? Alla, till och med Söder dialekt? För Söder dialekt låter betydligt mer manligt än den typiska ’Lidingö’ dialekten.
Yes, Czech does sound funny to Polish speakers. I'm not sure why, but I have few potential candidates: - stress: Polish has it on the penult, Czech on the initial - vowel length: Polish doesn't use it, in Czech it's phonemic, giving the language a completely different rhythm - palatalization: Polish retroflex consonants correspond to postalveolars in Czech, which makes them "softer"; meanwhile Polish "soft" alveolopalatals usually become "hard" dentals in Czech; those two aspects contrast with each other in a clashing way - use of diminutives in different places than in Polish, especially combined with softness of č in -ček or -čka endings that frequently occur in diminutives, makes them sound childish - and in general, using different derivational prefixes (so a word after translating looks more like a victim of overly creative word derivation than a word in a foreign language) - still using -ová for female surnames (the long á only makes it more noticeable) - the present tense of být, both in its use as a copula (where it sounds like a childish simplification), and as an auxiliary - false friends (my favourite example: nápad), including words that narrowed or shifted their meaning - Czech using Slavic words where Polish used loanwords; some of those can be funny, like divadlo - the vowel shifts that happened in Czech, most importantly loss of nasals, shift to e/i in historically palatalized contexts, and merger of i and y - ř I just found a 2022 presentation titled "Dlaczego język czeski śmieszy Polaków?" by Grażyna Balowska from Opole University, she mentions some of those reasons and discusses dozens of funny or otherwise shocking false friends in Czech.
As a Czech, I appreacite this thorough comparison, it makes a lot of good points that make sense even from my side of the proverbial language barricade.
I’m a Norwegian who loves the Swedish language. There are so many beautiful dialects in Sweden too, but dialects are often ridiculed in Sweden. In Norway people are proud of their dialect and will not disrespect other dialects. Dialects are cool in Norway. 🇳🇴🇸🇪
Oh, Norwegians poke fun at dialects, too. Trøndersk and nordlandsk, for example, are inherently funny to most Norwegians - including the speakers of those dialects.
@@liseanettegranheim4404 It's not that we make fun of our own dialect - at least not primarily - but we do find our own dialect funny. And yes, we do put on an extra broad variant of that dialect when pretending to be... I guess "hick" is the best word in English.
To me as a German speaker, both Dutch and Swiss German sound quite funny. I think for very similar reasons as with Norwegian for a Swedish person. At least with Swiss German, the intonation is very different and to my ears sounds very silly. And also words being used differently, like "lässig".
my grandpa was swiss so i've had more interactions with the language than most swedish people, and i've long held that swiss is to german what norwegian is to swedish.
As a Norwegian who has worked in Switzerland among many places (and remembers a tiny bit of my school German), hearing Swiss-German makes me wonder why there are others who grew up on the eastern slopes of the Jotunheimen mountain massif before I realize my confusion. We "sing" so similarly in our speech. Interestingly, the old art of jodelling and Norwegian "lokk/kulning" (also found in western Sweden, once a part of Norway). Jodelling and kulning are, however, not directly related - but people living in similar landscapes developed similar solutions to make voices carry as far as possible (including pitching up into head voice at the end of phrases).
honestly, half of German dialects already have that, even within Germany. "schwätzen" being used by the Swabians as the standard word for speaking/talking is a thing very comparable to "snacka/snakke" in Swedish and Norwegian i think, or Hessians with "babbeln"
Fun take on the differences and similarities between our Scandinavian languages. I have one little quibble with regards to the grammar example. In Norway we can say both "bilen min" and "min bil". Both mean "my car", but the last version is often used when the focus is on the fact that it's MY car.
Sometimes we can say "Bilen min" or whatever is before "min" in Swedish too. In a more relaxed kind of way. In songs we sometimes do this (probably to make it rhyme) too.
@@TorBarstad Får mig att tänka på svenska (komiskt ordvitsiga) sångaren Robert Broberg : "Min bil är inte lik din bil det är en likbil!". Likbil=Bilen som transporterar "lik", döda människor! Ni har inte ens "likbil" ser jag. Ni har "olikbil" antar jag!😄 Eller "Olycksbil". Jag menar "Alla är döda när vi kommer fram!"
@@TorBarstad Får mig att tänka på svenska komikersångaren "Robert Broberg" och låten "Min bil är inte lik din bil det är en likbil"! ruclips.net/video/ZLMUG33mUyQ/видео.html&start_radio=1 Totalt hysteriskt roligt i det här sammanhanget. Likbil=Bil som transporterar, just det", lik (i kistor). Ni verkar inte ens ha "likbil" på norska! Det är en "Olikbil"! En olik bil jämfört med vår likbil. Eller "Olycksbil" kanske. För alla är ju döda när vi kommer fram! :) Jag dör av skratt! (Behöver en likbil)
And in Norwegian just put a line across the o to make an ø, then add another r at the end and the it means the same as the originally discussed Swedish meaning
dialect variations such as "sno" and "snor" are cognates with standard norwegian "snu" and standard swedish "snurra", which often means something turning on itself to a degree. some dialects of värmländska share roughly the same meaning of "snor" as the neighbouring norwegian dialects, like the act of tying a knot or a thinly twined string. some old people also say "sno" when they refer to a cold wind breeze, and when it's blowing a lot it "snor" outside.
I've always thought that, strangely enough, the western Norwegian dialects have more inherited words in common with Swedish than the eastern Norwegian dialects that actually border to Sweden. Western dialects will still use the words that you referred to that are typical of eastern dialects, but there's also more local older words that are similar to the Swedish equivalent. Words like "ete, arg, tale" would be among them - as well as "snor" (more likely pronounced "snår") for snot. It doesn't make sense in terms of a geographic dialect continuum, but I guess that just speaks to the overall influence of Danish on the eastern Norwegian dialects over the centuries.
As someone who speaks danish and german I always thought that swedish is to danish what dutch is to german. Possible to understand if you listen closely, but just very silly. Norwegian always just felt like someone saying danish words like they would be pronounced if danish was a somewhat reasonable language lol
As a Hungarian, the silliest sounding Language to me has to be Finnish. On one hand It sounds a bit like Hungarian except with none of the same words, like a sort of Sims language. On the other hand it borrows some of the silly intonations from its Norse neighbors. Also Finns speaking English is the funniest shit ever.
Rally English is indeed silly. Where it turns into pure, unadultered horror is rally *Japanese*. Check out some Marutei Tsurunen videos, and don't say I didn't warn you.
As a Brit who speaks some Finnish and has heard a fair bit of Scandinavian languages, I can imagine, Hungarian is incomprehensible to me.. and rally English is very funny sounding but kinda cute.. I really love the variety of ways people communicate. Got to go look up rally Japanese now..
As a native Portuguese speaker (Brazil), People from Portugal sound incredibly funny for some reason, and Spanish sounds like they're overpronouncing every vowel, and speaking on fast forward. And my impression of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish is that Swedish sounds funny for some reason, Danish sounds like they're slurring everything together and Norwegian sounds vanilla except for declarative statements sounding like questions. I'm sorry of I've offended anyone.
There are so many insulting takes and uninformed opinions in this comment section, your comment isn't one of them! In fact, that's quite endearing. I mean we agree on the Danish, so we are good. I wonder why my vanilla (Swedish) sounds silly to you, and something I find so silly (Norweigian) sounds vanilla to you... Vanilla might not be the best word for what I'm hearing. Maybe mundane is closer.
Lol im swedish and dont know any of those languages, but i still think youre exactly right for spanish. Same for standard french with the overpronouncing, it makes both spanish and french sound a bit arrogant to me.
Haha, it'd be interesting if someone made a comparison about mutual perceptions of each other's languages, between Spanish and Portuguese accents. Brazilian Pt often sounds kinda singy-songy and relaxed, and a bit cute. But Pt from Portugal sounds different, kinda colder and more serious.
To put this in to perspective for you and compare the Scandinavian languages against your note, Brazilian Portuguese would be Danish, Portugal Portuguese would be Norwegian and Swedish would be Spanish. Maybe easier to understand?
As a german who learns swedish and has spent a bif of time in Lund/Malmö i find it sounds a bit funny in a cute way. It has what we germans call "Sing-sang" so you pronounce the weirdly and always go up and down and it just sounds like your singing or humming, it's hard to describe but Swiss german and Schwitzerdüütsch sound in that regard almost like swedisch.
To me, native Spanish and Basque speaker, both Norwegian and Swedish sound like someone speaking while eating (not a potato, that's for Danes) but like, you know, mouth half full, not really making an effort to state sounds clearly.
As a Swede, I look at English in the same way. It sounds like they refuse to open their mouth all the way when speaking. And that Swedish is much more clearly pronounced. It is maybe because there are so many damn diphthongs in English which I interpret as constricting.
i feel like this is especially noticable with dialects like västgötska, which i speak. It's to the point that i almost want to call it another language because we treat the spellings of words as a vague suggestion a lot of the time. For example "trädet" can sometimes turn into [tʁæ:a], which is almost converging on danish somehow, and is also like really tonal? the [æ] sound dips real low and then the tone goes back up for the final [a]
That's very accurate for when we speak colloquially though, at least in Swedish. We barely pronounce any words the way they are written, and instead kind of rush everything together. An example is how "jag" becomes "ja". Something like "Jag ska diska", which means I'm going to do the dishes, becomes "jaskadisk".
As a Norwegian, I think Swedish is a beautiful language, I think it sounds a little softer than Norwegian. But I would also like to argue that the Scandinavian languages can be considered a large dialect continuum. It is, for example, easier for me to understand standard Swedish than some of the Norwegian dialects.
In the silley valley, you had a missed opportunity with "Jäg vil ha en bärs", in Swedish that would be I would like one beer. In Norwegian it would be, I would like one poop.
As a Dutch person living in Norway, at first both Norwegian and Swedish sounded hilarious to me. They're such bouncy languages. Now that I've lived here for a few years, Norwegians sounds entirely normal and neutral to me, but Swedish is still hilariously bouncy.
@@linusfotograf Yeah, I can usually get the gist. But I probably only really understand 50% of the words if I listen to two people talking to each other. If they're talking to me directly, it's a little easier, but I always feel like I'm talking over a satellite connection, because there's a 5 second delay before I can respond, because I have to process things first 😅
It's not just across languages, but within varieties of languages. You get many Canadians, younger Australians, and some American Californians doing a non-final rising intonation for _declarative_ statements, which to almost anyone else sounds like a question; that intonation only falls when the **full** statement is uttered at the very end. (They basically speak in "paragraphs", with only the final sentence falling.) And it stands out: in the US, it's associated with "Valley Girl" speak, or "Surfer Dude" speak.
My partner has an uncle who is Swedish and it is absolutely a language we take the piss out of all the time. And the funniest thing is, because of the pitch accent, us trying to take the piss ends up being MORE CORRECT than us trying to say a word off-handedly. Once I was in Sweden and I saw the guys driving licence (körkort) and I just said the word how I normally would as someone who does not speak Swedish but is familiar with its orthography. He said it sounded wrong. Then I said something to the effect of “I’m sorry, kJÖÖÖÖÖRkURTTTTTT” as a joke and he was like “yeah that’s pretty spot on”, not even realizing I was just taking the piss. Not to mention as someone who speaks English and German, I find some Swedish to be a funny mishmash like “tillsammans” being like “I took German zusamnen but I replaced zu- with the English equivalent “till”.
Hahaha...that's exactly how it is. When we Norwegians really put on a Swedish accent to make fun of the language, then we get it done. When I was a student, I played a Swedish character in the student revue, and all I had to do was give it my all and a little more all the way, and it turned out right.
English "till" was a loan word from the Scandinavian languages, during the Danelaw in the 800s. While words like "samme", "samma" are old heritage words that retained their form in Swedish, but became "zusammen" by typical High German use of prefixes and consonant shift during the middle ages. So Swedish is closer to the original than both (standard) German and English, as is often the case.
Me, a hopeless lingshitter: "haha wouldn't it be funny if the Swedish word for 'forbidden' were something silly like 'förbjuden' lol wouldn't that be hilarious lmao" The Swedish language: 👀💦💦💦
I always find it funny as a Native English Speaker learning German to see memes about German being aggressive when really I’ve found it’s usually very calm and narrative. I actually often make a point when I meet people and I talk about my studying of German to demonstrate how it’s really just calm and only aggressive when I make it.
As a native German with a decent command of the Swedish language, Norwegian does sound funny to me. And that's because of two things: the rising intonation and the vocabulary. Norwegians often have cute words for things. These factors made watching e.g. Vikingane even more funny.
Two regions in Norway have the intonation pattern that you mentioned: standard østnorsk and dialect varieties of this one; plus dialects belonging to the larger group called trøndske (trønderske) dialekter. They stick out in Norway - but they also stick out in Europe. Because they combine two things that hardly any other language does: an unstressed syllable with a high pitch. The usual pattern in ANY European language is to speak in a high pitched whenever a word / syllable / section has stress; as that is a more important syllable. You would speak a word like “waiting” with the highest pitch on the “wait-“, because that’s the stressed part of the word. However, the roles may flip when you say the word “possess”, because the stress is on the last syllable. I’m Norwegian, I don’t speak either of these dialects, so my melody is just as depressed as any Swede! And so are most dialects in Norway. However, the dialect of our capital region dominates in all films and in all communication that foreigners get from Norway. So all you ever hear, is this particular way of speaking; the “standard østnorsk”. It sounds funny to us, too… but as a linguist I have decided to just be proud! This is UNIQUE!
As a Swede, Norwegians sounds like they are happy all the time, even when they are angry. Scandinavian intonation is also good for not dozing off, like English which is on the same tone all the time.
I am native french speaker living in France and the way you describe norwegian as a swedish speaker reminds me a lot of the relationship most of us french have with québec french. People here love to imitate the accent and to describe it as incredibly "silly". You got entire comedy sketches centered around making fun of the people from québec and how they speak. The interesting part is they barely exaggerate the traits : québec french does have a different phonology, including different phonemes, different intonation, etc, and different vocabulary. When I came across content made by french speaking canadians on youtube, it took me some time to throw this "silly" impression their accent gave me. It was like trying to listen to someone making a silly voice on purpose and having to do the conscious effort of ignoring it. It's really interesting, to see that a similar phenomenon is happening in a different cultural setting.
3:25 Norwegian has "ete"/"ete" and "arg" too. "Ete" in Bokmål is mostly used for animals, or eating greedily, because of Danish. But in Nynorsk, "eta" is the common word for "eat". Nynorsk actually does not have "spisa". "Eta" is very common in dialects. "Arg" is also common.
8:34 I think you’re right about Swedish having a bit of a silly reputation, at least in the anglophone world. When I think of media depictions of Swedish characters, I think of the Swedish chef muppet or more modernly the Swede from “Our Flag Means Death”, both of whom have a kind of sing-song accent that accompanies a sort of bumbling demeanor. I actually can’t think of characters that are Danish or Norwegian in the same way, not counting Vikings
I'm from England, and I don't speak any Scandinavian languages to any degree at all. From just a kind of aesthetic level of the sound of the language, I think Danish has a much more familiar intonation pattern to English out of the three. And then the Norwegian rising intonation actually doesn't sound so weird because it's so consistent. It's like the 'Australian' or 'uptalk' rising intonation style that some (generally older) people have tended to grumble about some other (generally younger) people using in English. It might be an unusual intonation pattern to you, but it's easy to understand what it is and how it's different from your own intonation (and how perhaps you might not like it!). Which leaves Swedish as having just as 'foreign' an intonation pattern but one which seems less easy to get a handle on than Norwegian, so it sounds subjectively stranger. That's my amateurish theory anyway!
The person who was used as a "blueprint" for the Swedish chef in the Muppets was actually a Swedish chef visiting some American Tv-station, who made food in a morning Tv-show. That Swede came from a very sing-songy part of Sweden called Dalarna and he also didn't speak very good English and put in some Swedish words in the middle of sentences and the combo of bad English in that extremely sing-songy dialect of Sweden just made that comical character! I would give a fortune just to hear the original chef! So your imagination about how a Swede sounds is partly formed by that dialect from Dalarna which is off the chart in sing-songy-ness!
This seems similar to how Finns make fun of Estonian. It's uncanny valley similar, lot of confusing word pairs and everyone has learned to laugh at it. It was kinda weird learning it, cause Estonian funnyness decreased steadily the more I learned it. Anyways, I think that the general consensus in Finland is that Swedish sounds too lighthearted, too happy and too melodic. I guess cause Finnish is so monotonous and also because of the image we have of Swedes: too happy, too social, too performative. (I like swedish though, it sounds pretty, but also kinda like a child who is too excited to explain more calmly. Softer and faster than Finnish)
Was there anything you had trouble with, learning Estonian? I've heard they lack vowel harmony, so I guess that would sound weird to a Finn. To my Norwegian ears, Finnish always sounded amazing. The exact opposite of how you describe Swedish (which makes sense): down to earth, serious, monotonous, a bit melancholic. I especially like the diphthongs and rolled r-s!
@@Saturos02 I didn't have any big issues with Estonian, although I never learned it by the book, but just watched a bunch of movies in Estonian and just very occasionally checked grammar. The languages are so similar that I didn't even need that much repetition. Although I have to admit that I have watched Frozen in Estonian over a dozen times and could quote it by heart during my most active learning period 😳 They do not share the Finnish vowel harmony, that's true, but they have their own logic: front vowels only in the first syllable. It was pretty easy to pick up with practice, since Finnish also has some loan words that break vowel harmony anyways. I also went there for an exchange in upper secondary school which helped to polish my skills, but I could speak okayish Estonian already when I got there. Now however I don't get enough practice so I've become a little rusty...
@@kanskubansku Ah, I see. Haven't heard much spoken Estonian, but it definitely sounded like "weird" Finnish! Not to mention the Sami language, but then I guess we're way past any kind of mutual intelligibility.
@@Saturos02 Yeah, Sami languages are impossible to understand for Finns without studying. Karelian is borderline possible. It's the closest to Finnish and since it's mainly spoken in Finland or former Finnish territories, it has great resemblence, but I think I understand it way better _because_ I also know Estonian. Finns usually say that Estonian sounds drunk Finnish. Funnyly enough, when I did an exchange year in Estonia, Estonians said the same for Finnish. My theory/opinion is that Estonian sounds the first level of drunkness when you're happily getting tipsy and Finnish the drunkness after too many drinks, when you start to talk slow, mumble and sound sleepy. :D
@@kanskubansku Interesting theory! I've always said Dutch sounds like German spoken by a drunk Norwegian :) We have a Finnic minority language called Kven. To me it sounds like Finnish with some extra loanwords here and there, but idk. The language/dialect question is kind of a big deal for some, I guess because of identity and such.
Good to know you're Swedish :) Nice video! Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Belgium (and Dutch from Suriname) are officially all 1 language but they all sound incredibly funny to the other ones. Same with French from France and French from Belgium or Québec. So yeah, even if its officially 1 language, you still have this "problem". Afrikaans sounds even more funny though 😂
The funny thing is that Dutch is the one that sound weird to me. I know Afrikaans and whenever I hear Dutch it sounds like a lazier and more slippery version of Afrikaans. The way they pronounce the R in words is what throws me off each time.
@@fullmetaltheorist the R? Really? Cause it depends on where you are from. In Belgium it's mostly rolling or like the French (guttural). In the south of the Netherlands it's mostly guttural as well, while in the west it's traditionally rolled unless it's at the end of a word (when it sounds more like the English R)
@@fullmetaltheorist Funny because it's the complete opposite for us. Afrikaans sounds like a children speech. I personally like Afrikaans more though in some aspects.
Like everyone else I've also always experienced Norwegian as "silly", but I could never quite articulate why. Thank you for this thorough analysis of the quantifiable differences!
As a second language German speaker, it’s doesn’t sound very aggressive to my native English ears anymore. People mostly think it does because they force it too. If you had a French and English speaker both shout “BEVERAGE 🤬” and then had a German speaker politely say “Trink 😊”, I think you could make the same perception happen in reverse
Well, "German" is used prefer to Hochdeutsch. It varies from Länder to Länder (I'd also include Swiss German, and Alsatian (both North and South) here.) For example, I know my mother doesn't like Swiss German because they say "Ich" with a hard R. It may actually be the same in England, actually. It's definitely a similar case for Italy.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 oh completely, I remember one of my teachers from München and she definitely had a “harsher” sounding accent than another teacher from Dortmund even though they were both speaking Hochdeutsch to us. Though generally I don’t think English speakers hear much difference unless they’ve spent a decent amount of time learning German and hearing all the different accents and dialects
From a Dane: I’ve never heard anyone say that Swedish sounds depressing. I think it sounds like if you just ended every Danish word with an A. Easy Swedish.
Fascinating; as a Norwegian I have always found Swedish to sound happier than Norwegian(Very generalised). Though granted, I am from western Norway, so my dialect is different from that around Oslo. Different intonation patterns, different vocabulary and grammar. In fact, my dialect has features more in common with Swedish than the dialect of Oslo. Such as, depending on the speaker, preserving the historic -ar, -ir, -ur plurals in some form(as -a, -e, -o in my dialect vs. -ar, -er, -or in Swedish). Most speakers do however merge the historic -ir and -ur plurals, but their effects on preceding velars is still different as the historic -ir plural palatalises them while the historic -ur plural does not. Similarly the present tense of verbs will end either in -e or -a depending on the verb in pretty much the same pattern as Swedish with its -er and -ar forms in the present tense.
Considering as a northern Norwegian speaker my intonation pattern is more like Swedish, I actually feel the same way. Bokmål is hard to take seriously for me. Swedish sounds more normal, just more "elitist" in a way
As a Norwegian, I love how Swedish sounds, and have never had the thought that it sounds depressive. Particularly I think the Swedish vowels sound incredibly beautiful. Much love.
Given that I am located on both the other side and hemisphere where nobody has any ingrained beliefs about the Nordics, I can safely say that the only “silly” sounding language is Danish. I do find Finnish slightly amusing but that is by the by. As for Norwegian, I actually really like the sound and intonation. It sounds pleasant and encouraging. Icelandic too. They’re almost hopeful sounding!
@@Littlevampiregirl100 That may be. I understand that cold harsh winters can wear people down. One day I dearly hope to experience one of those for myself.
Well, Norwegians, at least the coastal, mountainous or northern ones (ie pretty much all of us😅) and Icelanders HAVE to be positive and unbreakable in spirit, you dont survive for generations in ice, salt water spray and below 20 degrees Celsius if youre not positive.
As someone who has learned Swedish, I find that Swedish sounds more crisp and pointy, like British English, whereas Norwegian sounds more bouncy and fun, like Jamaican English.
I think that just might be the result of learning Swedish as the "correct" language, while the similar one sounds wrong. I find that the description fits my perception of posh British English and Jamaican, but I find Swedish to be more bouncy and funny
@@DenKulesteSomFins It also varies greatly with Swedish dialects. Dialects to the north have less intonations and is less "singy" and bouncy. The west coast, especially Gothenburg, are really bouncy, almost to the point of Norwegians at times. People from Skåne may sound more like Danish at times and tend to go down in pitch more. Then we have people from "Gnällbältet", aka the "The whine belt" where people sound like they are whining (or complaining) all the time. "östgötar" sounds like they are mildly retarded (sorry, but you do!). Oh, we have a special part of a singy dialect in Dalarna which is all over the place with silly pitch changes and intonations.
I'm Norwegian so it's a hard to understand how it sounds like to others. But when I speak English without putting on a British or American accent, I feel like it sound a bit like Scouse? Especially if comparing Swedish to "normal" british accents
The Oslo accent with the dramatic cheery rising intonation sounds especially eccentric to me as a Norwegian. I am from the Swedish border and our intonation is a lot more neutral, leading to me being called "The Swede" by classmates when I moved to Oslo for college. And your pronunciation of Norwegian is pretty much exactly what I would sound like when imitating the Oslo accent. Nice.
As a Russian native speaker, I can definitely say that all the other slavic languages sound more or less silly. And when I for some reason need to distinguish between Swedish and Norwegian I do it by sillyness: from my perspective Swedish sounds more ridiculous with its pitch accent, and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that people really communicate like this
Well, it equally baffles us Scandinavians that you Russians communicate solely with words comprising of the sounds of the letters "J" and "Z" :D What every word in Russian sound like to us: "Jzjzjjzj"
@@falkkiwiben I can’t really point out the silliest, they all are about equally goofy. But I remember me playing Geuguessr with my friends and we got a round in Croatia and we absolutely died from “Glavni Koldovor” (I believe it’s spelled like this)
One of my swdsish friend went to a sauna in Norway, and got dizzy and said "jag e yr" or something that (meaning i am dizzy) and left. The Norwegians were apperently 5 utter shock, and he later found out yr means horny in Norwegian lol
Your word examples were fun as a Dane learning Swedish. In Danish you can say eat: æde (slightly brutish form of eating) Angry: arrig So there are much more common words between the languages, it's just which ones have "won" the battle in the respective countries.
As someone who speaks both English and German, I think Swedish and Norwegian both sound like someone smashing English and German together in a sing-song way.
Same here. Plus, as a native American english speaker who learned high German then worked with Bavarians, suddenly Austrian is happy and trivially easy, as is Norwegian Nynorsk. And even Frisian isn't hard. Just swap English vowels into German, then replace some unusual words. I though Californian Sacramento Valley Girl talk was a joke until I heard native speakers in Sacramento using it in day to day speech. Southern American accents and dialects go through similar shifts from one another.
@@tunneloflight It has spread far and wide now, but the valley girl accent originally comes from the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles. But yeah, that and the "surfer dude" accent seem like a joke until you meet people that actually talk that way. Since I grew up in Southern California, near where those accents are from, I met a lot of people that had one of those accents many people have only heard in movies or TV.
@@timseguine2 Sheesh. Yes. I forgot about the surfer dude accent. And yes, it seemed like a put-on until I met a bunch of them in their native environs.
7:22 i have been literally laughing out loud for the last three or four seconds, haha! the thought of film-makers ahistorically making a character speak a different language *just to make them seem more depressed* somehow was so unexpected for me that it makes me laugh!!
As a Swede living in Finland for over a decade, interacting with the local Swedish-speaking minority, I now find "Sweden-Swedish" or as it's called in Finland "rikssvenska" almost as silly-sounding as Norwegian😆. I find that the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland speak a more, albeit with tons of weird and different accents and dialects, proper and "OG" Swedish. Especially when comparing with more modern Swedish words and expressions.
Whenever you show translations a words among the Scandinavian languages don’t forget that there are many ways to say things. E.g. “bucket” is “hink” in Swedish and “spann” in danish, but you can say “spann” in Swedish too, it’s the common choice in the south, but not in the rest of the country. An other example is: angry, sint, vred, arg (en, no, da, se). In Swedish you can say ‘vred’ too. It a bit archaic though. ‘Sint’ is in the dictionary, but people wouldn’t know it in that way. However, if someone is on the angry side of the spectrum he is ‘argsint’.
What I as a Norwegian has noticed is that at least we use the usual words in Swedish or Danish as a secondary word for stuff, like the previously mentioned “bucket” is usually (at least in my filthy Oslo dialect) “Bøtte” but everyone would understand what you meant if you said “spann”
@@ItzLucky90 According to the Swedish dictionary “bytta” means a wooden slat bucket used for holding dairy products like milk or butter. Most people, like me, would say it means container or receptacle. I would definitely understand “bøtte”.
You touched on it, but it's probably more like a slight majority of Norwegian speakers that speak in the rising intonation (lagtone) - specifically Trøndersk and Østlandsk, which are the examples you used. The other (somewhat less than half) speak like the English tend to, in falling intonation (høgtone), that would be Western Norwegian dialects, most Northern Norwegian dialects, and the dialects of Agder/Sørlandet. Northerners from Norway sound pretty monotone to Swedes and Danes, and due to our intonation I've experienced being easier to understand than a lot of the other dialects by Swedish and Danish acquaintances. The problem is that most movies from Norway tend to be heavy on Trøndersk and Østlandsk as those are two of the main hubs for media production (Trondheim and the Oslo area). There are obviously exceptions, Bergen and Stavanger are both influential cities with prominent actors, and especially Bergen is a hub for news production, but generally, most Norwegian entertainment happens in those rising intonations.
@@jambec144 But AFAIK that's just pitch and no stress (whereas Swedish has both). That's what I meant. I only put the word "lexical" there to indicate that I'm not saying Japanese couldn't have prosodic stress.
@@seneca983 No, a pitch stress language is in a middle space between a tonal language (like Chinese) and a stress language (like English). It's as if you have a few forms of stress that are distinguished by pitch. Or to put it another way, there isn't such a thing in a pitch stress language as stress occurring without pitch, since that would simply be a sort of 'neutral' tone in the stress.
The thing that gives pitch stress languages their attractive (in my opinion) sound is that the tonal contours mostly require two or more syllables to occur (otherwise, you're basically describing a tonal language). This means that you can have fairly strict rules about how the tones flow together, which in turn gives these languages a lyrical quality. That's in contrast to tonal languages, where basically any two tones can be adjacent to each other, giving the language that choppy sound.
Swiss German sounds very similar in tone and pitch to Swedish and Norwegian. When in Switzerland you always got the “Oh, I think I hear my countrymen” feeling ( that you always get abroad when hearing someone speaking your language) and had to watch out what you say out loud after hearing Swiss German speakers from afar - before realizing it’s not your language when they get closer and your hear the language in more detail. Which is probably the best way of native Swedish and Norwegian speakers to listen to their language from an outsiders perspective.
Brazilian Portuguese speaker. I can divide European languages into two camps, ones that sound like real people, and ones that sound cartoonish. From the most to least real in the first group, we have South Slavic languages, Baltic languages, Celtic languages, Iberian languages (that are not Spanish, Portuguese or Basque), Greek, Albanian, Italian languages (that aren't Italian), Portuguese, Hungarian, West Slavic languages, Romanian, Estonian, East Slavic languages, and at the end of the spectrum English, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and French. Languages that are definitely a whimsical cartoon character are, from most to least cartoonish, Italian, German, Finnish, Danish, Basque and Spanish. I get internally very offended when other Brazilians get defensive and say Brazilian Portuguese uNlIkE eUrOpEaN does not sound Slavic and sounds like "the languages of love and passion" because I feel like it's an insult to be told I speak beppiddy boppiddy. "You sound like a drunk Russian" yeah at least Russians sound like humans from real life as opposed to speakers of a fictional Tolkien race tongue. The way Spanish speakers when say destrapaceo or whatever with the same exact mouth opening degree and vowel length eating consonants away if they can and blowing them to the wind with fast speed sounds like they're airbenders or whatever and are trying to mog us about it. Basque is the same but they're ancient mages talking backwards to fool you. I think everyone understands why German sounds very silly and out of a fairy tale. And I don't think I need to explain why Finnish people sound like they can talk to animals, either. And I will never get how Italians think their official language is POSSIBLY, IN ANY TIMELINE more "refined" than their minority local languages. But I don't have animosity towards any of them because the real question in those discussions is why everyone mostly listens to music in the one language that sounds like the night wails of elderly people with dem33ntia in a very real nursing home (girl what is that R), and we decide to judge our young and healthy people-sounding languages using that as somehow a measuring spade for everything else. "Oh Dutch and Hebrew sound like they have throat phlegm" better health condition than what I would identify out of the sound English has. Even the more serious-sounding yet singasongy accents like Scottish still sound like they're a bit kooky. Speaking of kooky. I have autism (type 2, don't come for me!). Swedish sounds like people who have autism even more visibly. That speech register of guys who, like me, read encyclopedias as kids and go well in school (better with grades than with being well-received by others), but sound very authoritative and emphasizing every syllable as if they were a king giving a pronouncement. It sounds very self-important, pompous, educated, quite conceited but not like they are trying to bash you, mog you or anything. Unlike RP English which does not sound like a wail in a nursing home but does sound like they're judging at least your fashion choice. (I *know* this does not translate to real behavior and English people are mostly chill and don't give a damn.) Norwegian sounds like you gave drugs to the Swede, just like Dutch sounds like you gave drv🍄🌵🍁vgs to the English person after making them have sessions with the phonoaudiologist, but they decided to stay crazy and vandalize a different consonant. Definitely real people but choices were made. Danish people... sound like the Swedish person displaying bigoted behavior and making a caricature of what people of other languages sound like. The crazy diphthongs, glottal stops and to be entirely frank gross softened consonants of English, the Hans und Gretel rhythm of German, the thousand deleted vowels of Portuguese (yes, Brazilians delete vowels or at the very least devoice them too, we just don't notice it ourselves because /i/ becomes palatalization and /u/ becomes velarization+rounding). And tried to sound as country as possible while doing it. Norwegian sounds a bit country but whereas our beloved autistic Swedish character would be from Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Vitória, Niterói or Brasília, his Danish vulgar imitation is of someone from absolute caipira country. And French. Yeah they just sound French. I don't have how to describe it. It doesn't really strike me as similar to anything else, but they also sound like they exist in our world without having been invented, for some reason. 😐 Maybe making a German try to speak Portuguese after giving them a ton of coffee or even stronger⚡? But since Germans are a fantastic race it comes across as a spiritual assault. Icelandic sounds like an allistic-passing sibling of the Swede who is inventing their own fantasy language and speaking it full time 24/7. Maybe not so allistic-passing. It definitely sounds like a real person who's trying too hard (though it's not at all bad).
I used to think European Portuguese sounds silly but I now have the opposite opinion, it's Brazilian Portuguese that sounds like someone who spoke Portuguese as a child trying to imitate their adult Portuguese parents, got separated from them and kept speaking baby Portuguese for their whole lives. People from southern Brazil sound like they were adopted by Swedes, Norwegians and Finns, people from São Paulo city and Brasília like they were adopted by the English and Romanians, people from the Northeast like they were adopted by Czechs, Danes and Ukrainians, people from Minas Gerais like they were adopted by Czechs, Lithuanians, Danes and Americans, people from Rio de Janeiro like we were adopted by Russians, Poles, Romanians and Germans*, people from Espírito Santo by Czechs and Romanians, people who are REALLY from Florianópolis by Russians and Danes (RUclips search Discussão Entre Manezinhos), people from the countryside of São Paulo, the Center-West and the north of Paraná by Danes and Americans and people from the Amazon by Ukrainians and Americans. People from Rio de Janeiro and the Northeast do drvvgs and people from southern Brazil, São Paulo and Brasília have autism (almost as much as the Nordics in southern Brazil) and allergic rhinitis (worst in São Paulo city and Porto Alegre). * I mean the schwa diphthongs with é, ê, ó, ô, em and õ. Actually, this is a trait we share with Swedish, but it doesn't make Swedes sound as silly. I guess because everyone expects Germanic languages not to map well to the Latin alphabet but we Romance speakers aren't allowed to be quirky. 🙄
As a Norwegian, I never thought of Swedish as sounding depressing at all. In fact I always thought you guys sounded jolly and funny as well. Cause it really goes both ways. You sound funny to us as well. If I were to attempt to imitate Swedish, I would most likely put on a somewhat cartoony voice as a default, placing my voice in the roof of my mouth and imitating particular Swedish utterances like the way you just say "å" in a descending intonation when you're agreeing or affirming something.
I feel that Norwegian and Swedish both sound like a mix of cute and silly. And I say that after having started learning Swedish last year in Finland while being German xD
but also the most difficult part of learning swedish from a german perspective is the use of the definitive article, because it always sounds and feels like a plural 😅
As a native speaker of Turkish I have almost EXACTLY same thoughts when I listen to Azerbaijani. They use very similar words and sometimes old words(old is Turkish but contemporary in Azerbaijani). But when I kept listening to their songs and watching their movies the 'funny' just disappeared after a while. Now I that learned many words from their language and started enjoying the way they speak and when I use those words with my Turkish friends they still find it funny. I on the other hand just feel richer as a human being if that makes sense.
As a Norwegian i have always thought that when swedish people talk they all sound like children with the more high pitched tone and its always funny to hear how often swedish people talk in the back of their mouths almost like what danish people do except danish people do it all the time
@@PlatinumAltaria It really is not, and "Klein" if anything is German, so ... The only thing that gave him away as not being an english speaking native is the fact that he speaks English way too... "well". I always thought he was just making a particular effort to speak as well and neutral as possible, but other than that - i speak swedish and thought i'd be able to pick up on those subtle hints giving away that someone is a Swede, but in this case, nope.
Danish kinda does my head in, honestly. Like. I can read it, but then I'm on a flight with danish announcements announcements and its just like "*record played backwards* dont *seal noises* luggage"
I'm a Spanish native and I've been exposed to several regional dialects of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish and... I can never tell what language it is and can barely make a couple words out despite knowing quite a few words out of Duolingo :D. I'm convinced some dialects in Sweden sound way more Norwegian or Danish than an average Swede would even consciously tell.
Western swedish has norwegian tonality, but with swedish. So something like a gothemburg dialect will sound like a norwegian to people who dont know the words because of the tone. Swedish people make fun of gothemburgers for not being angry ever, just like norwegians. And on the border there is a dialectical continuem, meaning there is no langauge border. Scanian, aka sounthern swedish has danish influences, and are made fun of for being danish by other swedes. But the words and tonal emphasis are swedish, so scanians cant understand danish unless they have studied it, but understand swedish perfectly.
I listened to a one and a half hour entirely in Swedish with shite English subtitles, which I would've done even if it was in a language I loved less, but the almost musical melodiousness of the Swedish speakers even as they politely dissed each other definitely helped
as a norwegian, i mostly understand swedish when someone speaks, but then every once in a while there will be some word thats just completely alien to me lol
Pronunciation varies very much from from to place in all three Scandinavian countries. All of them have dialects that sound like different languages. I'm from northern Norway and Swedes say my intonation sounds normal and kind of Swedish. My intonation starts high and ends low, like in most Germanic tongues.
One of my favorite things about going to ERASMUS to sweeden was laughing at the youtube ads in swedish so I can confirm 😂 I mean, swedish kinda sounds like if you took a normal recording of someone and reversed it, and that vibe algongside silly ad antics and not understanding the brand names felt funny
The dialects make this pretty interesting, as they are so different. As others have mentioned, I am from the west and our intonation goes down like the Swedes. (Though i would argue we go down even more than them. (We are more depressed)) To us east Norwegian sounds very silly as well, and Swedish maybe even more so. To me east Norwegian and Swedish sound quite similar when it comes to intonation, even though they go down in Swedish. They are in general a lot more sing-song-y then my dialect, at least to my ears. I'd say east Norwegians sound really dim, and Swedes sound like children. That's obviously a joke, but not 100% a joke :P
I never thought Norwegian sounded silly, but now that I've heard of a Norwegian saying that Swedish sounds depressing, I suddenly realized that Norwegian is the silliest language in the world.
@@itskarl7575 When I have heard Norwegian it has usually sounded very happy to me for some reason, maybe it has to do with what Norwegians are like in Swedish movies. I don't really know...
Brazilian here! Gotta say, Norwegian sounds absolutely amazing-dare I say, even more so than Swedish!Just my personal take, though. 😊 I love both languages! 😍
As a native English speaker, our closest common relative Dutch does indeed sound funny. I couldn't tell you exactly why, I think it has something to do with sound correspondences.
English's closest relative (other than Scots) is actually Frisian. If you dont know what it sounds like you should take a look, it's pretty insteresting.
Spoken Dutch obviously isn't that intelligible to native English speakers, but written it's pretty comical to us: "We hebben een serieus probleem", "Hitler dood, wat nou"
Out of the three, I love how Swedish sounds (I would guess before of some sounds like SJ and because it doesn't go up at the end like Norwegian, which is unnatural for my Italian ears), but I like much more how Norwegian is spelled! It just makes more sense to use ø and Swedish has too many ä for my eyes that are used to reading Icelandic. :)
As a Finn, especially the stockholm accent sounds really dilly and flamboyant, kinda like the stereotypical gay accent in american english. This is less true the more north you go, and (most of) the Finnish dialects of swedish don't sound like that at all
In the north of Sweden they call Stockholm Fjollträsk, which means ~Gay Swamp. Of course in all countries the city folk are seen as a bit effeminate by the periphery, but it kinda seems like everyone thinks Stockholm is extra gay.
Yesh, but there is the "Stockholm" dialect, and then there is the "Rikssvenska" (standard Swedish). These are sometimes thought to be the same, but as somebody who lives a few miles outside Stockholm I can tell you there is a difference. The difference is however quite slight, most notable would be the total replacement of the letter "Ä" with "E" in spoken Stockholm dialect. The word "Dörr" (door) is pronounced "Durr" in the Stockholm dialect. Small differences. The "flamboyant" thing you mention is perhaps the very stereotypical "Lidingö"-accent (a specific island in Stockholm where rich people live), as this accent actually annoys everyone. It is very popular among younger women for some reason, even if they don't live there, and it is very apparent when they speak any word with the letter "i" in it, it just sounds like they, as you said, are doing a gay accent in english.
The gay people flee from the countryside.. (even many from the Finnish countryside) and come to Stockholm. Because they feel safer and more welcome here. They quickly snap up the (usually the Lidingö-) accent because they don't want to reveal their origin (or they want to forget). It is the jargon they use amongst each other. To me they all sound like rumour spreading hair dressing ladies from the 1950's.. And poof it has become a living stereotype. But that is the Lidingö accent in a nutshell you are describing.. Quite feminin.. Will pronounce sj as sh instead.. I digress though. As this is quite a generalisation brought on by how Swedes are portrayed by Finnish people in general these days. As a family that also has Finnish language skills and ties, I can tell everyone else here that propaganda in Finland spreads a lot of stuff about Swedish men being gay and effeminate.. Just for being Swedish. Sweden has always been a step ahead in the human rights sector.. Also gay rights. Finland has been more homophobic in the past and had issues catching up.. I hear something negative and "gay" every time I go to visit Finland.. How gay gay gay Swedish guys are.. It gets old really fast.. And it probably stems from jealousy/resentment from miscreants who know deep down inside that Stockholm is an awesome place that not many other places can live up to.. Also.. There are at least 10 different accents in the Stockholm area alone. The Söder dialect for exampel has a lot of words in it that no one else can understand. (A bit like cockney) they speak in riddles. Western Stockholm people speak low and fast. It sounds like they are constantly going to run out of air. Southern stockholm tends to speak slower and more pronounced. Northern stockholm stretching into Uppsala and southern Roslagen.. Is your standard Upplandsdialekt.. North of Uppsala.. The melody is completely different. Some of the islands in the Stockholm archipelago have small pockets of unique Swedish dialects that are incredibly difficult for mainlanders to understand that go back hundreds of years in time. Gräsö is an example of one of those places.
If you're being honest, is it really the accent per se, and not just your cultural stereotypes about Stockholm that inform this? I mean, here's an interview with Mikael Hjelmberg, a very straight man (lol) who speaks in a distinct Stockholm dialect: ruclips.net/video/Y1xCRYtWv-o/видео.html . I really struggle to hear anything that resembles a stereotypical gay accent in the way he speaks, but it is undeniably Stockholm.
@@albinjohnsson2511 I think the darker voice and the topic is what conceals it to be honest. I would say it has more to do with pronunciation of certain words though, like "fräscht" and using expressions that would be quite feminine in other parts of the country. Like saying "ah men gud vad roligt". I don't think this stereotype has come from nowhere, as most stereotypes, but it might not apply to the majority. Another way of looking at it, is to listen to how women from Stockholm speak, it's very similar to the men. I would say a lot of people would think that they sound snobbish, melodramatic, over the top and so on. Bit like stereotypical "valley girl" from California. Which in turn might sound a bit feminine? The way people speak is heavily influenced by the culture. To be honest I think it has quite a lot to do with being the capital. I've read topics about similar descriptions in other countries as well.
I'm Wermlandian and due to my dialect I get confused for a Norwegian by my own countrymen all the time. I've been asked if I'm Norwegian at work by my own colleagues... The Wermlandian dialect does have a lot in common with Norwegian. We say "bilen min" "bror min" "syr min" etc. instead of "min bil" "min bror" "min syster" etc. Intonation in the Wermlandian dialect is also closer to Norwegian than Standard Swedish. We tend to rise at the end of sentences and words. It's funny, because having that intonation makes Wermlandians sound perpetually happy, no matter our actual mood. I've heard it told to me a thousand times that Wermlandians cannot sound angry at all. At worst it sounds cute. Don't know what to make of that...
I'm a Norwegian living in Wermland. I love the dialect - I agree that it sounds nice and friendly. Also, Wermlandians understand Norwegian perfectly. Some (very few!) Swedes from other regions writes back in English when I've written in Norwegian to them, and some even want me to speak English... In general Norwegians understand Swedish perfectly and can even speak some, as in using Swedish words where the Norwegian version is different. There may be several causes for that; we consume more Swedish culture than the other way around, and we've "always" had Swedish TV. "Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter" for those who remember :-D
@@Krzysztof25XD Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige om vi vil Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige om vi vil Ja vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige om vi vil
a swede that likes danish.. never thought the day would come
Times are truly changing, I never though it would come to this
after watching the Pusher films I began to love danish! I can't understand a thing they saying but it sounds nice. Norwegian I understand alot better even if it kinda sounds silly and nearly comedic sometimes
Suspicious, i think this event never happened. Probably hyperbole for story reasons.
Probably a Skåning (Scanian)
Swedish is my second language, but honestly, despite the fact that I can't understand Danes outside a 1-1 conversation context (ie. films/tv Im just lost), I find it quite pleasantly chill.
There's a saying - Swedish, Norwegian and Danish is all really the same language. But the Swedes can't write it, and the Danes can't speak it.
Definitely true
Which implies Norwegian is the "proper" Scandinavian? 😂
Don't forget about the age gap. Millennials and older generations grew up learning other Scandinavian languages through television, children's shows and the like. Younger generations don't learn the other Scandinavian languages this way and often have a harder time to understand their neighbors abroad.
@@Aqollo yup, Norwegian is the most proper Scandinavian language
@@Aqollo Norwegians are the only ones that understand all three, so yes😁😂
😂
I, native Swedish, spent a week in Norway this summer. I got by by just speaking Swedish with a """Norwegian""" accent. It worked uncannily well
I love using dialectal words too, they get so happy. Although it has on occasion lead me to accidentally use a singular dokker
Norwegians understand Swedish perfectly well. My experience is that swedes have a harder time understanding Norwegian that the other way around.
@@simonliland927 Yes, largely because most of them could see our tv broadcasts back in the day, but usually not the other way round. (But historically also because Sweden has been more dominant, for centuries.)
@@herrbonk3635 The "silly" norwegian is typical for the south east part of the country, the area around Oslo, and since Oslo is the capital of Norway this dialect is often identified as some kind of "standard norwegian", although there is no "standard norwegian", to my knowledge (contrary to Sweden, where the accents in Nyköping and Enköping are dubbed to "rikssvenska" = official standard swedish). For instance, the Bergen accent sounds very different from Oslo accent, not silly at all, and the accent in Bodö is surprisingly close to swedish. It´s my experience that Norway, although with half as many inhabitants as Sweden, has a far greater dialectal variety. Probably even greater than the whole of USA.
@@ingemarsjoo4542 I didn't mention Oslo here. But where I did, it was because that's an easy reference to grasp for outsiders. Yes, Bergen is indeed very different from Oslo. But so what? :) Did I suggest otherwise? And yes, some dialects are close to Swedish, for sure.
"Nyköping and Enköping dubbed to "rikssvenska" is just nonsense though :) They both have particular dialects... especially 50 years ago and back, and especially Enköping (I live very close, in Uppsala).
Rikssvenska is the accent people moving in from other parts of Sweden were taught (up until 1975) when moving to Svealand in order to work for media, government, as teachers, etc. It was very close to the natural accents of Mälardalen at the time, but without the most rural or uneducated forms.
As a half-Norwegian Swede who grew up in Sweden with a father from Bergen, I can assure you that the "sounds silly in an overly happy way" does not apply to all accents. The way my father answered the house phone with an angry-sounding "Hallo, det er meg" even became a sort of meme among my brother's friends because of how aggressive it sounded.
Yeah. Bergensk has an intonation that aims downward, whereas Easterners sound like everything is a question.
As a Bergenser (Bergenser = Someone from Bergen) I have been asked "why are you so angry/mad?" when I'm really not, it's just how we speak. Many of our R's is not "rolling R's, but hard R's like the Dutch or Germans". I can go to Oslo and I'll have to speak slowly to make myself understood. and sometimes even having to use their rolling on the tounge R's for them to understand. Ofc Bergensere understand Swedish or Danish perfectly fine, it's a bigger problem for them to understand us. I think Oslo sounds like they are singing too, and if i try to speak like that it just sounds wrong and stupid. In Oslo the R is one of the last sounds the kids learn as babies, but in Bergen the R is one of the first sounds a child can make. Swedish also sounds soft and singing like to me, but the Danish just sounds like someone shoved a potato down their throats. :)
Man i can hear that in my head
As a norwegian it's funny because it is the exact same way for us. at least for me. Swedish is INHERENTLY funny. Also fake pseudo science side note that i made up but i stand by 100%: there are two types of swedish ways to speak and every swede can be sorted into these two extremes on a spectrum. the spectrum goes from A: Baby voice , to B: Problematic alcoholic uncle voice.
I agree. He mentions at the end that Norwegian and Swedish probs sound similar to native english speakers like me. But I can confirm that I know they're Swedish if they have a weird baby cartoon voice.
I guess the problematic uncles don't make it to the UK that often cos I've not heard that one lol
Hahaha, that's hilarious!
That is interesting. The Baby-Voice I have been noticing also, starting to appear around Stockholm about 10-15 years ago. I left my home in Sweden 24 years ago, and only come back once or twice a year. The language has evolved over this time-period, with the baby-voice one of the most notable changes.
Nu må du förklara hur Svenskar har bäbisröst. Det är första gången jag som svensk hör talas om detta!
Dane here: Norwegians sound silly and happy, Swedes sound silly and haughty. My mouth is open and ready to receive your potatoes.
btw. I think at least some of it has to do with the different tones in their respective pitch accents. The Swedish tone 2 sounds overly concerted to me. I'm not saying Danish sounds good, but we at least sound angry when we are. As a boy, I once got scolded by a Norwegian, and I just couldn't take it seriously and began laughing because it sounded funny.
I can assure you that I sound very angry when I'm angry. The ones around and in Stockholm sound silly even to Swedes though.
I do think Danish has a lot of silliness to it as well, but I'd probably and unfortunately have to agree with you that it's the least silly sounding, at least when comparing the capital dialects.
@@CottidaeSEA yes exactly, there's a wide range of tonal patterns in different regions of both sweden and norway that have completely different connotations than the usual ones, but since most people outside scandinavia are only ever exposed to the prestige dialects of both capitol areas, they will just assume that the rest of both countries will sound the same. best example of this i think is comparing finnmarks dialect with oslo dialect, completely different vibes.
unfortunately for me my värmland dialect can't escape the "silly sounding"-label from either side of our border, other swedes will tell me i sound stupid, hillbilly and always jolly like a norwegian, meanwhile norwegians say i sound stupid, hillbilly but also gay like the rest of sweden.
oh well, at least i'm glad i'm not speaking östgötska
come to northen norway and get scolded.. xD
@@Timber2k I'm from Sweden and I actually asked someone once from northern Norway to scold me just to hear what it sounded like and it was not silly sounding at all. I actually believed him. :) It also sounded somewhat more like Swedish, at least the intonation.
Danish is a norwegian country boy that got an apple stuch in their throat.
As an Icelander, I always thought Swedish sounded very happy and sing-songy, always rising and falling in tone. But that might be some other Scandinavian language, I was quite shocked when you said Swedish was depressing lol.
It's just weird Norwegians. Don't listen to them lol
As a Norwegian I agree about the Swedish language sounding happy and sing-songy, always rising and falling. Probably since it does in other patterns than Norwegian. My dialect does not have the "up-at-the-end" pattern many Swedes finds funny about Norwegian.
Totally depends on the accent, I would say. Some people in Norrland (and Skåne too) actually sound a little sad, passive aggressive or depressing, while other accents or sociolects almost nearby can sound even more happy and upbeat than standard rikssvenska in central Svealand (where Stockholm is).
And now you see how Western-Norwegians speak just as depressing as Icelanders. Your ancestors came from our part of Norway (West).
@@ahkkariq7406 Most Norwegian dialects don't. It's just that for some reason Swedes always refer to "Østlandsk" when they think of Norwegian.
As a Finnish person having learned Swedish in school, Norwegian pretty much sounds to me like a dialect of Swedish. Danish on the other hand is utterly incomprehensible.
Respect. You know it. Funny fact though is that Swedish and Danish (east-old-norse) was the same language in Viking times, while Norwegian was the different one (west-old-norse). Meaning that 1000 years ago, a Swede and a Dane understood each other better than a Swede and a Norwegian. Today it has flipped. Idk why.
Can totally confirm Czech sounding funny to Polish speakers
Can confirm too. I like and respect Czechs, but it's hard not to laugh when I hear their language
Heard someone from the Czech Republic say the same thing about Poles lol.
Chlebíček at you
Ye I heard it described like poles think czech sounds like a cutesy baby version of polish
Slovak too, although not as much. Other Slavic languages, not at all.
As a Norwegian, I absolutely agree that the Oslo dialect sounds kinda funny and weird. Not my dialect of course, that's obvious
I'm a second language German speaker. I've always found the continental Scandinavian languages to be fun--jovial perhaps. Pitch accent and their intonation patterns are what make it for me. To me, languages are just funny and silly in their own unique way; Swedish and Norwegian for their intonation, French for its ..everything.
I blame French for why English is so weird.😂
German is silly because of the way you can just smash words together to make a new one.
Pflanzenkraftwerkmanufakturarbeiterschutzgesetzautor.
That would mean "author of the plant power plant manufacture worker protection law" and consists of the words Pflanze (plant), Kraft (power/force), Werk (factory/work, combined with Kraft as Kraftwerk, it means power plant), Manufaktur (noun version of manufacture), Arbeiter (worker), Schutz (protection), Gesetz (law) and Autor (author).
Swedish and Norwegian sound as wacky as Icelandic to Germans, while Danish sounds much more reasonable. I think anyone can figure out why that is.
I can confirm that french is the oddest language of all
no way it's marcy yorsa!
As a norwegian i think its super confusing that someone finds swedish depressing. I usually think of it as a way happier and sing songy language. Its fun to hear that swedes make as much fun of us as we do of them though
Min grandlanndsbroder
It depends on the dialects though. We have a literall dialect belt called "Gnällbältet" where it actually sounds like they are "whining" or complaining all the time.
People from Gothenburg sounds really jolly as do people from Dalarna.
People from the northern part don't use as many words and they go down in pitch and may actually be the ones sounding more depressed.
@@Magnus_Loov Yes, Northern Swedish sounds quite a bit more like Finnish in the way they speak, who are known for sounding depressed. Honestly, living that far up in the cold and darkness, I wouldn't expect anything else.
Personally I think Swedish sounds a lot more like German, without the harsher sounds of the language. Quite sterile, neutral and academic. While Norwegian sounds a lot more lively and jolly.
@@-RXB- Just parts of Norrland (mainly Norrbotten and mostly the western part of it) have a Finnish tone. Norrland overall have may different dialect variants but the most common denominator is that they often don't use as many words or cut the words off makig them shorter to the point that sometimes even a "yes" is just them "breathing in" with a slight whistlig tone sounding like a very fainit "Ju". or "Ssiu" .
For that kind of passive "yes" they don't even bother to speak out, they just inhale in a kind of "I agree but don't care that much" way!
And the mentioned "going down in tone" (for the last syllable),
As a Norwegian: Obligatory comment about how no, _your_ language sounds funny and happy and... weirdly feminine?
Also, a note about intonation patterns: The "up-at-the-end" pattern only exists in Eastern and Central dialects. In the west and north of the country, the intonation pattern is flipped, and most sentences end with a _downward_ intonation. I'm sure this is all great fun for those poor souls trying to learn our language.
weirdly feminine. lol. as a German I kinda get it, but I feel like this about Swedish and Norwegian, not Danish btw, probably because it's a tad more similar to German.
as a Swede I find this interesting! I wondered how you perceive our language. I'm from Östergötland and our dialect(östgötska) sound horrible. It's the ugliest dialect ever 🤢
@@Martin_likes_beer don't be like that, your dialect is wonderfully funny! if you can sing Bjällerklang in östgötska you can instantly send most people into a laughing fit
@@Martin_likes_beer idk man, I find Skåne to be . . . weird
@@swedneck haha thanks 😆
Having worked in the oil business I (a Swede) had to take a multitude of courses in Edinburgh/Scotland. As it happened, I met up with a Dane and a Norwegian who I spent time talking with in the free time we had.
It blew the minds of Scots/Englishmen when they found out that we spoke our respective languages and still managed to make ourselves understood...
It's even more fun when you throw in some Faeroese and Fenno-Swedes in the mix, you end up speaking some funny "Scandinavian" dialect together ;-)
@@oskich Worked with some Faeroese in italy (Costa Concordia). If I really tweaked my hearing and treated them as a Scottish dialect it was doable...
@@MrOddball63 They just speak Danish with a north Norwegian accent and pronounce all the letters ;-)
@@oskich Damn it, I had to re-check my memory... Voe Earl was registered in UK but physically stationed in the Orkneys...
My bad!
I'm an exchange student in Vienna rn, and just yesterday at some welcomingg party all the Scandinavian people somehow found each other and spent most of the night speaking to each other, in our own languages (and some English to my 2 very social Dutch friends whenever they circled round back to us lol)
I think the best equivalent for English speakers is all the Dutch that goes viral on twitter for sounding funny - think the headline ‘Hitler dood wat nou’ or ‘we hebben een serious probleem’
The same thing happend for German once "Wir suchen dich :D". I think we just need to take the ridicule and accept it
I've seen the jokes but is still don't get what's funny about them😭
I remember seeing some meme with 'spank me daddy' being 'geef me een klap papa' in Dutch and thought that was the funniest shit ever; even thought I'm not native English speaker (but Polish, and in Polish spank is also klap/klaps, but of course in English clap has also similar meaning).
Fruit plukken is verboden
@@blinski1 More accurate would be "Papa geef me billenkoek" which is even weirder translated
8:45 Swedish and Norwegian are languages that are satisfying to my ears, idk I think it’s so soothing to listen to
As a Norwegian who moved to Sweden in 2013 and achieved equal fluency in both languages, I can see this from both sides. My Norwegian brain thinks that Swedish sounds silly often times, whereas my Swedish "indoctrination" sheds new light on which parts of my native tongue sound silly, or plain weird (like certain grammatical structures). The similarities are indeed what causes this, widely different languages will automatically take room on opposite ends of the cognitive housing - but this is like sharing a living room and disagreeing on which channel to watch. I find that, after a visit to my family in Norway (I was there in July and May of this year), Swedish is a bit alien and odd-sounding. When arriving in Norway, the Norwegian is jarring and borderline silly, especially the dialect I speak (middle-Norway, your second audio example). Great video, we talk about this all the time at work!
I mostly think Swedish complicates sentences, where as they think our simpler ways of spelling are silly.
@@tropicalhousemVad menar du med att svenska komplicerar meningar? Syftar du på att vi stavar långt k som "ck" och liknande?
Vet du om det är något särskilt som får svenska att låta löjligt? Han i videon trodde att det är (öst-)norskans betoning som får det att låta löjligt för svenskar. Jag undrar om där är någon liknande sak som gör svenska löjligt för norrmän.
@@vhil364 För min del handlar det mest om orden i sig, en del av dem låter 'barnsliga'. "Spindel", till exempel, eller "bebis", det blir mjukt och barnaktigt. Detsamma gäller vissa böjningar, exempelvis "mammor", "pappor", "sköterskor", "sångerskor" etc. , det ger en känslan av någon som inte helt lärt sig hur man pratar. Det som stör mest är dock alla förkortningar, smeknamn, och is-ar och or-ar - att Lars blir Lasse, Hugo blir Hugge, Anders blir Adde, Leif blir Leffe etc. Det skulle aldrig fungera att ha programledare vid namn "Babben" på norska, till exempel. Fralla, frulle, frilla, allt sådant låter märkligt med norska öron. Detta samt Stockholmares tendens att is-ifiera precis allting (Medis, Rålis, Mellis, Fiskis, Fjärris, Skådis, Timmis, Veggis). Med det sagt så tycker jag väldigt om svenskan; ordvitsar, slang och annat roligt ligger en mil före norskan. Jag har även lärt mig att tycka om dess mer precisa skriftspråk, trots lite krångel.
Re. depressed queen: Crown Princess Märtha, King Olav V's wife, was Swedish. She was also depressed for many years after her sister died.
To be "dead" correct, Märtha was Olav's wife while he was a crown prince. They married in 1929. She passed away from cancer in 1954. Olav became king as a widower in 1957, after his father, the Danish born king Haakon VII died. The Danish prince Carl who could never speak Norwegian, although being chosen as king of Norway in 1905. Still much admired and respected, I might add. Anyway, was Märtha's sister Astrid, who if my memory serves me right, was killed in a car accident in Belgium or thereabouts, sometime in the later 1930s?
To English speakers, Dutch is definitely the "silliest" sounding language. So many words are the same except for different, unnatural (to us) vowel sounds. And the main consonants they have that are different from ours are ch and g, which sound guttural and very weird to us.
I love Dutch though.
That's true, I never considered that that's why it took me aback so much lol.
yeah English is my native language and I know German pretty well too so Dutch sounds funny to me in multiple ways. It sounds like silly children’s language from the English direction, and from the German direction is sounds like they’re slurring all their words like they’re drunk or something
As a Swede Dutch is weird because it sounds so similar thati always feel like i should understand it but i can't understand anything.
@@fruustlesthat's exactly how it sounds to me as a native English speaker. It's like if they just spoke louder or more clearly maybe I'd understand them, but no, it'll never happen. To me Dutch sounds like someone who speaks no English is trying to convince me that they speak English well.
Dutch sounds like orc speak to me.
It's a "intonation continuum" all over Scandinavia too, not just dialect. Eastern Norway is where it peaks with the high-pitch endings. In Bergen, Norway we have the opposite intonation (and I'm not exaggerating), which is much closer to the intonation in Skåne or Stockholm in Sweden.
I mean, people from Gøteborg are much more "cartoonish sounding" than we in Bergen are, but ofcourse not as much as in Oslo, or Eastern Norway in general, (where again, the high ending intonation peaks in Scandinavia). Trøndelag is much like Eastern Norway as well, but Northern Norway is not, they speak in the exact same intonations as in Northern-Sweden.
To me the Northern Norwegians speaks in a way that sounds closest to Swedish. Perhaps they use different words too that are closer to Swedish?
Finally, a sensible and correct Norwegian.
Eyo, Norwegian here. From our viewpoint about 95% of what you said is correct for our view on Swedish too. Swedish sounds off, cute, funny, uncanny. I personally don't think of it as "depressed" and haven't heard that before, but maybe some people think that?
Norwegian sounds feminine
I think the mutual intelligibilities between the Germanic (especially North Germanic) languages is very interesting. I don't speak any Scandinavian languages - just English, German some Old English, but last year, I watched "The Rain", which is a Danish Netflix programme and it was such an interesting experience. I obviously couldn't understand anything much, but there were bits and pieces I caught. Mainly just single words and short sentences and by the time I realised I'd understood it, it had moved on. Interestingly, there was one bit where a character spoke in Swedish, and despite all the differences I'd expected to pick up on, I couldn't notice the shift. I can generally distinguish the three of them in isolation, but for some reason, it was giving be real grief when I tried there. :)
The "silly valley" is a great way to phrase it. I can think of a bunch of examples at the top of my head: Dutch and Low German to German-speakers, Belarusian to Russian-speakers. It's also common with regional varieties, like how Americans find Canadian accents adorable.
It isn't lost on me that it's usually the less spoken or less prestigious language that sounds silly to speakers of the more common or more prestigious language, and that the feeling is often not mutual.
Another example that's basically hinted at in this video is Faroese to Icelanders. It's just hilarious to us.
Pretty much this
i don't hear anything weird when listening to languages like Chinese because it's completely unrelated and different compared to my own.
But when it's my own language (Dutch) and i hear German it sounds super funny because it's very close but different (to me it sounds like they have trouble pronouncing words in general💀)
It's even weirder when hearing a dialect like Flemish which is just the same language as Dutch but sounds slightly different and use some different words so there you really like hyperfocus on the minimal differences.
Frisian to Danish-speakers. When I first heard it, I was like "Am I drunk? Are they drunk?"
As a Swede I can't hear much difference between Canadian and American English. Except if they Canadian bring in a "Ay?" (or "Eh?") at the end of the sentences.
In fact many times I have learnt that famous actors or other famous people actually were from Canada. Jim Carrey, for example. I can't hear that in his voice.
In fact I can hear much more dialects that are much more different in the states compared to the "standard American accent" or the Canadian English accent.
The Brits are in a class of their own when it comes to differences in regional accents though. Great variety in such a small area!
As a Spanish speaker, PORTUGUESE is THE FUNNIEST language in the world. They're just superior with phonetics and word endings. I love you and your language ❤🇵🇹🇵🇹🇧🇷
Portuguese is objectively a little bit funny. Brazilian Portuguese even a bit more funny. Someone being pissed off and eloquent in Brazilian Portuguese is just amazing to listen to as long as you are not the reason they are pissed off. Love the sound of Portuguese.
@@rustknuckleirongut8107 You know those stupi ultraconservetive takes on pronouns? "I don't use pronouns!", "There are no pronouns in the Bible.", etc.?
Brazilian Portuguese took it to heart.
What do you think about Italian though? I've learned some Spanish and the vocabulary is astoundingly similar to Italian in some cases. Idk just a random thought of mine (love your language, wish I'd speak it better than I do)
I am a native Spanish speaker too, and for me the funniest language has to be Italian, with Portuguese as a close second.
But Portuguese probably has the funniest word: guardanapos (napkin), because it almost means nape-keeper in Spanish.
@@beth5627As a Spanish native speaker I find Italian very easy to hear (although not as easy to understand), not funny or strange, since it has the same sounds. I feel I could write what I hear and understand more than 80%. Romance languages outside Spain tend to have very stark pronounciation differences (French, Romanian, Portuguese) while the ones in Spain sound similar (Spanish, Galician, Catalan-Valencian-Balearic, Basque and Bable). Italian sounds more similar to the Spanish, even though it is less inteligible than Portuguese to a native Spanish speaker.
I speak Swedish as a foreign language and for me it's quite the opposite. I really like listening to Norwegian and love its intonation.
Damn straight
Same! Norwegian is beautiful to my ears. I love Swedish too but it makes me giggle when I try to replicate the accent/pronunciation.
I like how you hit on the tonation of Norwegian. It's one of the things foreigners usually never get correct. We have very specific tonations based on your dialect, and when a foreigner speak, they either fuck it up completely (which is fine, dw about it. We still understand you), or they mix tonations from different dialects.
For example. I have a friend from Hungary, who speaks Norwegian extremely well. However, he has some words he uses the "wrong tonation" for his dialect, and it instantly throws you off.
We make fun of him a lot.
the word order "bilen min" is quite common in parts of sweden as well. i grew up in northern sweden (ångermanland) and it was very common to hear that word order in every day conversations.
Unserious dialect xD
As an urban Swede, I see that as just talking in a playful way and like you want to spice things up. Instead of just saying it the normal way.
Or rather.. shifting focuse between "the car that I own" , to me and my car/cars that I use or own!
Its a shift of posseision I think.. frome the car to the possesion of that car.. even its not yours!
In anyway.. its often easy to understand Norweigan for a swede.. its still in swedish vocabulary.. its like "my car" or "the car of mine"!
We also have that in my dialect, but I live in Värmland and we pretty much speak norwegian so it doesn't count.
@@Malfredsson
@Malfredsson In Norrland where i come from we say "Vi tar bilen min" and "Nu far vi till köket"
I don't talk like that much since i've lived in Stockholm for 10 years but sometimes i slip.
Being a Norwegian I'd say Swedish sounds happy and jolly, rather than depressing.
It's the best language for comedy films.
Similarly I also find that "standard" south east norwegian sounds childish, and sort of fake and unnatural compared to other dialects around Norway.
It’s the same here in Sweden. We think you sound happy and almost dumb like you can understand bad things. And where I’m from in Skåne and many other places in Sweden we think the Stockholm area accent sounds dumb posh and childish.
The pure "bokmål" dialekt makes everyone in Oslo just sounds like they never left 2nd grade
@@Nxmsei Du förstår väl att Stockholm är den stad med flest dialekter i Sverige? Så när du säger ”Stockholms dialekt” vilken menar du? Alla, till och med Söder dialekt? För Söder dialekt låter betydligt mer manligt än den typiska ’Lidingö’ dialekten.
@ de låter alla ganska likt varandra för någon som inte bor nära Stockholm
Yes, Czech does sound funny to Polish speakers. I'm not sure why, but I have few potential candidates:
- stress: Polish has it on the penult, Czech on the initial
- vowel length: Polish doesn't use it, in Czech it's phonemic, giving the language a completely different rhythm
- palatalization: Polish retroflex consonants correspond to postalveolars in Czech, which makes them "softer"; meanwhile Polish "soft" alveolopalatals usually become "hard" dentals in Czech; those two aspects contrast with each other in a clashing way
- use of diminutives in different places than in Polish, especially combined with softness of č in -ček or -čka endings that frequently occur in diminutives, makes them sound childish
- and in general, using different derivational prefixes (so a word after translating looks more like a victim of overly creative word derivation than a word in a foreign language)
- still using -ová for female surnames (the long á only makes it more noticeable)
- the present tense of být, both in its use as a copula (where it sounds like a childish simplification), and as an auxiliary
- false friends (my favourite example: nápad), including words that narrowed or shifted their meaning
- Czech using Slavic words where Polish used loanwords; some of those can be funny, like divadlo
- the vowel shifts that happened in Czech, most importantly loss of nasals, shift to e/i in historically palatalized contexts, and merger of i and y
- ř
I just found a 2022 presentation titled "Dlaczego język czeski śmieszy Polaków?" by Grażyna Balowska from Opole University, she mentions some of those reasons and discusses dozens of funny or otherwise shocking false friends in Czech.
E
As a Czech, I appreacite this thorough comparison, it makes a lot of good points that make sense even from my side of the proverbial language barricade.
I’m a Norwegian who loves the Swedish language. There are so many beautiful dialects in Sweden too, but dialects are often ridiculed in Sweden. In Norway people are proud of their dialect and will not disrespect other dialects. Dialects are cool in Norway. 🇳🇴🇸🇪
Unless you're from Toten.
Oh, Norwegians poke fun at dialects, too. Trøndersk and nordlandsk, for example, are inherently funny to most Norwegians - including the speakers of those dialects.
@@itskarl7575 I think us from Trøndelag are more busy making fun of Bergensk and the way people speak in Oslo to bother making fun of our own dialect.
@@liseanettegranheim4404 It's not that we make fun of our own dialect - at least not primarily - but we do find our own dialect funny. And yes, we do put on an extra broad variant of that dialect when pretending to be... I guess "hick" is the best word in English.
True. Sweden is a very centralized country. Norway, on the other hand, is the opposite, more decentralized. I think that is the reason.
To me as a German speaker, both Dutch and Swiss German sound quite funny. I think for very similar reasons as with Norwegian for a Swedish person. At least with Swiss German, the intonation is very different and to my ears sounds very silly. And also words being used differently, like "lässig".
my grandpa was swiss so i've had more interactions with the language than most swedish people, and i've long held that swiss is to german what norwegian is to swedish.
As a Norwegian who has worked in Switzerland among many places (and remembers a tiny bit of my school German), hearing Swiss-German makes me wonder why there are others who grew up on the eastern slopes of the Jotunheimen mountain massif before I realize my confusion. We "sing" so similarly in our speech. Interestingly, the old art of jodelling and Norwegian "lokk/kulning" (also found in western Sweden, once a part of Norway). Jodelling and kulning are, however, not directly related - but people living in similar landscapes developed similar solutions to make voices carry as far as possible (including pitching up into head voice at the end of phrases).
As a Dutch person, right back at ya. Deutsch ist sehr komisch
@@echtblikbonen WE HEBBEN EEN SERIEUS PROBLEEM
honestly, half of German dialects already have that, even within Germany.
"schwätzen" being used by the Swabians as the standard word for speaking/talking is a thing very comparable to "snacka/snakke" in Swedish and Norwegian i think, or Hessians with "babbeln"
Fun take on the differences and similarities between our Scandinavian languages.
I have one little quibble with regards to the grammar example. In Norway we can say both "bilen min" and "min bil". Both mean "my car", but the last version is often used when the focus is on the fact that it's MY car.
Sometimes we can say "Bilen min" or whatever is before "min" in Swedish too. In a more relaxed kind of way. In songs we sometimes do this (probably to make it rhyme) too.
I guess we say both "bilen min" and "min bil", but for many sentences saying "min bil" would sound weird/wrong.
@@TorBarstad Får mig att tänka på svenska (komiskt ordvitsiga) sångaren Robert Broberg : "Min bil är inte lik din bil det är en likbil!".
Likbil=Bilen som transporterar "lik", döda människor!
Ni har inte ens "likbil" ser jag. Ni har "olikbil" antar jag!😄 Eller "Olycksbil". Jag menar "Alla är döda när vi kommer fram!"
@@TorBarstad Får mig att tänka på svenska komikersångaren "Robert Broberg" och låten "Min bil är inte lik din bil det är en likbil"!
ruclips.net/video/ZLMUG33mUyQ/видео.html&start_radio=1
Totalt hysteriskt roligt i det här sammanhanget.
Likbil=Bil som transporterar, just det", lik (i kistor).
Ni verkar inte ens ha "likbil" på norska!
Det är en "Olikbil"! En olik bil jämfört med vår likbil.
Eller "Olycksbil" kanske. För alla är ju döda när vi kommer fram! :)
Jag dör av skratt! (Behöver en likbil)
4:30 "Snor" is an interesting word as it can also mean "stealing" in standard Swedish and "turning around" in northern Swedish
you say "sno runt" in the rest of sweden
And in Norwegian just put a line across the o to make an ø, then add another r at the end and the it means the same as the originally discussed Swedish meaning
Snor means koppel in Danish lol. "Hund i snor" means dog on a leash.
dialect variations such as "sno" and "snor" are cognates with standard norwegian "snu" and standard swedish "snurra", which often means something turning on itself to a degree.
some dialects of värmländska share roughly the same meaning of "snor" as the neighbouring norwegian dialects, like the act of tying a knot or a thinly twined string. some old people also say "sno" when they refer to a cold wind breeze, and when it's blowing a lot it "snor" outside.
@@bennyklabarpan7002 but do you say (for example) "han snor sig i sänga sin"?
I've always thought that, strangely enough, the western Norwegian dialects have more inherited words in common with Swedish than the eastern Norwegian dialects that actually border to Sweden. Western dialects will still use the words that you referred to that are typical of eastern dialects, but there's also more local older words that are similar to the Swedish equivalent.
Words like "ete, arg, tale" would be among them - as well as "snor" (more likely pronounced "snår") for snot.
It doesn't make sense in terms of a geographic dialect continuum, but I guess that just speaks to the overall influence of Danish on the eastern Norwegian dialects over the centuries.
As someone who speaks danish and german I always thought that swedish is to danish what dutch is to german. Possible to understand if you listen closely, but just very silly. Norwegian always just felt like someone saying danish words like they would be pronounced if danish was a somewhat reasonable language lol
Very well said; good point!
As a Hungarian, the silliest sounding Language to me has to be Finnish. On one hand It sounds a bit like Hungarian except with none of the same words, like a sort of Sims language. On the other hand it borrows some of the silly intonations from its Norse neighbors. Also Finns speaking English is the funniest shit ever.
I love watching AuriKaatarina just for her accent.
Rally English is indeed silly. Where it turns into pure, unadultered horror is rally *Japanese*. Check out some Marutei Tsurunen videos, and don't say I didn't warn you.
As a Brit who speaks some Finnish and has heard a fair bit of Scandinavian languages, I can imagine, Hungarian is incomprehensible to me.. and rally English is very funny sounding but kinda cute.. I really love the variety of ways people communicate. Got to go look up rally Japanese now..
I’m a Swede and I agree with you on the English part. Finn’s speaking English is very funny.
As a native Portuguese speaker (Brazil), People from Portugal sound incredibly funny for some reason, and Spanish sounds like they're overpronouncing every vowel, and speaking on fast forward. And my impression of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish is that Swedish sounds funny for some reason, Danish sounds like they're slurring everything together and Norwegian sounds vanilla except for declarative statements sounding like questions. I'm sorry of I've offended anyone.
There are so many insulting takes and uninformed opinions in this comment section, your comment isn't one of them! In fact, that's quite endearing.
I mean we agree on the Danish, so we are good. I wonder why my vanilla (Swedish) sounds silly to you, and something I find so silly (Norweigian) sounds vanilla to you...
Vanilla might not be the best word for what I'm hearing. Maybe mundane is closer.
Lol im swedish and dont know any of those languages, but i still think youre exactly right for spanish. Same for standard french with the overpronouncing, it makes both spanish and french sound a bit arrogant to me.
Haha, it'd be interesting if someone made a comparison about mutual perceptions of each other's languages, between Spanish and Portuguese accents.
Brazilian Pt often sounds kinda singy-songy and relaxed, and a bit cute. But Pt from Portugal sounds different, kinda colder and more serious.
To put this in to perspective for you and compare the Scandinavian languages against your note, Brazilian Portuguese would be Danish, Portugal Portuguese would be Norwegian and Swedish would be Spanish. Maybe easier to understand?
As a german who learns swedish and has spent a bif of time in Lund/Malmö i find it sounds a bit funny in a cute way. It has what we germans call "Sing-sang" so you pronounce the weirdly and always go up and down and it just sounds like your singing or humming, it's hard to describe but Swiss german and Schwitzerdüütsch sound in that regard almost like swedisch.
To me, native Spanish and Basque speaker, both Norwegian and Swedish sound like someone speaking while eating (not a potato, that's for Danes) but like, you know, mouth half full, not really making an effort to state sounds clearly.
As a native Spanish and learning-since-preschool Catalan speaker, i get what you mean
I imagine that would be all of those vowels that you don't have.
As a Swede, I look at English in the same way. It sounds like they refuse to open their mouth all the way when speaking. And that Swedish is much more clearly pronounced. It is maybe because there are so many damn diphthongs in English which I interpret as constricting.
i feel like this is especially noticable with dialects like västgötska, which i speak. It's to the point that i almost want to call it another language because we treat the spellings of words as a vague suggestion a lot of the time. For example "trädet" can sometimes turn into [tʁæ:a], which is almost converging on danish somehow, and is also like really tonal? the [æ] sound dips real low and then the tone goes back up for the final [a]
That's very accurate for when we speak colloquially though, at least in Swedish. We barely pronounce any words the way they are written, and instead kind of rush everything together. An example is how "jag" becomes "ja". Something like "Jag ska diska", which means I'm going to do the dishes, becomes "jaskadisk".
As a Norwegian, I think Swedish is a beautiful language, I think it sounds a little softer than Norwegian. But I would also like to argue that the Scandinavian languages can be considered a large dialect continuum. It is, for example, easier for me to understand standard Swedish than some of the Norwegian dialects.
And I, as a Swede, find Norweigan beautiful. It's really nice that internet makes it so easy to listen NRK Radio.
In the silley valley, you had a missed opportunity with "Jäg vil ha en bärs", in Swedish that would be I would like one beer. In Norwegian it would be, I would like one poop.
As a Dutch person living in Norway, at first both Norwegian and Swedish sounded hilarious to me. They're such bouncy languages.
Now that I've lived here for a few years, Norwegians sounds entirely normal and neutral to me, but Swedish is still hilariously bouncy.
Can you understand Swedish after having lived in Norway?
@@linusfotograf Yeah, I can usually get the gist. But I probably only really understand 50% of the words if I listen to two people talking to each other. If they're talking to me directly, it's a little easier, but I always feel like I'm talking over a satellite connection, because there's a 5 second delay before I can respond, because I have to process things first 😅
It's not just across languages, but within varieties of languages.
You get many Canadians, younger Australians, and some American Californians doing a non-final rising intonation for _declarative_ statements, which to almost anyone else sounds like a question; that intonation only falls when the **full** statement is uttered at the very end. (They basically speak in "paragraphs", with only the final sentence falling.) And it stands out: in the US, it's associated with "Valley Girl" speak, or "Surfer Dude" speak.
My partner has an uncle who is Swedish and it is absolutely a language we take the piss out of all the time. And the funniest thing is, because of the pitch accent, us trying to take the piss ends up being MORE CORRECT than us trying to say a word off-handedly.
Once I was in Sweden and I saw the guys driving licence (körkort) and I just said the word how I normally would as someone who does not speak Swedish but is familiar with its orthography. He said it sounded wrong. Then I said something to the effect of “I’m sorry, kJÖÖÖÖÖRkURTTTTTT” as a joke and he was like “yeah that’s pretty spot on”, not even realizing I was just taking the piss.
Not to mention as someone who speaks English and German, I find some Swedish to be a funny mishmash like “tillsammans” being like “I took German zusamnen but I replaced zu- with the English equivalent “till”.
The German "zu" is literally "till" in Swedish lol
Hahaha...that's exactly how it is. When we Norwegians really put on a Swedish accent to make fun of the language, then we get it done. When I was a student, I played a Swedish character in the student revue, and all I had to do was give it my all and a little more all the way, and it turned out right.
English "till" was a loan word from the Scandinavian languages, during the Danelaw in the 800s. While words like "samme", "samma" are old heritage words that retained their form in Swedish, but became "zusammen" by typical High German use of prefixes and consonant shift during the middle ages.
So Swedish is closer to the original than both (standard) German and English, as is often the case.
Me, a hopeless lingshitter: "haha wouldn't it be funny if the Swedish word for 'forbidden' were something silly like 'förbjuden' lol wouldn't that be hilarious lmao"
The Swedish language: 👀💦💦💦
@@herrbonk3635 Exactly. I thought it was hilarious that he wrote "the English equivalent 'till'" when it is the exact same norse word to begin with.
I always find it funny as a Native English Speaker learning German to see memes about German being aggressive when really I’ve found it’s usually very calm and narrative. I actually often make a point when I meet people and I talk about my studying of German to demonstrate how it’s really just calm and only aggressive when I make it.
As a native German with a decent command of the Swedish language, Norwegian does sound funny to me. And that's because of two things: the rising intonation and the vocabulary. Norwegians often have cute words for things. These factors made watching e.g. Vikingane even more funny.
I (also German) find Danish even cuter.
"kjempe torsk" caught me off guard, and had me laughing out loud. We have so many silly jokes for sweden here in norway as well 😁
Jag vill höra era bästa svenskvitsar!
@@JJ-hb9in Haha, orden "vill" kontra "vil" är också en källa till förvirring mellan norska och svenska.
Norway a new K Klein
Two regions in Norway have the intonation pattern that you mentioned: standard østnorsk and dialect varieties of this one; plus dialects belonging to the larger group called trøndske (trønderske) dialekter. They stick out in Norway - but they also stick out in Europe. Because they combine two things that hardly any other language does: an unstressed syllable with a high pitch. The usual pattern in ANY European language is to speak in a high pitched whenever a word / syllable / section has stress; as that is a more important syllable. You would speak a word like “waiting” with the highest pitch on the “wait-“, because that’s the stressed part of the word. However, the roles may flip when you say the word “possess”, because the stress is on the last syllable.
I’m Norwegian, I don’t speak either of these dialects, so my melody is just as depressed as any Swede! And so are most dialects in Norway. However, the dialect of our capital region dominates in all films and in all communication that foreigners get from Norway. So all you ever hear, is this particular way of speaking; the “standard østnorsk”. It sounds funny to us, too… but as a linguist I have decided to just be proud! This is UNIQUE!
5:37 This is also why the west coast of norway find the speakers in oslo silly so at least to me this makes sense
As a Swede, Norwegians sounds like they are happy all the time, even when they are angry.
Scandinavian intonation is also good for not dozing off, like English which is on the same tone all the time.
You do know we have more than one dialect in Norway?
@@Casstax hur voger du sige s^Å vi har mer en en dialekt av norsk^E!
I am native french speaker living in France and the way you describe norwegian as a swedish speaker reminds me a lot of the relationship most of us french have with québec french. People here love to imitate the accent and to describe it as incredibly "silly". You got entire comedy sketches centered around making fun of the people from québec and how they speak. The interesting part is they barely exaggerate the traits : québec french does have a different phonology, including different phonemes, different intonation, etc, and different vocabulary. When I came across content made by french speaking canadians on youtube, it took me some time to throw this "silly" impression their accent gave me. It was like trying to listen to someone making a silly voice on purpose and having to do the conscious effort of ignoring it. It's really interesting, to see that a similar phenomenon is happening in a different cultural setting.
3:25 Norwegian has "ete"/"ete" and "arg" too. "Ete" in Bokmål is mostly used for animals, or eating greedily, because of Danish. But in Nynorsk, "eta" is the common word for "eat". Nynorsk actually does not have "spisa". "Eta" is very common in dialects. "Arg" is also common.
Ja men jeg forbinder de ordene med gamle folk, jeg bare syns det høres gammelt ut👴
@@Heker_Boi Dei er vanlege ord.
@@Heker_Boi dei er ikkje "gamle", du snakkar berre dansk
@@ShadowValleysDansk er i hvertfall et levende språk, i motsetning til nynorsk som desperat klamrer seg til utdaterte former og regler.
@@ShadowValleys jeg snakker norsk men jeg bor nærme Oslo så det er ikke så vanlig der jeg bor å si de orda
8:34 I think you’re right about Swedish having a bit of a silly reputation, at least in the anglophone world. When I think of media depictions of Swedish characters, I think of the Swedish chef muppet or more modernly the Swede from “Our Flag Means Death”, both of whom have a kind of sing-song accent that accompanies a sort of bumbling demeanor. I actually can’t think of characters that are Danish or Norwegian in the same way, not counting Vikings
I'm from England, and I don't speak any Scandinavian languages to any degree at all. From just a kind of aesthetic level of the sound of the language, I think Danish has a much more familiar intonation pattern to English out of the three.
And then the Norwegian rising intonation actually doesn't sound so weird because it's so consistent. It's like the 'Australian' or 'uptalk' rising intonation style that some (generally older) people have tended to grumble about some other (generally younger) people using in English. It might be an unusual intonation pattern to you, but it's easy to understand what it is and how it's different from your own intonation (and how perhaps you might not like it!).
Which leaves Swedish as having just as 'foreign' an intonation pattern but one which seems less easy to get a handle on than Norwegian, so it sounds subjectively stranger. That's my amateurish theory anyway!
I think about the Norwegian accents in "dude where's my car". Would be funny to see a hamlet production with full danish accents.
The person who was used as a "blueprint" for the Swedish chef in the Muppets was actually a Swedish chef visiting some American Tv-station, who made food in a morning Tv-show. That Swede came from a very sing-songy part of Sweden called Dalarna and he also didn't speak very good English and put in some Swedish words in the middle of sentences and the combo of bad English in that extremely sing-songy dialect of Sweden just made that comical character! I would give a fortune just to hear the original chef!
So your imagination about how a Swede sounds is partly formed by that dialect from Dalarna which is off the chart in sing-songy-ness!
This seems similar to how Finns make fun of Estonian. It's uncanny valley similar, lot of confusing word pairs and everyone has learned to laugh at it. It was kinda weird learning it, cause Estonian funnyness decreased steadily the more I learned it.
Anyways, I think that the general consensus in Finland is that Swedish sounds too lighthearted, too happy and too melodic. I guess cause Finnish is so monotonous and also because of the image we have of Swedes: too happy, too social, too performative.
(I like swedish though, it sounds pretty, but also kinda like a child who is too excited to explain more calmly. Softer and faster than Finnish)
Was there anything you had trouble with, learning Estonian? I've heard they lack vowel harmony, so I guess that would sound weird to a Finn.
To my Norwegian ears, Finnish always sounded amazing. The exact opposite of how you describe Swedish (which makes sense): down to earth, serious, monotonous, a bit melancholic. I especially like the diphthongs and rolled r-s!
@@Saturos02 I didn't have any big issues with Estonian, although I never learned it by the book, but just watched a bunch of movies in Estonian and just very occasionally checked grammar. The languages are so similar that I didn't even need that much repetition. Although I have to admit that I have watched Frozen in Estonian over a dozen times and could quote it by heart during my most active learning period 😳
They do not share the Finnish vowel harmony, that's true, but they have their own logic: front vowels only in the first syllable. It was pretty easy to pick up with practice, since Finnish also has some loan words that break vowel harmony anyways.
I also went there for an exchange in upper secondary school which helped to polish my skills, but I could speak okayish Estonian already when I got there. Now however I don't get enough practice so I've become a little rusty...
@@kanskubansku Ah, I see. Haven't heard much spoken Estonian, but it definitely sounded like "weird" Finnish! Not to mention the Sami language, but then I guess we're way past any kind of mutual intelligibility.
@@Saturos02 Yeah, Sami languages are impossible to understand for Finns without studying. Karelian is borderline possible. It's the closest to Finnish and since it's mainly spoken in Finland or former Finnish territories, it has great resemblence, but I think I understand it way better _because_ I also know Estonian.
Finns usually say that Estonian sounds drunk Finnish. Funnyly enough, when I did an exchange year in Estonia, Estonians said the same for Finnish. My theory/opinion is that Estonian sounds the first level of drunkness when you're happily getting tipsy and Finnish the drunkness after too many drinks, when you start to talk slow, mumble and sound sleepy. :D
@@kanskubansku Interesting theory! I've always said Dutch sounds like German spoken by a drunk Norwegian :)
We have a Finnic minority language called Kven. To me it sounds like Finnish with some extra loanwords here and there, but idk. The language/dialect question is kind of a big deal for some, I guess because of identity and such.
Good to know you're Swedish :)
Nice video! Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Belgium (and Dutch from Suriname) are officially all 1 language but they all sound incredibly funny to the other ones. Same with French from France and French from Belgium or Québec. So yeah, even if its officially 1 language, you still have this "problem". Afrikaans sounds even more funny though 😂
The funny thing is that Dutch is the one that sound weird to me.
I know Afrikaans and whenever I hear Dutch it sounds like a lazier and more slippery version of Afrikaans.
The way they pronounce the R in words is what throws me off each time.
We often say that Dutch sounds like drunk Afrikaans.
@@fullmetaltheorist the R? Really? Cause it depends on where you are from. In Belgium it's mostly rolling or like the French (guttural). In the south of the Netherlands it's mostly guttural as well, while in the west it's traditionally rolled unless it's at the end of a word (when it sounds more like the English R)
Québécois French is really funny and I don’t even really speak French
@@fullmetaltheorist Funny because it's the complete opposite for us. Afrikaans sounds like a children speech.
I personally like Afrikaans more though in some aspects.
Like everyone else I've also always experienced Norwegian as "silly", but I could never quite articulate why. Thank you for this thorough analysis of the quantifiable differences!
As a second language German speaker, it’s doesn’t sound very aggressive to my native English ears anymore. People mostly think it does because they force it too. If you had a French and English speaker both shout “BEVERAGE 🤬” and then had a German speaker politely say “Trink 😊”, I think you could make the same perception happen in reverse
Well, "German" is used prefer to Hochdeutsch. It varies from Länder to Länder (I'd also include Swiss German, and Alsatian (both North and South) here.)
For example, I know my mother doesn't like Swiss German because they say "Ich" with a hard R.
It may actually be the same in England, actually. It's definitely a similar case for Italy.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 oh completely, I remember one of my teachers from München and she definitely had a “harsher” sounding accent than another teacher from Dortmund even though they were both speaking Hochdeutsch to us. Though generally I don’t think English speakers hear much difference unless they’ve spent a decent amount of time learning German and hearing all the different accents and dialects
Getränk
As Stephen Fry put it on QI: "Wo ist mein handy?"
Very much not aggressive in some contexts.
Just a small nitpick: the word isn't "beverage" in French, but "boisson".
From a Dane: I’ve never heard anyone say that Swedish sounds depressing.
I think it sounds like if you just ended every Danish word with an A. Easy Swedish.
~2:13 omg I never knew Old Norse was bisexual, good for it
Bisexual but there's an extra red gender
The gender of blood
Fascinating; as a Norwegian I have always found Swedish to sound happier than Norwegian(Very generalised). Though granted, I am from western Norway, so my dialect is different from that around Oslo. Different intonation patterns, different vocabulary and grammar.
In fact, my dialect has features more in common with Swedish than the dialect of Oslo. Such as, depending on the speaker, preserving the historic -ar, -ir, -ur plurals in some form(as -a, -e, -o in my dialect vs. -ar, -er, -or in Swedish). Most speakers do however merge the historic -ir and -ur plurals, but their effects on preceding velars is still different as the historic -ir plural palatalises them while the historic -ur plural does not.
Similarly the present tense of verbs will end either in -e or -a depending on the verb in pretty much the same pattern as Swedish with its -er and -ar forms in the present tense.
Considering as a northern Norwegian speaker my intonation pattern is more like Swedish, I actually feel the same way. Bokmål is hard to take seriously for me. Swedish sounds more normal, just more "elitist" in a way
As a Norwegian, I love how Swedish sounds, and have never had the thought that it sounds depressive. Particularly I think the Swedish vowels sound incredibly beautiful. Much love.
Given that I am located on both the other side and hemisphere where nobody has any ingrained beliefs about the Nordics, I can safely say that the only “silly” sounding language is Danish. I do find Finnish slightly amusing but that is by the by.
As for Norwegian, I actually really like the sound and intonation. It sounds pleasant and encouraging. Icelandic too. They’re almost hopeful sounding!
maybe its living in the cold for so long that makes the hopeful tone sound delusional instead
@@Littlevampiregirl100 That may be. I understand that cold harsh winters can wear people down. One day I dearly hope to experience one of those for myself.
Well, Norwegians, at least the coastal, mountainous or northern ones (ie pretty much all of us😅) and Icelanders HAVE to be positive and unbreakable in spirit, you dont survive for generations in ice, salt water spray and below 20 degrees Celsius if youre not positive.
As someone who has learned Swedish, I find that Swedish sounds more crisp and pointy, like British English, whereas Norwegian sounds more bouncy and fun, like Jamaican English.
I think that just might be the result of learning Swedish as the "correct" language, while the similar one sounds wrong. I find that the description fits my perception of posh British English and Jamaican, but I find Swedish to be more bouncy and funny
I think that it is that it is pretty common to speak clearly in Swedish, obviously not most of the time but it isnt weird
@@DenKulesteSomFins It also varies greatly with Swedish dialects. Dialects to the north have less intonations and is less "singy" and bouncy. The west coast, especially Gothenburg, are really bouncy, almost to the point of Norwegians at times. People from Skåne may sound more like Danish at times and tend to go down in pitch more. Then we have people from "Gnällbältet", aka the "The whine belt" where people sound like they are whining (or complaining) all the time.
"östgötar" sounds like they are mildly retarded (sorry, but you do!).
Oh, we have a special part of a singy dialect in Dalarna which is all over the place with silly pitch changes and intonations.
I'm Norwegian so it's a hard to understand how it sounds like to others. But when I speak English without putting on a British or American accent, I feel like it sound a bit like Scouse? Especially if comparing Swedish to "normal" british accents
The Oslo accent with the dramatic cheery rising intonation sounds especially eccentric to me as a Norwegian. I am from the Swedish border and our intonation is a lot more neutral, leading to me being called "The Swede" by classmates when I moved to Oslo for college.
And your pronunciation of Norwegian is pretty much exactly what I would sound like when imitating the Oslo accent. Nice.
As a Russian native speaker, I can definitely say that all the other slavic languages sound more or less silly.
And when I for some reason need to distinguish between Swedish and Norwegian I do it by sillyness: from my perspective Swedish sounds more ridiculous with its pitch accent, and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that people really communicate like this
Do you find serbian especially silly?
Well, it equally baffles us Scandinavians that you Russians communicate solely with words comprising of the sounds of the letters "J" and "Z" :D
What every word in Russian sound like to us: "Jzjzjjzj"
@@falkkiwiben I can’t really point out the silliest, they all are about equally goofy. But I remember me playing Geuguessr with my friends and we got a round in Croatia and we absolutely died from “Glavni Koldovor” (I believe it’s spelled like this)
@@vicolin6126 very might be. There is even a word that starts with 2 J’s in a row (or more like 2 Zh’s) - Zhzheniye (жжение) - “burning”
@@vijsek7488What's so funny abt Glavni Koldove? I don't speak any Russian
One of my swdsish friend went to a sauna in Norway, and got dizzy and said "jag e yr" or something that (meaning i am dizzy) and left. The Norwegians were apperently 5 utter shock, and he later found out yr means horny in Norwegian lol
Your word examples were fun as a Dane learning Swedish.
In Danish you can say
eat: æde (slightly brutish form of eating)
Angry: arrig
So there are much more common words between the languages, it's just which ones have "won" the battle in the respective countries.
As someone who speaks both English and German, I think Swedish and Norwegian both sound like someone smashing English and German together in a sing-song way.
Same here. Plus, as a native American english speaker who learned high German then worked with Bavarians, suddenly Austrian is happy and trivially easy, as is Norwegian Nynorsk. And even Frisian isn't hard. Just swap English vowels into German, then replace some unusual words.
I though Californian Sacramento Valley Girl talk was a joke until I heard native speakers in Sacramento using it in day to day speech.
Southern American accents and dialects go through similar shifts from one another.
@@tunneloflight It has spread far and wide now, but the valley girl accent originally comes from the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles.
But yeah, that and the "surfer dude" accent seem like a joke until you meet people that actually talk that way. Since I grew up in Southern California, near where those accents are from, I met a lot of people that had one of those accents many people have only heard in movies or TV.
@@timseguine2 Sheesh. Yes. I forgot about the surfer dude accent. And yes, it seemed like a put-on until I met a bunch of them in their native environs.
7:22 i have been literally laughing out loud for the last three or four seconds, haha! the thought of film-makers ahistorically making a character speak a different language *just to make them seem more depressed* somehow was so unexpected for me that it makes me laugh!!
As a Swede living in Finland for over a decade, interacting with the local Swedish-speaking minority, I now find "Sweden-Swedish" or as it's called in Finland "rikssvenska" almost as silly-sounding as Norwegian😆. I find that the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland speak a more, albeit with tons of weird and different accents and dialects, proper and "OG" Swedish. Especially when comparing with more modern Swedish words and expressions.
Whenever you show translations a words among the Scandinavian languages don’t forget that there are many ways to say things. E.g. “bucket” is “hink” in Swedish and “spann” in danish, but you can say “spann” in Swedish too, it’s the common choice in the south, but not in the rest of the country.
An other example is: angry, sint, vred, arg (en, no, da, se). In Swedish you can say ‘vred’ too. It a bit archaic though. ‘Sint’ is in the dictionary, but people wouldn’t know it in that way. However, if someone is on the angry side of the spectrum he is ‘argsint’.
where I’m from we use the similar word “sinnig”
What I as a Norwegian has noticed is that at least we use the usual words in Swedish or Danish as a secondary word for stuff, like the previously mentioned “bucket” is usually (at least in my filthy Oslo dialect) “Bøtte” but everyone would understand what you meant if you said “spann”
@@ItzLucky90 According to the Swedish dictionary “bytta” means a wooden slat bucket used for holding dairy products like milk or butter. Most people, like me, would say it means container or receptacle. I would definitely understand “bøtte”.
You touched on it, but it's probably more like a slight majority of Norwegian speakers that speak in the rising intonation (lagtone) - specifically Trøndersk and Østlandsk, which are the examples you used. The other (somewhat less than half) speak like the English tend to, in falling intonation (høgtone), that would be Western Norwegian dialects, most Northern Norwegian dialects, and the dialects of Agder/Sørlandet. Northerners from Norway sound pretty monotone to Swedes and Danes, and due to our intonation I've experienced being easier to understand than a lot of the other dialects by Swedish and Danish acquaintances.
The problem is that most movies from Norway tend to be heavy on Trøndersk and Østlandsk as those are two of the main hubs for media production (Trondheim and the Oslo area). There are obviously exceptions, Bergen and Stavanger are both influential cities with prominent actors, and especially Bergen is a hub for news production, but generally, most Norwegian entertainment happens in those rising intonations.
Swedish and Japanese are my two favorite sounding languages, and I suppose that it's no coincidence that they're both pitch stress languages.
I think Japanese has just pitch accent and no (lexical) stress.
@@seneca983 No, it's lexical. For example: HAshi (chopstick) vs. haSHI (bridge).
@@jambec144 But AFAIK that's just pitch and no stress (whereas Swedish has both). That's what I meant. I only put the word "lexical" there to indicate that I'm not saying Japanese couldn't have prosodic stress.
@@seneca983 No, a pitch stress language is in a middle space between a tonal language (like Chinese) and a stress language (like English). It's as if you have a few forms of stress that are distinguished by pitch. Or to put it another way, there isn't such a thing in a pitch stress language as stress occurring without pitch, since that would simply be a sort of 'neutral' tone in the stress.
The thing that gives pitch stress languages their attractive (in my opinion) sound is that the tonal contours mostly require two or more syllables to occur (otherwise, you're basically describing a tonal language). This means that you can have fairly strict rules about how the tones flow together, which in turn gives these languages a lyrical quality. That's in contrast to tonal languages, where basically any two tones can be adjacent to each other, giving the language that choppy sound.
Swiss German sounds very similar in tone and pitch to Swedish and Norwegian. When in Switzerland you always got the “Oh, I think I hear my countrymen” feeling ( that you always get abroad when hearing someone speaking your language) and had to watch out what you say out loud after hearing Swiss German speakers from afar - before realizing it’s not your language when they get closer and your hear the language in more detail.
Which is probably the best way of native Swedish and Norwegian speakers to listen to their language from an outsiders perspective.
Brazilian Portuguese speaker. I can divide European languages into two camps, ones that sound like real people, and ones that sound cartoonish.
From the most to least real in the first group, we have South Slavic languages, Baltic languages, Celtic languages, Iberian languages (that are not Spanish, Portuguese or Basque), Greek, Albanian, Italian languages (that aren't Italian), Portuguese, Hungarian, West Slavic languages, Romanian, Estonian, East Slavic languages, and at the end of the spectrum English, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and French.
Languages that are definitely a whimsical cartoon character are, from most to least cartoonish, Italian, German, Finnish, Danish, Basque and Spanish. I get internally very offended when other Brazilians get defensive and say Brazilian Portuguese uNlIkE eUrOpEaN does not sound Slavic and sounds like "the languages of love and passion" because I feel like it's an insult to be told I speak beppiddy boppiddy. "You sound like a drunk Russian" yeah at least Russians sound like humans from real life as opposed to speakers of a fictional Tolkien race tongue.
The way Spanish speakers when say destrapaceo or whatever with the same exact mouth opening degree and vowel length eating consonants away if they can and blowing them to the wind with fast speed sounds like they're airbenders or whatever and are trying to mog us about it. Basque is the same but they're ancient mages talking backwards to fool you. I think everyone understands why German sounds very silly and out of a fairy tale. And I don't think I need to explain why Finnish people sound like they can talk to animals, either. And I will never get how Italians think their official language is POSSIBLY, IN ANY TIMELINE more "refined" than their minority local languages.
But I don't have animosity towards any of them because the real question in those discussions is why everyone mostly listens to music in the one language that sounds like the night wails of elderly people with dem33ntia in a very real nursing home (girl what is that R), and we decide to judge our young and healthy people-sounding languages using that as somehow a measuring spade for everything else. "Oh Dutch and Hebrew sound like they have throat phlegm" better health condition than what I would identify out of the sound English has. Even the more serious-sounding yet singasongy accents like Scottish still sound like they're a bit kooky.
Speaking of kooky. I have autism (type 2, don't come for me!). Swedish sounds like people who have autism even more visibly. That speech register of guys who, like me, read encyclopedias as kids and go well in school (better with grades than with being well-received by others), but sound very authoritative and emphasizing every syllable as if they were a king giving a pronouncement. It sounds very self-important, pompous, educated, quite conceited but not like they are trying to bash you, mog you or anything. Unlike RP English which does not sound like a wail in a nursing home but does sound like they're judging at least your fashion choice. (I *know* this does not translate to real behavior and English people are mostly chill and don't give a damn.)
Norwegian sounds like you gave drugs to the Swede, just like Dutch sounds like you gave drv🍄🌵🍁vgs to the English person after making them have sessions with the phonoaudiologist, but they decided to stay crazy and vandalize a different consonant. Definitely real people but choices were made.
Danish people... sound like the Swedish person displaying bigoted behavior and making a caricature of what people of other languages sound like. The crazy diphthongs, glottal stops and to be entirely frank gross softened consonants of English, the Hans und Gretel rhythm of German, the thousand deleted vowels of Portuguese (yes, Brazilians delete vowels or at the very least devoice them too, we just don't notice it ourselves because /i/ becomes palatalization and /u/ becomes velarization+rounding). And tried to sound as country as possible while doing it. Norwegian sounds a bit country but whereas our beloved autistic Swedish character would be from Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Vitória, Niterói or Brasília, his Danish vulgar imitation is of someone from absolute caipira country.
And French. Yeah they just sound French. I don't have how to describe it. It doesn't really strike me as similar to anything else, but they also sound like they exist in our world without having been invented, for some reason. 😐 Maybe making a German try to speak Portuguese after giving them a ton of coffee or even stronger⚡? But since Germans are a fantastic race it comes across as a spiritual assault.
Icelandic sounds like an allistic-passing sibling of the Swede who is inventing their own fantasy language and speaking it full time 24/7. Maybe not so allistic-passing. It definitely sounds like a real person who's trying too hard (though it's not at all bad).
I used to think European Portuguese sounds silly but I now have the opposite opinion, it's Brazilian Portuguese that sounds like someone who spoke Portuguese as a child trying to imitate their adult Portuguese parents, got separated from them and kept speaking baby Portuguese for their whole lives.
People from southern Brazil sound like they were adopted by Swedes, Norwegians and Finns, people from São Paulo city and Brasília like they were adopted by the English and Romanians, people from the Northeast like they were adopted by Czechs, Danes and Ukrainians, people from Minas Gerais like they were adopted by Czechs, Lithuanians, Danes and Americans, people from Rio de Janeiro like we were adopted by Russians, Poles, Romanians and Germans*, people from Espírito Santo by Czechs and Romanians, people who are REALLY from Florianópolis by Russians and Danes (RUclips search Discussão Entre Manezinhos), people from the countryside of São Paulo, the Center-West and the north of Paraná by Danes and Americans and people from the Amazon by Ukrainians and Americans.
People from Rio de Janeiro and the Northeast do drvvgs and people from southern Brazil, São Paulo and Brasília have autism (almost as much as the Nordics in southern Brazil) and allergic rhinitis (worst in São Paulo city and Porto Alegre).
* I mean the schwa diphthongs with é, ê, ó, ô, em and õ. Actually, this is a trait we share with Swedish, but it doesn't make Swedes sound as silly. I guess because everyone expects Germanic languages not to map well to the Latin alphabet but we Romance speakers aren't allowed to be quirky. 🙄
I wish we had a dialect that sounds kind of like Dutch. It's actually the coolest speech pattern to me.
As a Norwegian, I never thought of Swedish as sounding depressing at all. In fact I always thought you guys sounded jolly and funny as well.
Cause it really goes both ways. You sound funny to us as well.
If I were to attempt to imitate Swedish, I would most likely put on a somewhat cartoony voice as a default, placing my voice in the roof of my mouth and imitating particular Swedish utterances like the way you just say "å" in a descending intonation when you're agreeing or affirming something.
I feel that Norwegian and Swedish both sound like a mix of cute and silly. And I say that after having started learning Swedish last year in Finland while being German xD
but also the most difficult part of learning swedish from a german perspective is the use of the definitive article, because it always sounds and feels like a plural 😅
As a native speaker of Turkish I have almost EXACTLY same thoughts when I listen to Azerbaijani. They use very similar words and sometimes old words(old is Turkish but contemporary in Azerbaijani). But when I kept listening to their songs and watching their movies the 'funny' just disappeared after a while. Now I that learned many words from their language and started enjoying the way they speak and when I use those words with my Turkish friends they still find it funny. I on the other hand just feel richer as a human being if that makes sense.
As a Norwegian i have always thought that when swedish people talk they all sound like children with the more high pitched tone and its always funny to hear how often swedish people talk in the back of their mouths almost like what danish people do except danish people do it all the time
wow, it's another episode of "swede speaks English so well I thought they were a native English speaker this whole time"
He lives in the Uk😂
I mean, he speaks English flawlessly but isn't his accent obvious to you? Also his name is K Klein...
@@PlatinumAltaria It really is not, and "Klein" if anything is German, so ...
The only thing that gave him away as not being an english speaking native is the fact that he speaks English way too... "well". I always thought he was just making a particular effort to speak as well and neutral as possible, but other than that - i speak swedish and thought i'd be able to pick up on those subtle hints giving away that someone is a Swede, but in this case, nope.
@@PlatinumAltaria Which is not a Swedish name.
@@albinjohnsson2511 Pretty sure it's not English either.
Danish kinda does my head in, honestly. Like. I can read it, but then I'm on a flight with danish announcements announcements and its just like "*record played backwards* dont *seal noises* luggage"
I'm a Spanish native and I've been exposed to several regional dialects of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish and... I can never tell what language it is and can barely make a couple words out despite knowing quite a few words out of Duolingo :D. I'm convinced some dialects in Sweden sound way more Norwegian or Danish than an average Swede would even consciously tell.
But that makes sense, since Spanish is a romance language and Swedish etc. are Germanic. What do you think about French, Italian and Portugese?
@@beth5627 Portuguese for me has that "silly valley" effect. Italian sounds familiar and French... unfamiliar with rare flare ups of intelligibility.
Western swedish has norwegian tonality, but with swedish. So something like a gothemburg dialect will sound like a norwegian to people who dont know the words because of the tone. Swedish people make fun of gothemburgers for not being angry ever, just like norwegians. And on the border there is a dialectical continuem, meaning there is no langauge border. Scanian, aka sounthern swedish has danish influences, and are made fun of for being danish by other swedes. But the words and tonal emphasis are swedish, so scanians cant understand danish unless they have studied it, but understand swedish perfectly.
I listened to a one and a half hour entirely in Swedish with shite English subtitles, which I would've done even if it was in a language I loved less, but the almost musical melodiousness of the Swedish speakers even as they politely dissed each other definitely helped
as a norwegian, i mostly understand swedish when someone speaks, but then every once in a while there will be some word thats just completely alien to me lol
Great vid. As a sweden in norway, I've wondered about why this is, the intonation part explains it all. Thanks!
Pronunciation varies very much from from to place in all three Scandinavian countries. All of them have dialects that sound like different languages. I'm from northern Norway and Swedes say my intonation sounds normal and kind of Swedish. My intonation starts high and ends low, like in most Germanic tongues.
On the contrary I who is a Swede from Hälsingland have a intonation that goes up, and I've heard by many that I sound Norwegian
@@JohanMood Interesting. I would like to hear someone speaking your dialect.
One of my favorite things about going to ERASMUS to sweeden was laughing at the youtube ads in swedish so I can confirm 😂
I mean, swedish kinda sounds like if you took a normal recording of someone and reversed it, and that vibe algongside silly ad antics and not understanding the brand names felt funny
The dialects make this pretty interesting, as they are so different. As others have mentioned, I am from the west and our intonation goes down like the Swedes. (Though i would argue we go down even more than them. (We are more depressed)) To us east Norwegian sounds very silly as well, and Swedish maybe even more so. To me east Norwegian and Swedish sound quite similar when it comes to intonation, even though they go down in Swedish. They are in general a lot more sing-song-y then my dialect, at least to my ears. I'd say east Norwegians sound really dim, and Swedes sound like children. That's obviously a joke, but not 100% a joke :P
the Må - Kan switcheroo was a massive hurdle for learning to deal with Danes.
I never thought Norwegian sounded silly, but now that I've heard of a Norwegian saying that Swedish sounds depressing, I suddenly realized that Norwegian is the silliest language in the world.
I'm Norwegian, and this was the first time I ever heard of anyone finding Swedish depressing, too. I've always had the opposite impression, myself.
@@itskarl7575 When I have heard Norwegian it has usually sounded very happy to me for some reason, maybe it has to do with what Norwegians are like in Swedish movies. I don't really know...
Brazilian here! Gotta say, Norwegian sounds absolutely amazing-dare I say, even more so than Swedish!Just my personal take, though. 😊 I love both languages! 😍
As a native English speaker, our closest common relative Dutch does indeed sound funny. I couldn't tell you exactly why, I think it has something to do with sound correspondences.
Isn't Scots your closest relative?
Dutch is more like German
@@kimashitawa8113 Scots isn’t too commonly spoken, so it’s harder to build an impression of how it sounds.
@@PlatinumAltaria Doesn't it just sound like English but with the funny Scottish accent
English's closest relative (other than Scots) is actually Frisian. If you dont know what it sounds like you should take a look, it's pretty insteresting.
as a German, I also kind of noticed the "funnyness" in the Norwegian example part of the film, which is amazing
Spoken Dutch obviously isn't that intelligible to native English speakers, but written it's pretty comical to us: "We hebben een serieus probleem", "Hitler dood, wat nou"
Out of the three, I love how Swedish sounds (I would guess before of some sounds like SJ and because it doesn't go up at the end like Norwegian, which is unnatural for my Italian ears), but I like much more how Norwegian is spelled! It just makes more sense to use ø and Swedish has too many ä for my eyes that are used to reading Icelandic. :)
As a Finn, especially the stockholm accent sounds really dilly and flamboyant, kinda like the stereotypical gay accent in american english. This is less true the more north you go, and (most of) the Finnish dialects of swedish don't sound like that at all
In the north of Sweden they call Stockholm Fjollträsk, which means ~Gay Swamp. Of course in all countries the city folk are seen as a bit effeminate by the periphery, but it kinda seems like everyone thinks Stockholm is extra gay.
Yesh, but there is the "Stockholm" dialect, and then there is the "Rikssvenska" (standard Swedish). These are sometimes thought to be the same, but as somebody who lives a few miles outside Stockholm I can tell you there is a difference. The difference is however quite slight, most notable would be the total replacement of the letter "Ä" with "E" in spoken Stockholm dialect. The word "Dörr" (door) is pronounced "Durr" in the Stockholm dialect. Small differences.
The "flamboyant" thing you mention is perhaps the very stereotypical "Lidingö"-accent (a specific island in Stockholm where rich people live), as this accent actually annoys everyone. It is very popular among younger women for some reason, even if they don't live there, and it is very apparent when they speak any word with the letter "i" in it, it just sounds like they, as you said, are doing a gay accent in english.
The gay people flee from the countryside.. (even many from the Finnish countryside) and come to Stockholm. Because they feel safer and more welcome here. They quickly snap up the (usually the Lidingö-) accent because they don't want to reveal their origin (or they want to forget). It is the jargon they use amongst each other. To me they all sound like rumour spreading hair dressing ladies from the 1950's.. And poof it has become a living stereotype. But that is the Lidingö accent in a nutshell you are describing.. Quite feminin.. Will pronounce sj as sh instead..
I digress though. As this is quite a generalisation brought on by how Swedes are portrayed by Finnish people in general these days. As a family that also has Finnish language skills and ties, I can tell everyone else here that propaganda in Finland spreads a lot of stuff about Swedish men being gay and effeminate.. Just for being Swedish. Sweden has always been a step ahead in the human rights sector.. Also gay rights. Finland has been more homophobic in the past and had issues catching up.. I hear something negative and "gay" every time I go to visit Finland.. How gay gay gay Swedish guys are.. It gets old really fast.. And it probably stems from jealousy/resentment from miscreants who know deep down inside that Stockholm is an awesome place that not many other places can live up to..
Also.. There are at least 10 different accents in the Stockholm area alone. The Söder dialect for exampel has a lot of words in it that no one else can understand. (A bit like cockney) they speak in riddles. Western Stockholm people speak low and fast. It sounds like they are constantly going to run out of air. Southern stockholm tends to speak slower and more pronounced. Northern stockholm stretching into Uppsala and southern Roslagen.. Is your standard Upplandsdialekt.. North of Uppsala.. The melody is completely different. Some of the islands in the Stockholm archipelago have small pockets of unique Swedish dialects that are incredibly difficult for mainlanders to understand that go back hundreds of years in time. Gräsö is an example of one of those places.
If you're being honest, is it really the accent per se, and not just your cultural stereotypes about Stockholm that inform this? I mean, here's an interview with Mikael Hjelmberg, a very straight man (lol) who speaks in a distinct Stockholm dialect: ruclips.net/video/Y1xCRYtWv-o/видео.html . I really struggle to hear anything that resembles a stereotypical gay accent in the way he speaks, but it is undeniably Stockholm.
@@albinjohnsson2511 I think the darker voice and the topic is what conceals it to be honest. I would say it has more to do with pronunciation of certain words though, like "fräscht" and using expressions that would be quite feminine in other parts of the country. Like saying "ah men gud vad roligt". I don't think this stereotype has come from nowhere, as most stereotypes, but it might not apply to the majority.
Another way of looking at it, is to listen to how women from Stockholm speak, it's very similar to the men. I would say a lot of people would think that they sound snobbish, melodramatic, over the top and so on. Bit like stereotypical "valley girl" from California. Which in turn might sound a bit feminine? The way people speak is heavily influenced by the culture.
To be honest I think it has quite a lot to do with being the capital. I've read topics about similar descriptions in other countries as well.
I'm Wermlandian and due to my dialect I get confused for a Norwegian by my own countrymen all the time.
I've been asked if I'm Norwegian at work by my own colleagues...
The Wermlandian dialect does have a lot in common with Norwegian. We say "bilen min" "bror min" "syr min" etc. instead of "min bil" "min bror" "min syster" etc.
Intonation in the Wermlandian dialect is also closer to Norwegian than Standard Swedish. We tend to rise at the end of sentences and words.
It's funny, because having that intonation makes Wermlandians sound perpetually happy, no matter our actual mood. I've heard it told to me a thousand times that Wermlandians cannot sound angry at all. At worst it sounds cute. Don't know what to make of that...
I'm a Norwegian living in Wermland. I love the dialect - I agree that it sounds nice and friendly. Also, Wermlandians understand Norwegian perfectly. Some (very few!) Swedes from other regions writes back in English when I've written in Norwegian to them, and some even want me to speak English... In general Norwegians understand Swedish perfectly and can even speak some, as in using Swedish words where the Norwegian version is different. There may be several causes for that; we consume more Swedish culture than the other way around, and we've "always" had Swedish TV. "Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter" for those who remember :-D
Swedes 🇸🇪: *make a joke about Norway*🤭
Norwegians 🇳🇴: wE hAvE sO mUcH mOnEy wE cOuLd BuY sWeDeN 🤪😂
😂
@@Krzysztof25XD
Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige om vi vil
Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige om vi vil
Ja vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige
Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige
Vi kan kjøpe hele Sverige om vi vil
@@bomba1905 För att vara riktigt ärlig, så är jag inte helt emot den iden.😅
@@bomba1905Ni kan ta skåne
@@Malfredsson Vi vil ikke ha Skåne, Danske kan få det