SV: IE and Substrates and Time

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Sheila Watts [SMTP:sw271 at cus.cam.ac.uk] skrev 15. mars 1999 12:25:

> This seems to me to be too broad a generalisation to work in any useful
> way. A lot depends on exposure: in Scandinavia, for instance, some Swedes
> understand Danish rather well, and others find it very difficult, mostly
> depending on how close they live to Denmark and whether they are within
> range of Danish TV. ....

It would seem that the three standard languages of Denmark, Norway and Sweden
do not present many problems as far as mutual comprehensibility is concerned,
at least not to educated speakers. (Typically, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
newsreaders would present few problems to speakers of other Scandinavian
languages). However, non-educated speech and dialects pose problems, not only
to speakes of a different language, but sometimes even to speakers of the same
language. There are Norwegian dialects that I find hard to undestand, and a
Danish colleague of mine complained about not understanding certain Jutland
dialects. Particularly spoken Danish seems to move away fast from the
"comprehensible version" that Norwegians could dechifre without too many
difficulties. Danes seem to begin having a similar problem with Norwegians. At
least I have noticed that some Danes simply switch to English when talking to
me, as that apparently feels more comfortable. Admittedly, these observations
are based on random personal experience, but may still have some validity.
Thus, when we discuss the ability to understand closely related languages, we
should not forget that there is a difference between societies with educated,
literate elites and standard languages on the one hand and societies without
such things on the other.

It would be interesting to know how Germans relate to their various highly
different dialects.

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Norway
Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no