In a meeting in Copenhagen, a Swede, a Norwegian and a Dane can each speak their own language and, with some effort, understand each other. Scandinavians even have a word for this: nabosprog or grannspråk, “neighbour language”.
But the understanding is not equal. Some pairs work much better than others.
Why can Scandinavians understand each other at all?
Danish, Swedish and Norwegian all come from Old Norse, the language of the Viking Age. They split only over the last thousand years or so, and they kept most of their core vocabulary and grammar. Many linguists say they are closer to each other than some dialects of German or Italian are.
Who understands whom best?
Norwegians. Written Norwegian (Bokmål) grew out of Danish, which was the written language of Norway for centuries, while spoken Norwegian sounds much closer to Swedish. So Norwegians have a head start on both neighbours. Studies of Nordic mutual intelligibility, such as the large 2005 survey by Lars-Olof Delsing and Katarina Lundin Åkesson, found Norwegians scored best at understanding the other two.
Book tip
The Scandinavian Languages by Einar Haugen
Haugen was one of the great scholars of the Nordic languages. This is an introduction to their history, from runes to modern speech, and it explains why the three languages ended up where they are.
Why do Swedes struggle with Danish?
Because spoken Danish drifted far from its spelling. Danish swallows consonants, uses the creaky stød, and blends syllables together. A Swede can read Danish quite well but often loses the thread when a Dane talks fast. Danes usually understand Swedish better than the other way around.
What about Icelandic and Finnish?
Icelandic and Faroese are also descendants of Old Norse, but they changed less and drifted away from the mainland languages, so a Dane or Swede cannot follow them without study. Finnish is not a Germanic language at all. It belongs to the Uralic family, together with Estonian and, more distantly, Hungarian.
What does this have to do with Frisian?
Frisian is not a Scandinavian language, it belongs to the West Germanic branch with English and Dutch. But the Frisians spent centuries trading across the North Sea, and the Frisian and Norse worlds met often. In Nordfriesland, in Germany, North Frisian is still spoken right next to Danish.
Read is there a link between Frisian and the Scandinavian languages? and the Frisian link with the Scandinavians, or try your first Frisian lesson.
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