English as a Scandinavian language?

Great Debates
61

I’m a bit baffled by the data you point to, the intelligibility is lower than I’d expected. Particularly from my own experience with fellow Scandinavians.

However, you should note that these data refer to spoken language and probably relates to a large degree to pronunciation. The written languages are very similar, and as amanset points out, the differences are so minor that ingredients lists on food packagings often use one language with only a few words written with alternatives.

I quite sure that if one had taken the same survey for comprehension of written lanugage rather than spoken, the scores would have been much higher. Let’s look at the vocabulary example in the next paragraph in the article you’re linking to:

It sure doesn’t look like three mutually non non-intelligible languages. At least not when written :stuck_out_tongue:
ETA: It’s also not uncommon for e.g. people from the large cities to claim they can’t understand dialects in their own language. E.g. quite a few people from Oslo have a problem understanding people from, say, Voss, Stockholmers have problems with skånsk, and Copenhageners have problems with sønderjysk. In that case, it is the pronounciation

62

A lot of people say that. But have you ever really looked at Frisian?

63

Just for comparison;

Dutch: Het was een vochtige, grijze zomerdag in laat juni.

64

I know. In fact, one of your examples demonstrates the closeness to German, not English (even when it is somewhat similar to English):

"Ik ferstean net.
I don’t understand.

And you’re like, close to English my ass!!!11ien!! "

65

With regard to English and Frisian, Johanna’s statement from the other thread is key:

Even to one such as myself with only a rudimentary historical knowledge of the Germanic languages, the closeness of the relationship is obvious because the apparently glaring divergences are explained by sound changes. Since the later impact of Norman French was largely limited to vocabulary, most of the sound changes we’re talking about occurred in the middle to late Anglo Saxon period. For example, long /a/ went to long /o/, except in the North, accounting for Scottish English words like “mon” for man and “stane” for “stone”.

66

Sorry I overlooked this until now. I agree that the written languages are extremely similar, but was under the assumption we were talking about spoken language. It was a bad assumption on my part, since it’s difficult to discuss historical linguistics without looking at the way the languages are written.

From my more extensive knowledge of German, together with two quarter-units of tape-recorded instruction in Dutch, I can stumble through a Dutch newspaper article just well enough to get the gist of it. But with spoken Dutch I am lost after the first syllable.

67

Contrast this to the Scandinavian languages: If you’re a native Danish, Norwegian or Swedish speaker, you shouldn’t have any major problems reading - and understanding - a newspaper article in any of the other two languages. There are some words that actually have different meanings in the different languages¹, but in general you’ll get the meaning just fine.
¹ e.g.
“Semester” means “vacation” in Swedish, but “school term” Norwegian and Danish
“Grine” means “laugh” in Danish, but “cry” in Norwegian
“Rar” means “cute” in Swedish and Danish, but “strange” in Norwegian
“Rolig” means “fun” in Swedish, but “calm” in Norwegian and Danish
“Glass” means “icecream” in Swedish, but “glass” in Danish and Norwegian
“Snål” means “greedy” in Swedish, but “weird” in Norwegian

68

Surely the second translates into The Clones’ Attack, given it’s the genitive of the plural clones…

On another note though, I have not been able to find the study or even the newspaper article, however, it is in the pay version of the Norwegian Aftenposten today. However, I find it a little far fetched, having read a fair bit on the History of the English language, and knowing that we Scandivavians (and we Norwegians in Particular) have a penchant for adopting rather obscure phenomena (and I actually maintain the English language is an obscure phenomenon) as our own…

69

There is no doubt that the similarities between the Scandinavian languages are greater than between any of the other Germanic languages - if you don’t count dialects, but I actually find the wikipedia mutual-intelligibility score fairly accurate. I think we often over-estimate what we understand of each other. Probably because we can get away with reading the other languages without much hassle, but also I believe we as kids grow up with that knowledge that we can, and it sticks with us. Kids have a fairly good understanding of each other regardless of language, so if you as a Norwegian kid grow up meeting a few Swedes and Danes (say on holidays), you will probably be able to communicate with them fairly well. However, the actual understanding you have may not be as good as you believe. Though that belief sticks, and unless you are proven wrong later in life, you probably end up with a slightly inflated idea of how much of the two others you understand.

Apologies for rambling, but it has always bothered me a bit that I keep telling non-scandinavians that we Scandinavians completely understand each other, whilst I’ve somehow known that we don’t. I’ve lived in both Norway and Sweden, and actually speak both now, as I learned as an adult that the mutual understanding wasn’t that great (I only lived in Sweden as an adult).

As for the Dutch you refer to - I too noticed that it is a bastardisation of English and German, but also with the odd Scandinavian word. The word for curious for example is the nieuwsgierig, which in Norwegian is nysgjerrig. Both literally meaning greedy for news. Although the word gjerrig in Norwegian is rather more stingy than greedy, as in not sharing, rather than wanting more, which again lends a sort of opposite meaning to the word than what it means word for word.

70

Which was pointed out (and replied to by me) almost two weeks ago …

71

I think a lot of it is to do with practice (hell, a lot of Swedes struggle with people from Skåne and that’s in Sweden), cultural and simply pure exposure. For example, I feel that as Sweden is a more populous country they are less likely to have the “other” languages in their media.

The marvellous Swedish Problems blog put it best. Twice.


72

Incorrect. The report referenced includes tests of both listening and reading comprehension, and the table comparing comprehension is the result of a weighted average of both types of test.

Yes, the differences are minor, but they are large enough that with increasing import of non-Scandinavian, particularly English, books, movies and other media, and a corresponding decrease in consumption of non-translated stuff from our neighbours, comprehension keeps dropping. “Mutual intelligibility” has only been the norm due to high childhood exposure to the other languages.

This also explains why Norwegians consistently score higher than Swedes and Danes on these tests, we’ve always imported a lot more Swedish and Danish media than we’ve managed to export to them.

That said, there’s still enough intelligibility that one of the top talk shows is hosted by a Norwegian, filmed in Sweden with interviewees being both Norwegian, Swedish and English speakers, and the host using English and Svorsk (Swedish - Svensk + Norwegian - Norsk).

73

Actually the other way round.

As already stated, these three are West-Germanic compared to North Germanic Scandinavian.
The languages spoken in what was to become Holland were frisian, saxon and frankish.
At this point there was no ‘dutch’ (nor ‘german’ for that matter).

West-germanic was brought to the British Isles with the Saxon invasions.
The thourough ethnic cleansing of the original Brits meant the language stuck.
Intermixed with the Saxons were, besides the Danish Angles and Jutes, also quite some Frisians and Franks (Dutch), Anglo-saxon would more properly be called Dano-Frisio-Franco-Saxon.

For West-Germanic there were three waves of distinct changes from the ‘original’. For example the P to PF shift. Appel becoming Apfel.Dutch and english were not equally affected by these shifts. The last one only happened in Germany not in Holland or England.
So Germany evolved High-german and English saxon into Old-english.
Of course dutch underwent changes as well, but of the three it is dutch that is still closest to the ‘original’ West-Germanic.

74

I am a professional interpreter and translator who learned French at two and English at three, so they are virtually both my mother tongues.
Over the past 10 years, I have become somewhat fluent in German as well. And, knowing what I know of all three languages, I feel funny describing modern English as “Germanic”. Here is a simple example. It works best if you speak only English. I am too dumb to know how to use the spoilers in SDMB, so I will have to ask you not to peek below at the answer.

Look at this sentnce in German:

Die Regierung beschloß die Verfassung zu ändern.

As a native English speaker, is there a single word there that helps you, that you can guess at?

Now then, look at this sentence in French:

Le gouvernement a décidé de modifier la constitution.

As a native anglophone who speaks no French, could you guess at the meaning of that sentence based on word similarity? If you guessed “The government decided to modify the constitution” you are right. And what does the German sentence say? Same as the French, believe it or not.:slight_smile:

75

Here’s an expanded article explaining the theory:
http://www.apollon.uio.no/english/articles/2012/4-english-scandinavian.html

As I understood it, they are saying that during the turbulent times of the Norman conquest in the former Danelaw, the common people, scandinavian viking settlers and anglo-saxons finally fused into one people. But the language that emerged from this union, Middle English is very different from Old English. This is because it’s actually descended from the language of the scandinavian settlers, with influence from Old English, rather than the other way around.

**<<<The language adopted many words from the Danelaw’s inhabitants who were of Norwegian and Danish descent. For example, all the lexical words in this sentence are Scandinavian: He took the knife and cut the steak. Only he, the and and come from Old English.

“What is particularly interesting is that Old English adopted words for day-to-day things that were already in the language. Usually one borrows words and concepts for new things. In English almost the reverse is true – the day-to-day words are Scandinavian, and there are many of them,” says Faarlund.
Here are some examples: anger, awe, bag, band, big, birth, both, bull, cake, call, cast, cosy, cross, die, dirt, dream, egg, fellow, flat, gain, get, gift, give, guess, guest, hug, husband, ill, kid, law, leg, lift, likely, link, loan, loose, low, mistake, odd, race, raise, root, rotten, same, seat, seem, sister, skill, skin, skirt, sky, steak, though, thrive, Thursday, tight, till, trust, ugly, want, weak, window, wing, wrong.
The researchers believe that Old English already had 90 per cent of these concepts in its own vocabulary."
The two researchers show that the sentence structure in Middle English - and thus also Modern English - is Scandinavian and not Western Germanic.

  • Word order: In English and Scandinavian the object is placed after the verb:
    -I have read the book.
    -Eg har lese boka.
    German and Old English put the verb at the end.
    -Ich habe das Buch gelesen>>>**
76

And this is where they are wrong. Middle English is, indeed, quite different from Old English, but mainly because of the incorporation of so much Norman French. You can cherry pick your way into sentences with Norse derived words, but any comprehensive survey of English speech is going to reveal more French influence than Norse.

77

I have to say that it makes sense. A English friend of mine when learning Norwegian told me that he only needed to learn the words, because the grammar and the way sentences are constructed was very similiar to English. While with learning German it was much harder.

Edit: John, Norman French have a strong influence on Modern English, but it’s mostly in the form of loanwords. French and English syntax and sentence structure are very different.
The last part of the article makes a very strong case for the English-Norse connection I think.

78

Just a nit-pick, but German places the verb at the end ony with the certain tenses.

Present: Ich lese das Buch = I read (reed) the book.

Imperfect: Ich las das Buch = I read (red) the book.

Perfect : Ich habe das Buch gelesen = I have read the book.

79

British guy that learned Swedish as an adult here.

Definitely not the case. English is very fluid with word order, you can pretty much move stuff around and then use a specific tone of voice to change the meaning. For example:

I have cancer.
I have cancer? or Have I cancer?

In Swedish:
Jag har cancer.
Har jag cancer?

There are also sorts of situations with word order and, especially subclauses, where word order changes and I found the rigidity with which Swedish stuck to these made it really quite difficult. And that’s without going into the whole almost-no-use-of-present-continuous-tense.

You are not coming.
Du kommer inte.

I know that you are not coming.
Jag vet att du inte kommer.

(Note that in the subclause translation of “you are not coming”, the negative “inte” moves from one side of the verb to the other, whereas in English the “not” does not move).

Stuff like that and Swedish rigidly sticks to it.

80

I should have added that these are strict word-word translations of the Swedish sentences:

Har jag cancer?
Have I cancer?

Du kommer inte.
You going not.

Jag vet att du inte kommer.
I know that you not going.

Which to me sounds like stereotypical “caveman english” from a dodgy 80s TV show.