Danish is a horrible language please dont do that. You have 4 nordic languages to pic from and you not only pick the worst one but also the one thats probably one of the worst languages of all time. Lotr and star trek trying to create the most disgusting sounding languages failed because danish was already a thing. Danish is so revolting that you start vomitting from it when you hear it and danish people think youre just replying to them.
Accurate though. Danish sounds legit like super drunk Swedish at a distance, and uncanny valley up close to anyone speaking Swedish or Norwegian or German.
I have a friend who is Swedish but worked in both Sweden and Denmark for his job and I asked him if he could talk to them in Swedish and them to him in Danish and if they could understand each other and he told me mostly, but they just did it in English.
It’s not impossible to understand Danish as a Swede but it’s different enough in terms of sounds, grammar, maths, etc. that it’s indeed like an uncanny valley. It’s close enough at first glance, but then gets really alien when you start to pay attention to it. It’s like catching snippets of a conversation in otherwise white noise.
I have worked in Denmark too, and share your friend’s experience - both sides default to English.
There are way more than 4 Nordic languages to pick from. Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Faroese, Icelandic, Greenlandic, Sami. Still Danish is of course the worst one.
Not sure if serious, but anyway it means “you damn smart”.
In Danish it has become a commonly known allegory used for threatening to initiate a fight over someone being provokingly clever. It started with a viral video in which two guys argue over a pocket bike.
Ahh i didnt count faroe and i only thought of the north germanic ones. Interesting mistake because i live in sweden and i myself am a finno-ugric speaker by being a native hungarian speaker.
No just a few words. I have a finnish friend who learnt some hungarian and is also a finnish teacher so sometimes he meets people who speak hungarian and are learning finnish. From him the main thing that i heard is that the grammar is similar but hungarian is more chaotic.
English is considered one of the hardest languages to learn because we have rules. And then we don’t use them. It doesn’t help that it’s actually something like a 5 language mash up.
If English were one of the hardest languages to learn, it would not be the most common second language worldwide. It is a difficult language to master, but we barely conjugate verbs, have only remnants of a case system, and no grammatical gender.
The hardest parts about English are the spelling and the advanced weird cases, like “I will have done that by tonight,” but those are not things that the standard language learner has to care about. It’s perfectly fine to ignore all the rules that don’t inhibit communication, so no ESL speaker needs to learn about not splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions (unless they want to do academic writing in the arts, I guess).
Greek, Latin, French were once important languages, yet no-one ever called them easy. English seems easy to you because you’re used to it. The grammar, especially the tenses, are extraordinarily hard to get right and I would comment a lot more if I knew which fucking tense to use when.
To illustrate: English grammar links to “English verbs,” a huge Wikipedia article on its own, which then branches further out to stuff like “Simple past” with their own Wikipedia pages. You - you realize other languages don’t have something similar, not because they are necessarily less spoken, but because they don’t need it?
Tenses are one of the more difficult aspects of English, as I noted, yes. Luckily, English allows for asimplification in most cases. English seems easy to me because I’m a language instructor (not teaching English) working with students from all over the world and they almost always rate English as pretty easy compared to other languages they’ve learned. One of my current students is a native Arabic speaker who found English easier than Persian in spite of the increased linguistic distance, for example.
The German and Spanish Wikipedias both also include pages for characteristic tenses and modes, respectively (the reason the English page for that case is split is because it’s got a different name in English). Every language has complex aspects, but one does not need to learn how to properly distinguish between “I would have been going” and “I would have gone” to speak English at a B2 level.
I’m sorry you’re not confident in your English, it’s great. Perhaps you haven’t mastered the tenses (many native speakers also have difficulty with them), but you are perfectly competent at communicating in English.
Farsi and Arabic are not even remotely related, so I don’t think that is the right thing to say as an example. Also, Farsi, like English, is Indo-European. Arabic is Semitic. So if anything, Farsi and English are much closer to each other than Arabic and either of them.
Languages from groups right next to each other do not have to be related at all. Finnish and Swedish were mentioned above. Swedish is Indo-European, Finnish is Uralic.
They use similar alphabets and have a lot of vocabulary in common, so many Arabic speakers find it pretty easy to learn, ime, though that doesn’t work the other way.
There is a greater linguistic distance between English and Arabic than between Farsi and Arabic, even though Farsi and English have a shorter linguistic distance between themselves than either does with Arabic.
Similarly, Finns probably have an easier time learning Swedish than they do Spanish even though Swedish and Finnish are from different language families, just because a lot of vocabulary will be similar. Estonian would probably be even easier for Finnish speakers because of common vocabulary and a shared language family.
You have 4 nordic languages to pic from and you not only pick the worst one but also the one thats probably one of the worst languages of all time.
I’d rather learn Danish than Finnish (also, I count 6 Nordic languages: Danish, Swedish, Finnish, the two Norwegian languages of which one is a Danish dialect, and Icelandic, plus there are surely a few minority languages, probably in the far north or so).
As another commenter said you also have faroe, sami and a lot of languages in greenland. The two norwegians dont really count as two different languages. Calssifying north germanic languages can be a bit hard because its a language continuum.
Two Norwegians are actually like 14 different languages. I had a girlfriend from Trondheim, i had learned “nynorsk” while living in Sognogfjordane and had a much easier time understanding people in Aarhus where we lived vs her dialect.
you’re gonna get their pronunciation too and it’s going to bleed over into the rest of the language. might as well throw away your hard consonants right now, it’s all rødgrød med fløde from now on
Danish is a horrible language please dont do that. You have 4 nordic languages to pic from and you not only pick the worst one but also the one thats probably one of the worst languages of all time. Lotr and star trek trying to create the most disgusting sounding languages failed because danish was already a thing. Danish is so revolting that you start vomitting from it when you hear it and danish people think youre just replying to them.
Found the Swede
deleted by creator
Accurate though. Danish sounds legit like super drunk Swedish at a distance, and uncanny valley up close to anyone speaking Swedish or Norwegian or German.
I have a friend who is Swedish but worked in both Sweden and Denmark for his job and I asked him if he could talk to them in Swedish and them to him in Danish and if they could understand each other and he told me mostly, but they just did it in English.
It’s not impossible to understand Danish as a Swede but it’s different enough in terms of sounds, grammar, maths, etc. that it’s indeed like an uncanny valley. It’s close enough at first glance, but then gets really alien when you start to pay attention to it. It’s like catching snippets of a conversation in otherwise white noise.
I have worked in Denmark too, and share your friend’s experience - both sides default to English.
And Swedes sound like Stitch.
Haeigh!
You:
There are way more than 4 Nordic languages to pick from. Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Faroese, Icelandic, Greenlandic, Sami. Still Danish is of course the worst one.
I’m sure there are more than that. Älvdalska comes to mind. Isn’t Sami a group of languages rather than a singular distinct language?
Ok yeah for sure. Greenlandic isn’t a singular language either I think.
Nor is Norwegian. For simplicity’s sake they bundle all the dialects together as Nynorsk.
Du’ dælme smart.
Undskyld hva sir du! Pft
Not sure if serious, but anyway it means “you damn smart”.
In Danish it has become a commonly known allegory used for threatening to initiate a fight over someone being provokingly clever. It started with a viral video in which two guys argue over a pocket bike.
Jo tak, det siger min mor også til mig.
Ahh i didnt count faroe and i only thought of the north germanic ones. Interesting mistake because i live in sweden and i myself am a finno-ugric speaker by being a native hungarian speaker.
Are there still any phrases that Finnish people say that you can clearly understand?
No just a few words. I have a finnish friend who learnt some hungarian and is also a finnish teacher so sometimes he meets people who speak hungarian and are learning finnish. From him the main thing that i heard is that the grammar is similar but hungarian is more chaotic.
Could pick the one that sounds like elvish but no let’s pick the one that sounds like mouth full of potatoes
Absolutely disgusting
Then again, US-American English is not exactly the most sophisticated sounding language either.
English is considered one of the hardest languages to learn because we have rules. And then we don’t use them. It doesn’t help that it’s actually something like a 5 language mash up.
If English were one of the hardest languages to learn, it would not be the most common second language worldwide. It is a difficult language to master, but we barely conjugate verbs, have only remnants of a case system, and no grammatical gender.
The hardest parts about English are the spelling and the advanced weird cases, like “I will have done that by tonight,” but those are not things that the standard language learner has to care about. It’s perfectly fine to ignore all the rules that don’t inhibit communication, so no ESL speaker needs to learn about not splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions (unless they want to do academic writing in the arts, I guess).
Greek, Latin, French were once important languages, yet no-one ever called them easy. English seems easy to you because you’re used to it. The grammar, especially the tenses, are extraordinarily hard to get right and I would comment a lot more if I knew which fucking tense to use when.
To illustrate: English grammar links to “English verbs,” a huge Wikipedia article on its own, which then branches further out to stuff like “Simple past” with their own Wikipedia pages. You - you realize other languages don’t have something similar, not because they are necessarily less spoken, but because they don’t need it?
Tenses are one of the more difficult aspects of English, as I noted, yes. Luckily, English allows for asimplification in most cases. English seems easy to me because I’m a language instructor (not teaching English) working with students from all over the world and they almost always rate English as pretty easy compared to other languages they’ve learned. One of my current students is a native Arabic speaker who found English easier than Persian in spite of the increased linguistic distance, for example.
The German and Spanish Wikipedias both also include pages for characteristic tenses and modes, respectively (the reason the English page for that case is split is because it’s got a different name in English). Every language has complex aspects, but one does not need to learn how to properly distinguish between “I would have been going” and “I would have gone” to speak English at a B2 level.
I’m sorry you’re not confident in your English, it’s great. Perhaps you haven’t mastered the tenses (many native speakers also have difficulty with them), but you are perfectly competent at communicating in English.
Farsi and Arabic are not even remotely related, so I don’t think that is the right thing to say as an example. Also, Farsi, like English, is Indo-European. Arabic is Semitic. So if anything, Farsi and English are much closer to each other than Arabic and either of them.
Languages from groups right next to each other do not have to be related at all. Finnish and Swedish were mentioned above. Swedish is Indo-European, Finnish is Uralic.
They use similar alphabets and have a lot of vocabulary in common, so many Arabic speakers find it pretty easy to learn, ime, though that doesn’t work the other way.
There is a greater linguistic distance between English and Arabic than between Farsi and Arabic, even though Farsi and English have a shorter linguistic distance between themselves than either does with Arabic.
Similarly, Finns probably have an easier time learning Swedish than they do Spanish even though Swedish and Finnish are from different language families, just because a lot of vocabulary will be similar. Estonian would probably be even easier for Finnish speakers because of common vocabulary and a shared language family.
The upside is you can speak in the most broken English imaginable and with patience you’ll be able to get much of your point across
That’s the most succinct explanation I’ve seen of what’s wrong with English
I’d rather learn Danish than Finnish (also, I count 6 Nordic languages: Danish, Swedish, Finnish, the two Norwegian languages of which one is a Danish dialect, and Icelandic, plus there are surely a few minority languages, probably in the far north or so).
As another commenter said you also have faroe, sami and a lot of languages in greenland. The two norwegians dont really count as two different languages. Calssifying north germanic languages can be a bit hard because its a language continuum.
Two Norwegians are actually like 14 different languages. I had a girlfriend from Trondheim, i had learned “nynorsk” while living in Sognogfjordane and had a much easier time understanding people in Aarhus where we lived vs her dialect.
If this is all I have to worry about. Then I’m all in.
Too late English already dragged Danish into the alley. We’re getting some new words! Woooooooo!
you’re gonna get their pronunciation too and it’s going to bleed over into the rest of the language. might as well throw away your hard consonants right now, it’s all rødgrød med fløde from now on
Oh we’ll probably add an ia ending on a few of those and throw some extra vowels in for no reason at all. (Looking at you Bible Belt)
i don’t think that’s physically possible
bear in mind she’s the prime minister speaking officially, so she’s actively trying to speak slowly and clearly
Oh I already heard a candidate! Nordlandia.
that’s a place
hittade svensken
Good! Only 4 more scalps and you’ve earned a Pripps Blå and a can of snus.
This post brought to you by the government of Sweden
(agreed though)
Come to think of it, maybe we can force them to speak Danish as a form of humiliation? You know, like Make America Danish (derogatory)?
Lol maybe