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[Lowlands Languages & Cultures]

>>And from what I've heard, both Norwegians and Swedes have a bit 
>>more trouble with Danish.  I don't know where I read the 
>>saying, but it's something like Norwegian is Danish spoken in 
>>Swedish.

>Yes, that seems to be pretty true.   I think Norwegians have a 
>leg up on understanding the other two.  Danish is just so 
>different phonologically that it makes it tough to understand 
>them.  I studied a couple of years of Danish in grad school 
>(decades ago), and never studied Norwegian, but I actually can 
>understand spoken Norwegian better than spoken Danish!

An anecdote: last summer I was in Denmark, in a group in which 
there were many Swedes, Danes and one Norwegian. (And some 
non-Scandinavians, like me; the common language was Interlingua, 
which is irrelevant for this story.)

We had an excursion in and around the village, led by a Dane from 
that village. The Swedes and Danes had no problem communicating, 
each in their own language (and someone translated to Interlingua 
for the non-Swedes). But when the Norwegian asked a question, in 
Norwegian, every time the Danish excursion leader didn't 
understand him and the others had to step in translating.

That amazed me, because Danish and Bokmål (which is what the 
Norwegian had grewn up with, he told me earlier) and Danish are 
supposed to be almost the same language, but with a different 
pronunciation. Apparently this Dane was familiar with the sounds 
and differences of Swedish, as compared to Danish. But he wasn't 
familiar enough with how 'his own language' sounds from the mouth 
of a Norwegian.

It's probably a matter of 'being used to it'.



-- 
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com