Thread: Danish language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

Hilarious video

Very funny! Just to clarify this is a Norwegian video. They are just pretending to be Danish because it's a comedy programme.

Normally each person from Scandinavia just speak in his own language to people from another Scandinavian country. We can still understand each other. The langauges are more like dialects that use different spelling.

But sometimes Danish can be a bit hard because they have a very strange pronounciation of some very simple words: That's what this video is joking about. Plus Danish has an insane system for counting...

Classic Norwegian comedy programme "Fleksnes" making fun of Danish counting. A Norwegian refuses to take a Mayday call from a Danish person because he hates the Danish numbers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrGIh...eature=related

Haha, thanks for the link, that one is good too! Yeah i heard something that Danish is quite hard to understand for the rest of Scandinavians. So its true then.

And i suppose that here it is the same way, Swedish and Norwegian are closer like Russian and Belarusian. They are very similar too. I can understand almost everything what they say in Belorusian, though some words seem to be like from the past, used long ago, probably Russian for them is the same.
Danish is more like Ukrainian then. Its not really understandable for me at all.

Yes I think you are right about the similarities between the Scandinavian languages being a bit like Belarussian and Russian.

To be honest I have never heard Belarussian spoken...
But I understand that it is very close to regular Russian. Ukrainian is almost not understandable to Russians, is it? So I think it's more different to Russian than the Scandinavian languages are to each other.

I can very easily read in Norwegian and Danish, but it can be a bit "irritating" because everything looks like it is incorrectly spelled, or using slang and old fashioned expressions... I would never voluntarily read a book in those languages, but at university I had to read some Danish and Norwegian books - it was not a problem, just weird.

Are you studying Danish? How are you finding it? Need any help?

Try watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--nidnGVV58 This guy there is speaking Belarusian, but the interviewer speaks Russian to him.

Yes exactly as you said - its understandable but some words look old fashioned or very colloquial. What about Ukrainian, well its not like Pollish of course, so i can understand some words from there, especially when reading but still you wont even get the general idea from what is being said. Ukrainian accent in Russian is another thing, its quite common on the south of Russia, and its very sticky. Sounds funny really like uhm, like you're always happy or something. When i lived in Rostov for 3 months or so i started to speak like they do and didnt even notice that. They told me that when i got back where i live.

No, but im learning Swedish instead. For some reason i really like this language. Its not very hard, has some similar words in Russian like gurka and the way it sounds is really cool for me. I have some difficulties with the prononciation though, especially when it comes to sounds like sju or -tion in the end for the word. But im still working on it. Yeah, i would appreciate your help of course. And would be really grateful if u would find a Karlsson pa taket swedish text for me Ive searched all over the internet but couldnt find it anywhere.

Originally Posted by Johanna

Ukrainian is almost not understandable to Russians, is it?

I wouldn't say so. It's hard to understand when it's spoken too fast as many Ukrainians speak. When I came to Ukraine (to Ukrainian speaking region) for the first time I had to ask almost everyone to repeat that they said and had a very embarassing feeling like I'm deaf or something. But when they repeated a phrase slowly (in Ukrainian of course) I started to understand almost everything. And now after ten years I visit Ukraine regulary, since I married Ukrainian girl, I can perfectly understad Ukrainian, I watch Ukrainian TV and understand everything without any troubles. I can even speak Ukrainian now but Ukrainians say I have a terrible Russian (they call it "Moskalsky" actually) accent.

I had never learnt Ukrainian before, but when I tried to listen to the Ukrainian radio, I understood almost everything. I think I got, at least, 60-70% of what they spoke.

Olyas experience of Ukranian is roughly how I feel about Danish. It might be that I understand 85-90% rather than the figure that Olya mentioned. It's a matter of practice - those who live closer to Denmark understand it fully because they are used to hearing it.

Spoken Danish is harder than written Danish for me because of their pronounciation (To a Swedish person it sounds like they are speaking with the mouth full of porridge...)

Written Danish looks very similar to written Norwegian. But it sounds different.

Norwegian sounds to me like they are always happy, or joking... It comes from the tone of voice. In Scandianvian jokes, the Norwegian person is always the subject of the joke, and you give the punch-line in Norwegian..
A bit like Basil explained the Ukranian/Russian mixed accent!

Norway is FULL of really different dialects... It can be confusing. Some of the dialects sound almost like Swedish - some are very hard to understand. The Oslo dialect is 98 % understandable to me.

As a Swedish person I have to be a bit careful about how to approach the language situation. In the past, all the other Scandinavian countries thought that Swedes were a bit arrogant and Sweden too dominant. They had been occupied by Sweden at some times or another and many had a bad view of that.

If it wasn't for the historical resentment, our countries could be a bigger country, together. It would be completely logical. I wish that was possible - then we could leave the EU. There is always talk about a Nordic Union, but nothing happens because of historical grievances (mostly by the others, against Sweden.).

It's the same thing with the langauge situation in Finland. Almost everybody CAN speak Swedish, but I have to be nice about it and ask them "Is it ok to speak Swedish?" But everything is sign-posted in Swedish and the police and government people must speak Swedish (by law) if you ask them.

vijk - I will find you a script of Karlsson -- bear with me.

Vijk.... I could NOT find an e-book of "Lillebror och Karlsson på taket" in Swedish. This is incomprehensible because every single person in the country has probably read the book... But google cannot find a copy.
I found one in Norwegian but that's not what you need.
I will look again later - Perhaps in a private e-book collection they will have it. But it takes longer to find. I will do it later.

Re Belarussian: Interesting to hear it what it sounded like! Thanks!
It was too confusing for me to understand much.. I can just about understand basic Russian, for example easy talk on the radio. I can't understand a serious discussion.

Until fairly recently I honestly hadn't quite noticed (hehe ) that Belarus was a separate country... I always knew where it was, that the capital was Minsk and some details about historical towns there. But I knew it as "White Russia" and I thought it was just a region of historical Russia.... I didn't actually know that it had it's own language.

Sweden just changed the "official" way of referring to the country from "Vitryssland" (White Russia) to "Belarus". This caused a lot of confusion - I read an article saying that thousands of people called TV to ask what this "new" country was.... Supposedly Belarus is more politically correct for some reason - I don't know why they would have changed it otherwise.

Yeah and its weird, one of the most famous books and there's completely nothing about it in the internet... Ive searched everywhere - libraries, forums, torrents and nothing there. I could only find an audiobook, but spoken Swedish is still hard for me to understand and well its not really a book. Thanks a lot for your help really, if you find it somewhere it would be awesome!

How long do you learn Russian? If you need any help with it tell me. What about me, first time ive seen Swedish in some magazine, where one Russian 'specialist' talking about vikings showed a text in 'ancient Icelandic' but in fact it was modern Swedish. I really liked how did it look like and decided to learn something about that language and got surprised to know that its a modern language. I guess that im learning it from that time.
And for me Swedish looks more attractive among others or so. For example 'och' is better than 'og' or 'jag' than 'jeg' or 'ar' than 'er'. Hard to explain it really. And the same is with the accent. What about Danish it seems impossible for me to pronounce, like Czech or Pollish maybe.

Haha yes they do have a language but Belarusian actually doesnt differ much from the Russian, i'd say it looks more like a dialect or something and i guess that every Belarusian there speaks Russian as well. Our countries were very close in the past, and i think that before 1917 there was no big difference between them at all. But still there are people who believe that they should speak Belarusian and distinguish themselves from being just Russians.

And Ukrainian well i'd say that i understand 10-20% of their speech maybe. I can make out some words from there but thats it, maybe it depends on a dialect. I heard something about that they have dialects in Ukrainian.

Originally Posted by vj1k

Try watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--nidnGVV58 This guy there is speaking Belarusian, but the interviewer speaks Russian to him.

It is not REAL genuine Belorussian. I think he try to speak Belorussian for TV interview because his political views. His pronunciation is not so clear as Belorussian TV and radio newsreader (announcer) at the Soviet times. As for me his sibilants not so strong. Even Lukashenko's sibilants was stronger 10 years later.

Here is another sample of Belorussian http://www.svaboda.org/audio/programlive/125259.html

Вроде нету особой разницы. Там три человека говорили и у всех разное произношение.

Originally Posted by Johanna

I can very easily read in Norwegian and Danish, but it can be a bit "irritating" because everything looks like it is incorrectly spelled, or using slang and old fashioned expressions...

I think that's exactly how most Russians feel about Ukrainian and Belorussian. Ukrainian is somewhat harder to understand, because it's influenced by Polish, but still there's a lot of shared vocabulary, and grammar is almost the same.

When I was a kid I knew only a few basic words in Ukrainian (maybe a dozen or so), and i dreamt about reading one children book, which nobody could find anyware. And then someone procured a copy. In Ukrainian. Oh, well. I wanted to read it so badly that I've read it anyway (and it was big, about 300 pages). I didn't understand everything, of course, but could understand at least 60% of it, and I could enjoy a plot. Considering that I was only 8 y/o, I'd say that written Ukrainian is relatively easy to understand for a native Russian speaker. Spoken Ukrainian is another matter, because even the words that look exactly the same when written are pronounced differently.

About Karlson.. Is that what you were looking for, guys? (Sorry, I don't know any Swedish)
These are books 2 & 3 (book 1 is unavailable). I can email these to you, if you are interested. PM me. (You'll need DjVu software to read the books).

Originally Posted by vj1k

Вроде нету особой разницы. Там три человека говорили и у всех разное произношение.

Вот-вот. Все в разной степени стараются.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

About Karlson.. Is that what you were looking for, guys? (Sorry, I don't know any Swedish)
These are books 2 & 3 (book 1 is unavailable). I can email these to you, if you are interested. PM me. (You'll need DjVu software to read the books).

Yes, its perfect! Thanks a lot.

Hmm, well, actually, written Norwegian and written Danish are as good as identical (often, you can't see the difference when you see short Danish and Norwegian written texts next to each other) - Swedish is more different, but still understandable
I have a very hard time understanding Norwegian, because I'm really not used to the sound of the language (although I'm Danish, I don't live in Denmark, and don't have regular access to Norwegian).

Thanks for posting the Youtube links, they're hilarious. I'll deffo show them to my (non-native danish speaking) hubby.... he will soooooooooooo agree.

BabaYaga - that's an unusual situation. I thought Norwegian was easy for Danes too... Oh well, maybe you are unused to it since you live somewhere else.

@Gromozeka - gosh I almost didn't see your comment!

Originally Posted by gromozeka

About Karlson.. Is that what you were looking for, guys? (Sorry, I don't know any Swedish)
These are books 2 & 3 (book 1 is unavailable). I can email these to you, if you are interested. PM me. (You'll need DjVu software to read the books).

Yes, that's the one!!! Did you find it online? Where can I get it?

Originally Posted by Johanna

Where can I get it?

I'm not sure if I can post links here, so I PMed you.

I am pretty sure I saw the first Karlsson book at the Ilya Frank's site that was discussed a few days ago in the other thread (the site seems to be down at the moment). The book had both Swedish and Russian text, but I don't think this is a bad thing for a learner. Either way, the Russian parts can be easily deleted.