Quote:
Originally Posted by Slite
I think you'd have more succes in reading a book in swedish, than I would have reading it in Danish. I can never wrap my head around your way of counting for instance  |
I guess you mean the 'tens'? I don't blame you - it's not the logical two-ten, three-ten etc. as in Swedish (and English and French, and other languages). BTW; Anyone know any other European languages with German roots that has odd number names?
You have to learn the names and not think about the meaning of the words - or rather, not think about the meaning of the modern words. I got curious and looked them up in my etymology. There's good reason and logic behind the names - but they're abbreviated and slightly corrupted/changed in the last thousand years. '50' which today sounds like 'half-sixty' originally meant 'half-three-times-twenty' which translates to 'three-minus-a-half-times twenty' = 2.5*20 (= 50), 60 is 'three-times-twenty'. 40 is interesting as the word is in full (not used anymore) 'fyrretyve' - and 'tyve' is the word used today for 20 - but the Old Norse root is actually 'fjórir tigir' = four tens. I could go on, but I won't
The principle is the same for the other 'ten number' names. This is a good example of how language can be really tricky (and interesting).
But I was thinking... Is it possible that the Swedish number names have been changed deliberately in the more recent past, say 200-300 years? I'm guessing, since both our languages have coommon roots and were fairly alike 800-1000 years ago. It would be curious indeed if they'd manage to deviate so far without help.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slite
Well, both danish, swedish and dutch ARE related to each other if I'm not misstaken, so we do have a lot of words that look similar 
Pancakes for instance. In swedish it's Pannkaka, and Dutch is pannenkoek i think? |
And "pandekage"...
Being Danish, and knowing (some) German, I can understand the general meaning of a Dutch text or find my way around a web site. With some diligence, perserverance and patience, I could probably learn to read it quite well with practise. Dutch seems to be fairly closely related to the Scandinavian languages as well as German.