Quote:
Originally Posted by Freeshadow
ArcticBoy, you reminded me of something i once heared about Swedish and Danish: it was the statement that a swedish-speaker would be able to understand danish but not the other way around.
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I won't brag about Norwegians being able to understand Swedish and Danish better than the Danes or Swedes understand their neighboring countries, but it holds some kind of truth. First of all, Swedish and Danish are more exposed on Norwegian TV than the other way around, even before satellites and cable, Norwegians close to the border tuned into Swedish television. And Denmark has for ages been a favorite place for summer vacation among Norwegians with its lovely beaches. Written danish are almost like written Norwegian. With a little patience and slow-speaking all the Scandinavians can understand each other. I find it kinda stupid when they start to speak English to a Norwegian.
I myself learned Norwegian and New-Norwegian in school, both written and spoken. We also had to read texts in Old Norwegian. In addition we read several books in Danish and Swedish and I even remember we had to listen to Swedish-Finnish (a Swedish dialect spoken by a minority in Finland). Sami is only teached in districts with Sami population (mostly in the northernmost parts of the country), and is also made up of several dialects spanning over Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola peninsula in Russia.
Cheers,
ArcticBoy
