Ja, jag talar svenska hela bra, ja! Bork bork bork!

[pne]

I wonder how I would fare if I were plunked down in Sweden for a while (say, half a year or more).

I understand a little Swedish, at least in writing, and I've been known to fake speaking/writing Swedish myself, but I have little formal knowledge—I just go by the bits and pieces I picked up (or half-remembered snippets thereof) and some educated guessed what the cognate of a German or English word might be. I wonder how quickly I'd acquire the language (with or without formal instruction).

And relatedly: I wonder how I'd do in Denmark or Norway, since for some reason, most of my exposure to "Scandinavian" has been to Swedish. (I presume Faeroese or Icelandic would be right out in terms of my being able to understand much of anything.)

Comments

[edricson.livejournal.com]

After nine semesters of quite intensive Swedish (but only a week in Sweden during that time) and then a break of nine months, I was plonked in Norway. Even without too much exposure (people speak English at the University, obviously), it took me little more than a couple of weeks to become quite comfortable with spoken Norwegian (written was a piece of cake right from the start). Admittedly, the Tromsø dialect is in some respects closer to Swedish than to standard Norwegian, but still.

Written Danish is of course also super easy. Speaking nis quite different: having spent nigh on a year in Norway, I failed miserably trying to buy some ice cream at CPH (they could understand my Norwegian, but the Danish was just gurgles to me).

[mummimamma.livejournal.com]

Danish sounds much like gargles to anyone not used to the language I fear. Have you seen the sketch from Uti vår hage Forstår dansker hverandre? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk) Parody, yes, but still...

[edricson.livejournal.com]

Sure :). I like Sydpolsekspedisjon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPOetDo7y7E), too.

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Norwegian and Swedish are very similar - often just the same word with a different spelling. I'm trying to learn Norwegian myself (though I'm dreadful at learning languages) so I know some bits, and whilst over there I've watched Swedish TV and it is very similar. They also have Swedish news broadcasts on the radio over there. Icelandic and Faroese are harder but not impossible. The tricky part is remembering what the different characters are. I have a few faroese friends actually and I've seen the language written and it's not anywhere near as "guessable" as other languages. Like any language, some parts are easy and others are more difficult. For example "Nurse" is "sjúkrarøktarfrøðingur" - crazy looking at first but you can break it down to three major parts: "sjúk / røkt / frøðingur" - this is "sick / treatment / [person who has had training to do something]" ("teldufrøðingur" is Computer Engineer, so it again has the frøðingur part) - the rest of the letters are just there to stick the above parts together.

[mummimamma.livejournal.com]

Hva med norsk da? Norsk har lettere grammatikk enn svensk!

I guess your Swedish would something like my German. I understand a more or less everything in writing, and much spoken - but when I try to speak it tends to be lots of words and little grammar. My students are imopressed with me it seems - and my collegues try correcting me so...

Faroese is easier than Icelandic though. At least when you know Norwegian.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Though in Norway, don't you have to contend with three languages? Two written ones plus a spoken one which doesn't correspond exactly to either written standard?

Though I confess I know little about that situation. I just remembered reading something along the lines of "Yeah, there are two written standards, but in the end it doesn't matter terribly which one you have to learn at school, since what you speak doesn't correspond to either one exactly anyway, so you're learning a 'different' (though closely related) standard language anyway".

I'm not really sure how that all works out, since, by a fortunate coincidence, the local dialect is close enough to standard German that I never bothered to learn much about the differences and what "proper" standard German is, as opposed to dialectal or regional forms, except through passive exposure to the standard. Perhaps if I had come from further south in Germany I could sympathise more, where learning the standard written language really is a feat, and not just learning how to read and write what you can already speak and understand.

[mummimamma.livejournal.com]

It isn't three, it is more like 4.8 million. One person, one language variation. There is your spoken language which gives you the guidelines for the written language.

There are considered to be two standard variations, but within those two there are lot of room for variations (commonly considered to be 6 broad cathegories, going from conservative bokmål through (the mostly defunct) the attemt at making one variation to conservative nynorsk, and you choose what you fel is right for you, your dialect, sociolects etc..

So explaining it is actually a lot more difficult than learning it! (Says I...)

[edricson.livejournal.com]

Norsk har lettere grammatikk enn svensk!

This is true. Especially goinf from Swedish to Norwegian: all the -ar, -er and -or endings magically become -er, whereas going from Norwegian to Swedish all the endings have to be learned all over again. But then Norwegian does have the feminine...

[mummimamma.livejournal.com]

But then Norwegian does have the feminine...

Not in Bergen! (Come to Bergen!) Which makes it kind of tricky for me to teach three gender systems since I sometimes have to stop and think "konglen? kongla? konglen?"

[edricson.livejournal.com]

(Come to Bergen!)

In fact, I am, for the week before Easter. (completely off-topic - is it very dead or just dead around that time? We didn't want to fly two legs with the baby, so we had to get on a direct flight, which is basically just Oslo which we have seen all of and London for which we don't have a visa, so we're going even at the risk of finding it quite deserted :))

Tromsø does have the feminine, and the nominal morphology is a bit weird from the perspective of the standard Scandinavian languages. There's a place in town called Stakkevollan. It took me about a year to realise that it's not a definite singular à la Swedish (which would be Stakkevolla, except voll is masculine) but rather definite plural...

On the subject of feminine, the story here (http://www.forskning.no/blog/vangsnes/205737) about the double meaning of juli made me smile.