Can A Swedish Speaker Understand Old Norse?

[@MoreChirpy]

How similar is Galician to Portuguese? Find out in my new video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqTVdoeLa5KAh8U

[@jaysimoes3705]

As a Portuguese it is basically Portuguese spoken by a Spanish person with some unique words in it. SOme Galicians do not like it but when I ask Spanish friends to read out a Portuguese text it is virtually identical to that.

[@snorriivan6365]

@@jaysimoes3705 True.

[@The_name105]

​@@jaysimoes3705Yeah the Ibero-romances are way too similar and the dominance and uniqueness of Spanish confuses me a little when I see the similarities between Catalan and Portuguese which are separated by Spanish/Castillian but they all have the common ancestor and Spanish went one way while most if not all the others go another way in most cases. Like peixe (Port. & Cata.) vs pez (Span.) which is a strange morphology with Latin being Piscis.

[@LouseGrouse]

I wish i had something more valuable to add but “Snjorbert” is so fucking hilarious and precious. I hope the name becomes common in future.

[@Glossologia]

One small thing to keep in mind is that Old Norse as shown in this video is really Old West Norse, the direct ancestor of Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian, while Swedish and Danish descend from Old East Norse. The differences were small, but this is why Icelandic often looks identical rather than just really similar, and there are some differences which would have already existed in the 1200s between Swedish and what you see here. The reason he's using Old West Norse is because all Old Norse literature (so not counting inscriptions) is in OWN, mostly written in Iceland. Swedes and Danes at the time were writing in Latin.

[@GodmyX]

Thanks for the observation!

[@livedandletdie]

These are even greater differences that came later on...

[@Nekotaku_TV]

Yet the Swede understood the most haha.

[@tommydeamon7657]

Thank you for that bit of extra info and work you put in

[@chovuse]

Thanks for reminding us.

[@doodlePimp]

What I got from this video is that whenever someone tells me they are studying Old Norse it is just a fancy way of saying they are learning Icelandic.

[@Hwyadylaw]

Most people who study Old Norse learn it in the modern Icelandic pronunciation, so you're not far off.

[@BernasconiDerLangobard]

More or less. In Icelandic you wouldn't say "Ek heitumk". The reflexive conjugation is different, and Old Norse had a lot of words not used anymore. The negative sencence in O.N. is given by "eigi", in Icelandic is given by "ekki", which was the O.N. neuter of "engi" (noone), while "engi" is now "enginn" and the neuter is "ekkert", and so on. However, one interesting thing is that by reading Icelandic and Old Norse you can actually understand some Old Langobardic.

[@spacelemur7955]

As an American who moved to Sweden when I was 30 (40 years ago), but has also studied a bit of German, I did better that the Dane and Norwegian and about as well as the Swede, but the Icelander was probably bored with this as being way too easy.

[@vanefreja86]

I am Danish and I did a little better than this Dane as well. 😅😊

[@Grekerr]

But let's be real, this norwegian guy didnt understand much, I am from norway and could understand betterr, but I have different dialekt, but it is all very logic so I dont even know "snow"

[@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038]

I could understand more than half of the Old Norse and Icelandic because I am intermediate level in both, and I am advanced level in Bokmål and upper advanced level in Dutch, but I could understand most of the words from the other Norwegian-based language and from Danish, I could actually understand a lot of the Danish words, even tho I am beginner level in Danish, but it’s very close to Bokmål - these languages are so pretty!

[@spacelemur7955]

@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 True! As you know, written Danish and Norwegian are very similar, and Swedish is only "quite" similar. Enough so, that I could work as a professional translator (medical and pharmaceutical, mainly) without having to study all three. Now I am finding German to be pretty easy, as it's truly a close cousin too. I also know Spanish and am studying French and even in these Latin languages, I am increasingly seeing the Indo-European roots. I only wish I had begun earlier, as I feel the Slavic languages would be within my grasp, but at 69 years old, that expansive clock has run out. (That I started out as a geographer, I still read a lot of earth sciences, biology, ... Why is life so damned short!? I could happily live for centuries feeding my curiosity.) Best wishes, Lingo-sister!🍻

[@vincentL.7]

As someone who is swedish and studied german, similar here

[@Hun_Uinaq]

Interesting to see a Swede try this one. It would be interesting to watch a video by a Faroese person on this topic.

[@annatraustadottir4387]

I'm Icelandic so this was really easy. Faroese would do better than Swede/Norwegian/Dane, I expect. I would think he would make more or less sense of all the sentences in the end but not so totally effortless as an Icelander.

[@oliviakrause3336]

As a German all I understand is that Scandinavian languages sound kinda hot 😂

[@xaemyl]

I watched the original vid a few months ago and its cool to get a Swedish take on this.

[@kjellericsson8955]

The Swedish name for the bird is Blåmes

[@thogameskanaal]

That's like, blue mes? Or blue titmouse... That's interesting!

[@Bjowolf2]

Blå-mejse [bla(w)-migh-se] in Danish.

[@reallivebluescat]

Blue-tit in english

[@BobWitlox]

In Dutch it's mees, but hearing mejse still didn't ring a bell for me. I kept thinking mus which means sparrow. I guess my bird knowledge is also too limited.

[@Gallopstar]

Oh so they're like blue tits or great tits etc. in english? I've never heard the word titmouse used though

[@SteamboatW]

I think we should learn Icelandic in Swedish schools.

[@johnlastname8752]

​@@aliceberethartwould only be fair since they have to learn Swedish in schools in Finland.

[@hanifarjo5222]

​@@johnlastname8752Finnland was submitted & controlled (may even occupied) by Sweden for many centuries, then by Russia too.

[@johnlastname8752]

@@hanifarjo5222 I know. I'm Swedish and we learned this in school. I also have some Finnish ancestry from when they moved Finns to Sweden proper to use for slash and burn agriculture.

[@marcelbork92]

@@hanifarjo5222 The Finns were too weak and did not defend themselves properly. If they do not learn the lesson, it may happen to them again.

[@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038]

Languages such as Icelandic + Norse / Dutch / Norwegian / Danish / Gothic etc should be learnt by all from all countries, as they are so magical, as pretty / refined / poetic as English, so they are too pretty not to know - I highly recommend learning all Germanic languages and the 6 modern Celtic languages and Galician / Latin / Portuguese etc!

[@rainbs2nd]

As a Norwegian Speaker, I could more or less understand the sentences in the same way as you. I don't really understand how the Norwegian guy performed so badly compared to the Danish guy.

[@mikedoverskog]

Yeah, he was pretty poor, wasn't he? :D

[@noneofyerbeeswax8194]

The Norwegian guy was completely lost.

[@littlemouse7066]

It doesn't necessarily depends from him being norwegian it's possible it's because he's not good enough or intelligent enough lol.

[@rabnori4836]

Beck, Bekk ,still used in north west England . A Norwegian visitor was surprised when told we were going to the Beck (Bekk) . (River or stream. ) many Scandinavian words from centuries ago still remain in the English language .

[@Kari.F.]

I'm Norwegian, and that surprised me, too.

[@etanol.]

as a brazilian portuguese and english fluent speaker, I certainly did not understand a single drop of the languages in this video. but I found extremely interesting, and I want to learn icelandic.

[@Halli50]

I have seen the episode reacted to before and getting a Swedes take was interesting. The Swede did better than the Norwegian but I don't think that is typical, Torleif was probably quite handicapped by his local Norwegian dialect. As an Icelander I could only do like Óskar did: Nod with a knowing grin on my face! Jackson, the 'Murican Cowboy, perfectly explains the the technicalities - how words have changed over a millennia, sometimes subtly, sometimes quite a lot but always with some common root.

[@dzymslizzy3641]

This was very interesting to me. I love exploring language and word origins. I've been a prolific reader ever since childhood. That was both a blessing and a curse: as a result, I had a much larger vocabulary than my peers, (and I was always more comfortable conversing with adults), which made me a "card-carrying member" of the "out" crowd. That said, it allowed me to become very good at expressing myself on paper. I was a shy child, and writing came much more easily to me than speaking. The downside of that, however, was that I learned grammar, syntax, flow, and spelling from all the reading I did: by osmosis. By the time we got to school lessons on parts of speech, subjectives, clauses, (relative and otherwise), I was totally lost, and none of it made a bit of sense to me. I could write well, get good grades on essays, and help others correct their papers, but I just never got a handle of the technical terminology; I just did it. Now that I'm 75, It's a bit late to start again. LOL I did study some French in junior high and high school, and again as a mid life student in community college, but I never became fluent. Why? I got tripped up in exactly the same technicalities. If I can't do it in my native English, I sure couldn't master it in French! I did get vindicated to some extent in a college essay and composition class, when we were all asked our pet peeves about English studies. Mine, (and a few others) mentioned diagramming sentences. I never could get it right. There was a round of applause when the professor exclaimed, "Diagramming sentences is bullshit!" During that same college period, I took a voice class, and the instructor had us singing Italian arias. She said it is the easiest language in which to learn to sing, because of the preponderance of vowels. We also learned that Spanish, French, and Italian all began as Latin, and today, Italian remains the closest to the original Latin, with Spanish next, and French being furthest away. I must say, though, that I am impressed with other countries in which people routinely learn multiple languages. Everyone in this video certainly has a much better grasp of English than I do of French! (And there is French in my ancestry, which was my main reason for studying that language. In 20/20 hindsight though, as a California native, Spanish would have been far more useful!)

[@currywhiskers]

This was fun, thanks for giving it a go. It's a shame there wasn't a Swede to get involved with that video.

[@hanifarjo5222]

Of course there is, that guy on the bottom-left. He's swede!!

[@nebuchadnectarthe2nd688]

Nice that a Swede finally showed up. Jk. I have only studied Old English. I was able to get most of it right. The last sentence 'vinr með vængi hefir þann óvin er flýgr'. I thought it was friends with wings. I have a habit of thinking Old Norse -r are secret -iz, so I make them -s in my head. English still has win in names like Godwin. I guess in OE words, it might be like 'Wine mid feðra hafian þone unwine (x) flyge'. I know we borrowed wing from old Norse. It works better than just saying feathers.

[@mikedoverskog]

Well, Old English and Norse were surely closely related through their Germanic roots and this was why the Anglo-Saxons (from Angeln and Sachsen in modern day Germany) and the Norse, who I'm pretty sure are also a Germanic people, would be able to communicate fairly well.

[@serfin01]

Modern Icelandic is virtually indistinguishable to Old Norse. I have been learning Icelandic for 3 years and I understood almost all sentences in spoken and written way.

[@feakhelek1]

Dr. Crawford's channel is very good. He points out the difference in pronunciation between Old Norse and modern Icelandic.

[@serfin01]

@Redbod I don’t have deep knowledges about old Norse. I said just, watching the video, that Icelandic is virtually identical to what Dr. Crawford’s calls old Norse.

[@serfin01]

@Redbod Takk fyrir. Núna veit ég meira. Ég elska að læra tungumálið þitt en ég þarf að vinna betur. Takk fyrir á ný.

[@serfin01]

@Redbod Þakka þér kærlega. Þú ert mjög vingjarnlegur eða vingjarnleg. Ég hef áhuga á að læra tungumálið þitt, menningunni þinni og íslenskri sögunni. Næsta sumar ætla ég að fara til Íslands í frí. Kveðja frá Spáni 😃👋🏻

[@Gunsandjewels]

​@Redbod absolutely right! No one knows how the arhaic languages were sounded! So its rather...brave here, to affirm which syllables and vovels were pronounced how. And as you say, even the modern islandic cannot be taken as an example. More with the norwegian. What was the old norwegian? The modern one is either bokmål which practically danish or nynorsk, which is a kind of artificial language. Which norwegian dialect is closest to old norse? Not in any way that Tromsø dialect, because the Tromsø guy did not managed well (dane got it much better actually).

[@abc-dj3dx]

I know an odd mix of languages. I know English, Spanish... normal. But, I also know American Sign Language, Pidgeon Signed English, and Sigh Exact English. The relationship an original language has with it's "offspring languages" is uncanny and the most spectacular mixes occur. I could research this all day. I grew up bi-lingual with English and American Sign Language, which is not English on the hands, it is it's own unique language including syntax, grammatical structure and all. Fascinating, thanks.

[@wynterfir]

Yeah when you learn ASL after your childhood the syntax and structure surprises you. I was personally befuddled for a good month or two before I got used to the structure. The whole starting and ending with pronouns, starting with time signs, and all the nms involved with literally everything. My teacher was very into structured ASL that was very to the books, but its a whole different world when you actually start speaking it in the wild lol. I also found this video fascinating and was happily surprised to see someone talking about signing.

[@qludse]

Interesting, in east-swedish, or more archaic swedish dialects in finland the transcripton of swedish for these sentences would be: 1 snöjin fåll in da i skojin 2 mang fåoglar bodd i hanje skojin 3 i he högsta trie i skojin, så byggd två "birds" boe sett 4 furi he att stormin komm, så stjield kråkon eggjen därasas / kråkon tärasas egg 5 in kamrat (vän) me "som har" vingan har (se) in fiend (ovännin) som "kann flyg" flygär

[@jmolofsson]

Is this in East Nyland dialect or Ostrobothnian? Sorry for my ignorance!

[@qludse]

@@jmolofsson It's an ostrobothnian dialect. To more specific, there are three general "groups" of Ostrobothnian dialects, Northern (Nykarleby-Karleby), Central(Malax/Korsholm-Vörå) and Southern(Malax/Närpes-Kristinestad). But each town and villages have their own dialects. But yes, this example is a type of "Southern" Ostrobothnian dialact.

[@Arthion]

The old ostrobothnian dialects remind me a little of the old "bondska" dialect of west bothnia. Or at least in the written form, no idea if the pronounciation would be similar.

[@KateGladstone]

I wonder if Jackson Crawford could please do a video where he speaks Proto-Indo-European and sees if he can be understood by a Lithuanian, a Sanskrit scholar, and a Zoroastrian who knows the language of the Avesta.

[@Hun_Uinaq]

That’s not a language he specializes in in the same manner that he specializes in old Norse.

[@nicholas3354]

So "adr en" is like "early more than storm" meaning "more early than storm"; so "before storm". That is absolutely fascinating to me. When I study Biblical Greek, I sometimes come across areas where the King James Bible translators misinterpreted the words because the literal words just sound too awkward to them, but really we just need to accept that what sounds awkward for Greek students did not necessarily sound awkward for ancient Greek-speakers. A more literal translation always comes to better doctrine, so I've learned to just accept whatever is written without getting clever about it. That experience makes it very easy for me to accept "adr en", once I know something about what the words mean.

[@Gh0stHack3r.]

This was amazingly fun and educational

[@mormor19glad]

As a dane from the most northern Jutland (skagen), i understand most Swedish and Norwegian dialects, Icelandic is hard also the faroe island. But in writing i can actually understand a big part of it.

[@eh1641]

I wonder how did the Low German dialects influenced Scandinavian language so much that a lot of basic word made their way in

[@_c_y_p_3]

Ohh, I hardly speak Swedish or Danish but I absolutely recognized way more than I expected!

[@sirseigan]

Interesting that the word "hefir" and the Swedish word "haver" which were with the old spelling spelled "hafer" but the "f" was pronounced as a "v" was not mentioned in the last sentence. "Vän med vingar haver den ovän som flyger" is kind of archaic in form and a bit poetic in style but makes perfect sense in Swedish :-)

[@Utgardaloki76]

Hi! Norse historical linguist here. Swedish/Classical West Old Norse (as in this video) Snö föll en dag i skogen. Snjór fell einn dag í skóginum. Marge/Många fåglar boddo i denna skog. Margir fuglar bjuggu í þessum skógi. I det högsta trä(det) byggdo(/gjordo) två mesar rede sitt. Í því hæsta tré byggðu(/gørðu) tveir meisingar(/meisar) hreiður(/hreið(r)i) sitt. Men/Än ”ijåns än”/före stormen kom, stal (en) kråka dera(s) ägg. En áðr en stormrinn kom, stal kráka þeira egg. Vän med vingar haver den ovän/fiende som flyger. Vinr með vængi hefir þann óvin er flýgr.

[@Utgardaloki76]

@@varnarleikur Það er alveg rétt. Sænska og danska koma frá fornri austurnorrænu.

[@BernasconiDerLangobard]

Mér finnsk at þetta tungumál sé næsta eins ok tunga Langbarðanna. Ek reynda at lesa "Hildebrandslied" ok þat var eigi svá mikitt drœgt. Ek myndi vilja læra tungu Langbarða því at mér fannsk at nöfnin mín eru Langbarðar, men þar es eigi mjök at finna um tungu sinna, svá kaus til at fara með Norrønu. Men þess get ek til at ek sjá gótt eigi ok mynd vilja læra mikit meira. Ek em nú at lesa Snorra-Eddu. Hafið eitthvat auðveldara til at mæla með mér? (Ek skrifaði "ek sjá gótt" en eigi "góðr" af því at ek veit es með lýsingarorðum stuttum víð sérhljóð löng, lokasamhljóðin tvinnask, ok R hverfask).

[@jasminlechner2909]

As a Austrian whose motherlanguage is the stirian dialect it was not that bad I understood some

[@gabrielprado2659]

You have a delightful accent, thank you.

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

I wonder if hreidhr, nest, is related to cradle or crater (Moore's law - germanic languages turned initial k into initial h)

[@aragorn1780]

I am a (bad) Swedish speaker who took it for 3 years in Uni and can speak it somewhat conversationally.... long story short, I can understand some Old Norse, and there are some patterns you can watch for to make it easier especially once you know what to listen for I imagine for a native speaker it's even easier lol

[@sschmachtel8963]

Nice! yeah completely true for me as well .... I once tried to say to some woman from island she should just talk and I want to see what I can understand. Yeps that was basically nothing except numbers, although written those sentences here made much more sense than nothing. Danish Norwegian Swedish all fine more or less even in most of the dialects if they speak slowly enough and you can listen on to get some idea. But Icelandic is really that far that it's completely different in a way But German english and differences between swedish and norwegian really help somehow. Not so much into danish as not really experience but short time exposure. I know numbers and that is pretty interesting and kind of origin of french 80. And for islandic its really about special words also, that you need to know it seems to use other languages for understanding. A really difficult thing I can imagine because from old German I would understand quite much where dutch people are quite lost I imagine. And funnily I also have the feeling that English native speakers might do surprisingly well if they have some idea about any of Danish Norwegian or swedish. Also, I noticed that many times that you get quite easily stuck on some kind of interpretation of foreign words in general and that's why your imagination is just zero kind of. But to overcome the barrier you need much more than one sentence and thrn everyone will find something similar with their own language and figure out the rest, unless you switch off. Given that you know some stuff which is not very much though.

[@apreviousseagle836]

Hah! As a fluent Greek and Spanish speaker, I'm reminded of when I read the Koine Greek from the Bible and compare it to the modern Greek (but the differences are nowhere this drastic). Koine Greek vs modern Greek is more like the difference in Spanish and Portuguese, where you can, with some time and patience, understand the meaning of at least 70% of what the other person is saying or writing. This comparison in the video was probably more like Spanish vs French, where both parties might be able to understand 20%-30% of each other?

[@stuartdryer1352]

This is really interesting. Another interesting video is Dr Crawford with Simon Roper having a conversation, one in O.d Norse, the other in Old English.

[@darpmosh6601]

Interesting! Why didn't they invite any Swedes and Faroese in this video?

[@oneukum]

"Wing" is borrowed? This is interesting because it looks to me like German has a cognate in "Schwinge".

[@gcanaday1]

Because Jackson doesn't know any?

[@jmolofsson]

​@@gcanaday1 He does! But Swedes have had more contacts eastwards and southwards. Nynorsk and Danish are the right choices. 😁 As a Scanian, I think it's easier for me than for the (proper) Swedes.

[@Gittas-tube]

These guys were so young! It would have been much easier for an older generation to recognize those unusual (today) word orders. Anybody Swedish who has read Swedish books from the latter part of the 19th century and onwards would have come across sentences like these ones. Not that it really pertains to the subject of this video, but people who still speak or know some dialect that contains old word forms and sayings would have understood these sentences much more easily, I think. Swedish, in particular, has just during my lifetime changed quite a lot and something has been lost in the process.

[@typhoon2minerva]

According to norbert the facilitator of eco linguist he can only make maximum of 4 screen in the video so he cant fit everything in one video

[@nicholas3354]

I'll play along a bit. I'm Californian, which doesn't help, but I study alot of ancient Greek, so maybe the first two will help me guess number 3 (I'm at 14:28). Looks like: "In the rising/spring tree in the forest, living there a messenger (some type of bird) sits". I'll reply after it's explained.

[@nicholas3354]

No one can accuse me of cheating anyway. I thought "haesta" might be related to "easter", guessing pretty much in the dark. I wonder what the name for the bird means in Old Norse, if it has any meaning beyond just being a bird: like, how cardinals are red, named for ecclesiastic cardinals because they wear red.

[@fiatnix]

Fascinating video! (And I really like your voice!)

[@tatradak9781]

Scotland we have the "Gaelic" pronounced Garlic, but I don't speak it so I'm no help for an opinion but it so interesting to hear an old language..

[@carnifpsgod9383]

My granddad was from Ireland and spoke fluent Old Gaelic, made no sense to me but he used to sing songs to me when I was a child and it was beautiful, touched my soul like nothing else.

[@cw4karlschulte661]

A cow (heifer) got wings then it flew into the oven. Easy!

[@Lethnion]

5 sentence "Vänner med vingar har fiender som flyger" that´s what I got out of it.

[@theresebjrknes4272]

I don't know how the norwegian guy managed to not get the "snow"-one. It sounds pretty much the same in Norwegian... Maybe he doesn't hear other dialects that much

[@Gunsandjewels]

Nemlig!😮

[@Alaedious]

I think he may have been nervous, which can really harm one's performance.

[@lowruna]

Margir fuglar bjuggu i pessum skogi? sounds like: Magic bird brings pressure (in/to the) nest. Which is a total legitim old saying for bringing dept into the marriage.

[@MellonVegan]

Having just spent a week in Norway and also seeing this, I find it funny how we have some things in German that may not be the normal way to say or pronounce sth by the books but we might still use them in colloquial speech and even jokingly. Jau instead of ja for yes is something we definitely use. Fuglar reminds me of Fugel (which is just a funny way of saying Vogel (v=f in this case)). And snakker sounds almost like schnacken, which they say in the North of the country. Also found it interesting how (when I was there) I always knew what people were talking about, just not what exactly they were saying. And there was one sentence I even understood in its entirety (felt so proud of myself lol). I mean that all makes sense (and is besides the point of the video bc German isn't North Germanic) but still, fascinating. Shame that the West Germanic languages are mostly either rather dominant like German or English or going extinct like Frisian or Low Saxon (both of which I understand perfectly well if it's the right dialect).

[@dan74695]

The Scandinavian languages got "snakka"/"snakke"/"snacka" from Low Saxon "snakken".

[@dexidexi5668]

This vas very good adition, really missed Sweden, and Færeyjar, i am from iceland,

[@dan74695]

The second sentence would be "Mikkler/mikkel/marger fugler byggde i isum skuojem/isu raisę." in Elfdalian, I think. I think it would be "Mikklör fuglör bodd i issöm skojem/issö raisi." in Orsamål. Elfdalian isn't that different from Orsamål or the other dialects in Ovansiljan, but nobody studies the other ones, everybody studies only Elfdalian...

[@LearnRunes]

Love your shirt mate!

[@tzimisce1753]

Jag skulle kunna sitta och leka sånt här i några timmar varje vecka, det är rätt kul. 😁

[@theequalisermouse2301]

My husband is Icelandic and this sounds very similar to when I listen to him talk to his family.

[@RoyalKnightVIII]

Actually they have a video of the same challenge but with Old English which I think you'd also find trippy as hell

[@mikedoverskog]

So that bird was of the tit family, or mes in Swedish. Not sure of the specifics of each but blåmes (bluetit), tofsmes (crested tit), svartmes (coal tit) and also going back to the tit-root as in talltita (willow tit)

[@PoolOfTrees]

Yeah, I had forgotten that the bird family is referred to as titmouse, in the UK we tend to (at least informally) just call those of that family 'tits' (and yes, because of the other meaning in English, that often causes a laugh or two), and the image shown in the video was what we call a "blue tit" (as you mentioned - note the space though). In addition to most or all of those you mentioned, we also have one called a "great tit".

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

Funny that titmouse has both the tita root and the meisingar root

[@Obelisk57]

The first sentence I hear is "Señor (Snjor) fell one day while chewing on Skoal Tobacco."

[@t-bear5243]

As a norwegian i understood way more than my fellow norwegian here. Not sure if he had some technical difficulties or if his dialect was somehow the issue (although i dont think it should be). only the last sentence really tripped me up badly where i thought he was saying something like "Venner med vinger herfra oppover flyr" or "Friends with wings from here uppwards fly" which doesnt really make sense, but i felt like it was closer than what the Norwegian and Danish guys were thinking at least. Really cool to see the icelander acing this test tho!

[@Howtoeatrocks]

It's interesting you saying as a native Swedish speaker you understand Norwegian the most. I don't know any related/clustered languages but as an English speaker Norwegian sounded the most similar

[@PearlPaisley]

The interesting thing is that danish and norwegian are more similar in writing but the melody of swedish and norwegian sounds quite alike so as a foreigner it's easy to believe that the latter are the most similar.

[@oenstian8228]

Even as a speaker of southern Norwegian, the dialect group most proximate and thus heavily influenced by Danish and low German, (and Denmark literally being closer to us than our own capital city, let alone Sweden), spoken Swedish is surprisingly STILL quite a lot easier for most Norwegians to understand. Even though there is a bigger difference in both vocabulary and spelling conventions between Norwegian and Swedish, the sheer amount of sound changes Danish has gone through makes it tricky to pick out words and structures from what, to an untrained ear, might sound like a mumbling porridge of unfamiliar vowels and gutteral sounds with the occasional completely intelligible phrase thrown in… (However I suspect a bit of exposure to spoken Danish would quickly remedy this.) I guess you could say, Swedish sounds clearer and more intelligible to most Norwegians, because Danish has gone through a lot of sound changes that we up here on the Scandinavian peninsula haven’t.

[@carnifpsgod9383]

Yes, I can understand Danish and Noweigan very well in text, but spoken Norwegian is much easier than Danish, the pronunciation in Danish is too different, maybe if they speak slow and repeat alot of words. :P

[@paiwanhan]

All the sentences seem to be a part of a story, so by the 3rd sentence, I'm hearing storm, come, crack, egg without the written form. The only language I know related to Old Norse is English.

[@jameskirton3168]

In my Yorkshire dialect I understood a fair bit, we've got 1.5K old norse words #1 skog - forest En - one Snoo fell en day i skog #2 Mardi - angry Fuglen - bird Brigg Bridge - like a brigg of sticks so nest I in Pessem skogi - thissen ( this one) skog probs an individual tree #3 In this hasty tree in the forest a (type of bird) sits, theres a word with R that's ab weaving strings together cunt remember it) bridged their nest together. #4 An olden strom came the krow got their eggs stollen Written it looks like Another storm ran through the krow stalls their egg (stall as in outweighs stores too) Another ringin storm kom kraka stalled their eggs. I Yorkshire #5 With vanity,,,, he flew Written Winter with envy hafs Odin flying So an analogy po crazy weather Or than Odin flying.

[@redwelder]

So as an English speaker just like the Swedish Danish and Norwegian speaking people we couldn’t go back in time and speak with our ancestors, i heard old English maybe some from England or Scotland Ireland or Wales could understand but as an American i was thinking maybe Scandinavians could understand it more and the Icelandic dude basically understand anything from the old Norse and probably a lot of old English too

[@eh1641]

To understand Old English, you need to learn Dutch, Frisian, or German. I think some dialects in England have good intelligibility with Middle English

[@efobust2859]

im not a language person. but as a swede i found this very interesting

[@Nekotaku_TV]

Stackars norrman. XD They said it's "live" in the second sentence and he just missed that somehow. Then talks about missing hair hahaha, and says "byggur" when he can read that it's not that. 22:15 Yeah difficult one but knowing what it is it still makes so much sense. (22:35 Surely you also got "sitt".) You did really well, and better than the Dane even overall.

[@ThaaugtheRedRaccoon]

Since it wasn't linked, here is the original video without Chirpy's chirping: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a361l4l-ip6ZqJI

[@eirmynt5539]

Interesting how óvinur/uvenner has changed between Scandinavia and Iceland. Óvinur means enemy in modern day Icelandic, exact opposite from friend. Found it interesting that you guys use it differently.

[@rafalkaminski6389]

Norwegian seems to troll it.

[@RoyalKnightVIII]

If you haven't yet I really hope you check out Prof Crawford's videos on Old Norse history and language. He's a real A Colorado cowboy viking He's got some good videos on actual Rune use. I do wonder what modern swedish might look like if written in runes

[@aleksejjovanovic986]

This was hard, understood 35%. I bet Icelander understood 90%. Funny thing, i understand old English far better than old Norse. Btw, i live in Sweden. Oh yeah, you forgot to bring someone from the Faroe Islands and somenone from Gotland who speaks old Gute. Those guys would understand old Norse easiest. I know people who speak old Gute can communicate perfectly with Icelandic people.

[@annatraustadottir4387]

No Icelanders understand 100%. This is so easy. The only thing that Óskar didn't know was the name of a bird that does not live in Iceland. And for a moment he believed Crawford was saying vinnr (works) but not vinr (a friend) but hearing the rest of the sentence made him immediately understand it was vinr. Someone from Faroe Islands would do well but it would not be so totally effortless as for Icelanders.

[@binxbolling]

Is Gotland related to Gothic?

[@aleksejjovanovic986]

@@binxbolling I believe so. It is known that Goths are a germanic tribe that went from northern Europe to Balkans.I cant find any concrete proof.

[@sakarialanen6425]

We learned runes in school, still it's been a long time since

[@nicholas3354]

Now I'm at 34:54, #5. So if "med" is "with" it must be from Greek, because Greek "met/meta" is "with". Could "thann" be another form of comparative "than"? So "more above than", meaning "over"; similar to "before" from #4? "Hefir" is probably not "higher" because we had "highest" earlier and it was not very similar. Oh! Maybe "vinr" is related to "wind". "Hefir" may likely be the bird this time, so I'll just use a "hawk". "Er" could mean "air" maybe (just a shot in the dark). Perhaps we have a first-person plural passive verb in there, or some other grammar to the same result, so the bird is flying over "us". Well, maybe the three word "thann ovin er" is a phrase which refers to the air above, so then refers to the sky. Maybe something like "Winded with wings, hawk more than above air flies." So, in plain English: "On winded wings a hawk flies the air above." Let's find out now [pressing play]. [Pause] Ok, no "hawk", but instead proverbial. That actually makes more sense to me; using a proverbial structure makes it a bit of a trick question. I suppose if it's proverbial, the word "thann" may be "then", giving a cause-effect structure for a proverb. "Wind with wing higher, then above air fly" That is proverbial, and has no bird mentioned. I'll have to do an Old English one of these; I don't know why KZbin recommended Old Norse before Old English. [pressing play again] [Pause] Not "air" but instead it's just part of the clause. I was thinking "when" before "wind" and I should have gone back to that as soon as I knew it was proverbial. "When with wing heaving---" really, it could be "wind" or "when", what do I know? "When/wind with wing heaving (lifting), then over flies." I'm at 37:55 now, and I'm satisfied with my final guess. [play] Ooohh. "Friend" and "unfriend". "Hefir" is like "have". Interesting that I came up with "heaving" before "having", and I didn't know "heaving" means "lifting", but I looked up "heaving", and "lifting" seemed like an excellent fit. Apparently "wind" was rather reasonable, especially considering I started watching with literally zero concept of what Norse languages are like. I was surprised to discover they're similar to English, because they've always sounded extremely foreign to my ear. "Thann" being "that" makes sense, but there are too many things that, from my perspective, would make sense there. This was fun. I've gone from all Norse languages sounding like mere sounds to me, to now having a bit of a vague awareness of how Norse languages relate to Greek and English. I like having some vague awareness of things, so this has been incredibly informative for me. I think it's very cool that Icelandic is almost the same as Old Norse. Really, it's still the same language, just a specific dialect. That's cool how Iceland has preserved that aspect of yall's shared heritage. I'm going to go watch something like this about Old English now; I should fare much better. Cheers.

[@kensears5099]

I know no Scandinavian languages at all, though I am fluent in Russian and very familiar with French and Spanish. So I am going purely by instinct. And I haven't listened to the translation of the fourth sentence yet, and at first something told me there was something there about boiling an egg in a pot, which I'm sure is ridiculously wrong, but the context suggests something about the birds protecting their eggs through a storm.

[@rafalkaminski6389]

Maybe english earl is also connect with that 'before' thing. Also german erst 'first'.

[@nicholas3354]

On number 4, you were too quick for me to try to hear "storm come" before you said it, but it sounds like that even in English. Sounded like "olden storm come"; could it be related to "Odin"? The next to last word sounded like the same word as before, "two". The last word sounds like "egg" or "ek". "Ek" would be "out" from Greek. "Egg" would fit the bird theme. Oh. you said "crash" or "crush", but it sounds like "crack". Maybe it's "an Odin storm comes and cracks out the sky in two" or something. I'm rearranging the syntax there. So "An Odin storm comes, sky crack two out". Let's see what is written. You suggest "one year a storm came". I forgot that "en" in Greek is both "in" and "one". I'll guess one last time based on that. "One year one storm came, cracking all their eggs." Final guess.

[@B----------------------------D]

32:29 I would guess that "earlier on" is pretty close.

[@svipul2582]

I heard him say: bargir fjuklar jokull i festin skogin not: margir figlar bjuggu í þessum skogin 🤣

[@EtherealSunset]

The Engish word for that bird is a Blue Tit. As someone from North East England, I understood a tiny bit, but not a huge amount. I do find it interesting that for all I may not have understood much of it, it was interesting that it doesn't sound foreign to me.

[@eh1641]

My guess is that you speak the Northumbrian dialect, which was influenced by Old Norse as much as the Yorkshire dialect

[@austindurham5736]

Is this the equivalent of an english speaker hearing old english

[@Bjowolf2]

I really like "Danaveldi" ( being Danish meself ) 😉 - we should be using that one instead of "Danmark" 😂 Today it would be "Danervælde" = Dane Rule.

[@Halli50]

Old Icelanders still use "Danaveldi" when referring to Denmark, but only as a fondly ironic term. Danes, with their great sense of humor, will "get it".

[@Bjowolf2]

@@Halli50 I simply can't imagine why you would do such a thing 🙄😂

[@harambe8372]

Yeah that sounded mighty

[@joeking3282]

I just been told about Google translator so i played with this whilst watching the vid back and forth. Google translates the written word perfectly (nearly perfectly) first go from Norse to Icelandic. But it struggles with the written word. But again better in norse to icelandic

[@Hwyadylaw]

My best attempt at converting the sentences to the Swedish dialect of the same period. Probably full of mistakes and inconsistencies. Snior fiol en dagh i skoghenum. Manger fughlar byghþu i þæssum skoghi. I þy høghsta træ i skoghenum, byghþu tve(r) mæsingar reþer sitt. Æn arla æn stormrin kom, stal kraka þera æg. Ven mæþ vinga haver þæn oven ær fliugher (flygher?). A thing of note is that this is just the written form. Some differences are pretty much just arbitrary spelling differences, like snior / snjór. I've left out vowel length markers (so kraka instead of kraaka or kráka)

[@Behemot_]

Same for me, as spanish guy, pretending understand latin.

[@eddiesimone3568]

In a way, there are also similarities with Dutch.

[@sschmachtel8963]

Dutch is quite a mixed language to me which I dont know really, but see it as a lot of funnily old sounding german. But then when you don't pass on that one you take words from nothern languages that still exist. Not sure though to which one of the three it is closest. I would guess danish but I use only swedish and not norwegian at the moment. My interest is now Frisian and at least northern frisian has a lot German influence mixed with some danish influence from the hearing I would say. And frisian and dutch yeah I don't know anyhting about that but I can guess that's the way how you got all those northern words there. So at the moment I consider it pretty much as a mixture of swedish and German for myself. But it might be very well more the Danish that shines through What I noticed also about Dutch that spoken stuff is much more difficult to understand than what I perceive as informal written style. Because that one I can really read quite well And about swedish or probably also Danish and Norwegian I think there is a lot of old style type of Germanic words that have somehow changed a bit either or the other way but make some sense and again sound kind of old. What I actually also wonder about how nordic speakers preceive German .... is it also some kind of old way to say things? Endings can be quite different but usually there is some of those that have exactly the same idea behind it. So, if you know the root word, which can be also quite different sometimes, you can stil pretty much nail it by knowing the endings

[@Baa975]

Any gothic/gotlandic people ⬇️

[@dan74695]

Wiktionary about Norwegian "høg": From Middle Norwegian høg, from Old Swedish hø̄gher, from an Eastern variant of Old Norse hár, Proto-Germanic *hauhaz, from the Proto-Indo-European root *kewk-. Supplanted descendants of Old Norse hár in most dialects, although forms such as håg still exist. Compare Swedish hög, Danish høj, and English high. Wiktionary about Danish "høj": From Old Danish høgh, from Old Norse (east) *haugʀ, (west) hár, hór, from Proto-Germanic *hauhaz, *haugaz (“high”), cognate with Norwegian Nynorsk høg, Norwegian Bokmål høy, Swedish hög, English high, German hoch, Dutch hoog.

[@Bjowolf2]

No, Danish "høj" [hoygh] = high / tall høg [h'oe'gh] = hawk Such original ending k-sounds have typically been weakened into -g's in Danish now and are usually pronounced as [-gh], as in E "sigh".

[@dan74695]

@@Bjowolf2 Du byr lesa kommentaren min atter.

[@timetomoonwalk]

I speak passable Swedish and, like the Norwegian speaker, I thought the first sentence was also about a dude, haha. I thought it was something like, "One day Snor fell in the woods".

[@birdseye_2020]

Old Norse writing on the thumbnail looks similar to Ethiopian/Eritrean ge’ez alphabets. Even down to the punctuation marks. Very fascinating.

[@harambe8372]

Isn’t there some ethiopian alphabet that looks like georgian as well?

[@birdseye_2020]

@@harambe8372 Yeah, it does look like Gregorian alphabets too. I think it looks closer to Gregorian. However, in the thumbnail what stood out to me was the punctuation structure. (Ex. hello: how: are: you:: )

[@Arsenico971]

I'm a Norwegian speaking Italian and I did better than the Dane and the Norwegian. I feel proud. :D

[@joejacquesschulz8514]

Swedish, unlike Danish, has been heavily influenced by Lower German because Sweden had at times a closer connection to Germany (lots of German Nobles/landowners in Sweden) than Denmark... or Norway. Subsequently it should be harder for you to understand Old Norse than for a Dane.

[@frostflaggermus]

as a norwegian, the norwegian guy is so embarrassing

[@shacklock01]

I was surprised the Norwegian did worse than a Dane. I'd THINK Norwegian behind Icelandic would be the closest to old norse?

[@Halli50]

@@shacklock01 nah, the everyday Norwegian language, especially Bokmål, is so influenced by Danish as to make little difference. I still agree, the Norwegian would have been expected to do better but was probably handicapped by a limited exposure to the oldest dialects (can Icelandic be considered the oldest Norwegian dialect?).

[@theresebjrknes4272]

@@Halli50 I believe you're right about his lack of exposure to dialects. I'm from south-western norway (Bergen), and I can confirm that nr 1 and 2 of the norse examples sounds VERY close to some of the dialects you find further south. Also I believe people in the south get much more exposure to other dialects than they do in the north. Eastern-norwegians (and apparently northerners too) often struggle more than the rest of us.

[@CarpetHater]

@@shacklock01 Some norwegian dialects for sure are much closer to old norse atleast in pronouncation, but grammatically there are some huge differences, even in the dialects that has changed the least from old norse, but Faroese is the closest (behind Icelandic) and in sweden you have Alvdälska which is the closest language/dialect on the european continent. Tromsø and the dialects futher east like in Finnmark has had a lot of influence from bokmål due to it being a sami territory back in the day, and they were more or less taught in bokmål back when they were assimilated. if they brought in a norwegian person from a place further south they would probably do a bit better, but i also just think they brought in one of the worst people for this too, i believe an average ''tromsøværing'' would do better.

[@d.v.t]

I think it's because he has little exposure to that dialect. Be nice.

[@chovuse]

Since this is Old West Norse as someone pointed out in the comments, Is there someone who can speak Old East Norse so that we can see if it's easier for the Danish and Swedes to understand ?

[@rafalkaminski6389]

In Polish kruk is for 'raven'. 😅

[@rafalkaminski6389]

What's that matter with throwing dice?

[@user-bf8ud9vt5b]

As a native English speaker (from Australia), I'd fare much, much worse listening to Old English...

[@Cassxowary]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/mXisZKuopLproas

[@JackReynolds-w7g]

You might do better than you might otherwise think if you are very familiar with old German of old English for that matter.

[@sanjivjhangiani3243]

With respect to the word "haesta" for "highest," in English, we have "hoist ": e.g., to hoist a flag. So maybe that has Norse roots.

[@bobapbob5812]

Interesting that Welsh for to live is byw.

[@Gittas-tube]

Titmouse is tofsmes in Swedish. That sentence was easy!

[@christopherchristianvanlan1809]

How did your brain translate Titty Mouse into Tuft Sissy ?

[@dan74695]

According to Wiktionary, Swedish "många" and Norwegian and Danish "mange" are from Old Norse "mangr", not from Low Saxon.

[@hjorleifuringason2778]

wonder what the Norvegian guy is doing in this company

[@AnjusDiaryAnjithapk]

I love vikings

[@alfatejpblind6498]

Why

[@emilatik8581]

@@alfatejpblind6498 Gorgeous looking ones ((on average)),you see.I'd agree there,though.We already know,though...I'm just saying..😅🤷💎👌✌️

[@Byezbozhnik]

Lífit es dauðafærð...

[@mintpastill]

Some sentences he set of sentences that dont sound nordic setment in right order more like opposite english or am i mistaken?

[@JRJohnson1701]

Manige Fugels buden in þissem Schagen.

[@jesperlykkeberg7438]

"Old Norse is basically the mother of all Scandinavian languages". 100% Wrong. "Old Norse" is just a modern word for "Norrøn" which simply means "Old Icelandic" or "Northern Scandinavian". However, the language spoken by the Danish Vikings "Dansk Tunge" is referred to in the oldest Icelandic text "Fyrsta málfræðiritgerðin" as another language than Old Norse.

[@quellepls2568]

That looks likes old turkic. Lol.

[@Gunsandjewels]

Ja! Interessant, at efter den islandske lærer, den danske fattet mest af old Norse. Selvom det burde være en normand. Men han var på den sidste plads. Jeg er russisk og bor i DK i 25 år. Jeg forstår nu en hel del svensk, og det kunne jeg ikke for 15 år siden. Den 1 sætning i old nordisk forstod jeg faktisk med det samme. Jeg har ikke studeret dansk på universitetet. Men een ting undrer mig: Det er umuligt at vide hvordan en old norse lød. Inven ved hvordan de arkaiske sprog var udtalt. Det tettæste på old norse er den modern islandsk, men alligevel...Absolut ingen sikkerthed.