Re: How do nordic people communicate?

casioculture@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

How do Dutch people communicate with Danish people?

Usually in English. The two languages are not close enough to be mutually comprehensible in speech.

do they use English?

Normally, yes. Danes from the southern border area and Dutch people from the eastern border are might speak German better than English, so the possibility of them using German should not be discounted, even if it is not as likely as English, and, particularly Danes and Netherlanders of the older generations to have an aversion to using German.

Are the languages similar?

Dutch and Danish are both Germanic languages, but Dutch, like English, Frisian, and German, belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Germanic family, while Danish, like Swedish and Norwegian, belongs to the North Germanic branch.

Here are the cardinal numerals from one to twelve in Dutch and the three main Scandinavian languages:

Dutch:
een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes, zeven, acht, negen, tien, elf, twaalf

Norwegian (Bokmål):
en, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, sju, åtte, ni, ti, elleve, tolv

Danish:
en, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, syv, otte, ni, ti, elleve, tolv

Swedish:
ett (or en), två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio, elva, tolv


The relationship between Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish is that Norwegian is essentially Danish spoken with a Swedish accent. Norwegian and Swedish thus share many features in pronunciation, making Danish the odd man out, while Danish and Norwegian share many features in grammar and vocabulary, making Swedish the odd man out. The Norwegian-American linguist Einar Haugen characterized the difference as follows: A Norwegian can understand the words that a Swede says, but he cannot always be sure that they mean the same thing that they do in his language. He has more difficulty understanding a Dane, but he can be relatively sure that the words he uses mean the same thing in both languages. A popular joke illustrates this.

A Swedish tourist arrives in Copenhagen (or Oslo) and asks the taxi driver to take him to a place where he can have a "en rolig kväll" (= a merry evening). The taxi driver takes him to the cemetery.
Danish "en rolig kveld"/Norwegian "en rolig kvell" means "a quiet evening".


What about Denmark and Norway?

Danish and Norwegian are arguably alternative standardizations based on the speech of different regions of a single dialect continuum. The written forms of the two languages, Danish and (Bokmål) Norwegian are quite similar, there is far more variation in the spoken language, although some forms of Danish clearly differ quite mechanically from some forms of Norwegian. Norwegian in particular, is fragmented into a network of quite divergent spoken dialects, so that some Norwegians could have as much difficulty understanding the local speech of certain other Norwegians as they would understanding standard Danish. There is an old saw in Norway: Hvis en normann hævder at han snakker sju språk, er seks av dem norsk. "If a Norwegian claims that he speaks seven languages, six of them are Norwegian."

Or Norway and Finland?

Norwegian and Finnish are as different as English and Japanese: totally unrelated. On the other hand, Finnish is spoken by some Norwegians in Northern Norway, where there is a Finnish-speaking minority, in addition to which many Sámis and people dealing with them speak Finnish. Many Finns in northern Finland, in turn, know Swedish or even Norwegian, due to the borders being quite permeable and many families having branches on both sides, or their having spent some time working on Norwegian oil rigs or at fish processing factories in northernmost Norway. Although English would probably be the default language for interethnic communication between Finns and Norwegians, Swedish, "skandinaviska" (= Norwegian and Swedish spoken slowly and clearly), or even Finnish might come into question, depending upon the individuals, the place, and the situation. Prices for everyday goods are considerably higher in Norway than the are in Finland, so northern Finland receives a steady stream of Norwegian shoppers, which has made the ability to serve customers in Norwegian a commercial asset on the Finnish side of the border. These practicalities have also resulted in many Norwegians in northern Norway learning enough Finnish to be able to shop and order drinks and restaurant meals in Finnish when visiting their less expensive neighbor.

The Finnish cardinal numerals 1 - 12 are:

yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi, seitsemän, kahdeksan, yhdeksän, kymmenen, yksitoista, kaksitoista.

The only major language with anything close is neighboring Estonian:
üks, kaks, kolm, neli, viis, kuus, seitse, kaheksa, üheksa, kümme, üksteist, kaksteist.

Despite the similarities in the numerals, Finnish and Estonian are not readily mutually comprehensible except in their most basic vocabulary, e.g. vesi 'water', veri 'blood', kana 'chicken', liha 'meat', yö/öö 'night', päivä/päev 'day', koira/koer 'dog', syödä/süüa 'to eat', juoda/juua 'to drink'; minä/mina 'I', sinä/sina 'you', punainen/punane 'red', suomalainen/soomlane 'Finn'. The relationship of Estonian to Finnish is very much like that of Danish to Swedish and Norwegian: many of the formerly unstressed syllables have been lost by phonetic attrition making it quite difficult for people speaking a language in which they have been retained such as Swedish or Finnish to process speech in a language in which many unstressed syllables have been reduced or lost, as in Danish or Estonian, in real time. Many Estonians know Finnish, although relatively few Finns know Estonian, so Finnish is often the default language when Finns and Estonians communicate, although young Finns and Estonians are more likely to use English nowadays.


Regards,
Eugene Holman
.

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