Can they understand Norwegian without prior learning? | Norwegian vs Danish vs Swedish vs Icelandic

[@Zapp4rn]

As a swede, I love how icelandic sounds with all þ's, ð's and h's, it sounds mystical, in a way. It also reminds me of how my great grandparents say "h" before K's, they speak "bondska" a swedish dialect in northern sweden.

[@juhanivalimaki5418]

Låter lite som samiska, tror jag.

[@KibyNykraft]

Yes the h in front of the k is also commonplace in the rural areas of inland South Norway such as classic Vågå. Listen to the chef Arne Brimi ,he should be somewhere on KZbin :)

[@eb.3764]

Swedish regional language

[@joaquin_nord]

As a Swede, i don't even have to concentrate with Norwegian. With Danish i understand everything 100% but still have to concentrate because some words tend to trip me up a bit. With Icelandic i feel totally lost about 90% of the time, then a couple of sentences comes along that makes perfect sense and all of a sudden i understand the entire context. LOL this was fun!

[@oskich]

Exactly this, full listening concentration required to decode Danish while spoken Norwegian is extremely easy to understand. For Icelandic I really need to see it in writing and think hard about the sentence, while contemplating any synonyms that might be applicable to make sense of the words. I think it would be easier if I had more knowledge in Icelandic pronunciation rules.

[@SaturnineXTS]

I know only basic and unstructuredly learned Swedish and Norwegian, but my impressions about Icelandic exactly mirror yours lol

[@GDPoptart]

Same!

[@CGJUGO80]

I heard that eating nonstop rødgrød med fløde makes you understand Danish even in your sleep.

As a Czech with some Icelandic experience I could understand 45% Norwegian, 45% Swedish, 5% Danish and 100% Icelandic.

[@muchadoaboutbooks9590]

Can we get a part two? Would love to see this with Hólmfríður explaining words to see how many Nordics can understand Icelandic

[@tingtingsf]

Great idea! I would love to see this.

[@TheTobbeF]

Yes please! I struggle very much with icelandic but being able to see it in writing helped a lot

[@kilipaki87oritahiti]

We wouldn’t be able too. It’s too far off as the others has evolved and Iceland was isolated for so long. Icelandic is the closest we get to Old Norse. I should know. I’m Norwegian and my bf is Icelandic. We like to brag that we understand as the Icelandic Vikings came from Norway, but we don’t. Tho they understand us of course as the learn Danish in school. They used to be under Danish rule, and they have to learn one other Scandinavian language, and the majority chooses Danish. They should choose Norwegian as they can’t do the sounds anyway and only sounds how any immigrant speaks Norwegian. And Icelanders are part Celtic due to the Irish and Scottish female slaves they brought with them from Dublin to settle Iceland, as no Norwegian woman wanted to come with.

[@nirutivan9811]

For Norwegian and Swedish I had no problem understanding them. For Danish I needed to see how it was written (due to the pronunciation), but with that, I had no problems understanding hin. For Icelandic I struggled a bit more. With how it was written I could guess many of the words she said, I think I understood the core meaning of what she said, but there are also many words I didn‘t understand. I‘m a (Swiss) German speaker, who also speaks English and Norwegian and I started learning Swedish a few months ago.

[@andreasfahlen4936]

I am swedish and study german, I noticed that ”to move” in danish and norweighian is very similar to the german word ”sich bewegen” swedish word is totally different ”röra sig”.

[@meadish]

@@andreasfahlen4936 Yep, noticed the same thing. We also have a possible cognate in Swedish 'beveka' but it means to 'implore' somebody to do something and isn't a word we would use a lot in everyday speech.

[@jasminstich1376]

@@andreasfahlen4936 there is also a German word called 'sich rühren' which means 'to move', but it is outdated and I don't use it in my everyday speech. I am swiss

[@FluxTrax]

@@andreasfahlen4936 in most cases it's more natural to say "røre (på) seg" in Norwegian. "Bevege" doesn't even exist in Nynorsk as it derives from German

[@TK-uh7qs]

In Dutch there's a distinction between the reflexive form of the verb ("zich roeren") and the non-reflexive form ("roeren"). The reflexive means that something that was still before comes into movement (usually a living thing), the non-reflexive form means "to stir" (like stirring soup in a pot).

[@jubmelahtes]

This was really interesting, as a northern Norwegian I honestly understand Iceland (and Faroese) better than Danish but Swedish is probably the easiest. Some Southern northern dialects I struggle with sometimes equally as much as Danish or German. Personally I struggle seeing Norwegian as one language sometimes, where I live we have a different sentence structure and grammar than that of the South and many dialects have Russian influences aswell as a leftover from the Pomortrade. Really intresting though!

[@Nika-Ezhevika]

Oh,you mean the relics of Russenorsk language?what is the part of Norway you live in?

[@bamereg]

I get you. From my end I struggle to understand northern Norwegian sometimes.

[@mathiaslist6705]

so, Norwegian isn't really one language but rather a country which thought it must one (a national language or so) ... probably it could have kept Danish and Swedish as national languages and probably no one would have complained

[@Osa49]

@@mathiaslist6705 There is no "correct" spoken Norwegian, only dialects. There are two written languages.

[@ttomboii5407]

yea im from iceland and i think norwegian is the easiest by far but thats just because its the closest to icelandic

[@mejlaification]

You know this channel educated and trained you well when you can sit through Nordic mutual intelligibility video. Very much enjoyed. (to my ears Icelandic is still the most beautiful one)

[@jt_norway9129]

Thats thanks to us Norwegians ;)

[@meadish]

Icelandic does sound great. Need to study it a bit more to also understand more of what they are saying.

[@Ecolinguist]

[@svenkarlsen2702]

Icelandic is very close to Old Norse.

[@Theholyone999]

@@jt_norway9129 ehhh kinda I guess Im Icelandic

[@arvid4409]

Scandinavians has almost no problems with understanding each other but it's a little bit harder to understand Icelandic

[@primrosedahlia9466]

I think Sami people might understand icelandic people. Well that's just a guess. But I certainly understand Swedish and Danish 100%,except some sweedish words that are very different from a Norwegian. But I had not one single clue when the icelandic girl spoke. That was very difficult even when reading it.

[@FreezeMathias]

@@primrosedahlia9466 nope, not at all for first sentence. Sami is a uralic language, so its close to finnish, estonian and even hungarian

[@primrosedahlia9466]

@@FreezeMathias ah yes, that's true - it's more like Finnish, not icelandic. I had to Google it and it says it's closer to faraoese.

[@arvid4409]

@@primrosedahlia9466 Why would sami people understand icelandic better? The sami languages are closer related to finish

[@primrosedahlia9466]

@@arvid4409 we have already established that

[@frazermurray8605]

Vad roligt denna videon var. Tack för detta! Jag är Britt men bott länge i Skandinavien. Blev så glad när jag förstod nästan allt som sas. Tack än gång!

[@hamboggy1195]

As a Faroese person I could understand most of what everyone said, sometimes I struggle with understanding the pronunciation of Icelandic though ^^

[@SchmulKrieger]

Written I find Faroese looks like German a bit.

[@hamboggy1195]

@@SchmulKrieger ooh interesting! Never thought about that

[@mohamadmosa8116]

I thought Faroese is the closest one to Icelandic, or could it be just in lexical similarities and not pronounciation-wise?

[@mikael5743]

Really? I thought the Danish pronunciation is the tricky one

[@mar754]

@@mikael5743 Yeah, Danish is hard for Norwegian speakers to understand when spoken, but reading is easy. There's some "throw up" sounds made in Danish sentences that makes a Norwegian ask to repeat what the Dane said. Faroese is easier to understand than Icelandic for me

[@TasnuArakun]

I'm fascinated by the different words for mammal: 'pattedyr' (Danish and Norwegian), 'däggdjur' (Swedish) and 'spendýr' (Icelandic). They use different words meaning either "teat" or "to suckle" which are all recognisable to me as a Swede. 'Patt/patte' ("breast, teat") sounds vulgar or childish in Swedish (there's also 'patta' "to suckle"). 'Spene' is the regular word for "teat". The word 'dägga' ("to suckle') is not used anymore - 'dia' is used instead - but 'däggdjur' has still managed to stick around. Also note that the 'd' in 'djur' is silent in most Swedish dialects.

[@andreafalconiero9089]

I'm guessing that the Swedish _dägg_ would correspond to the English word "dug", which is also used in some contexts to describe an animal's teats. I don't think we have cognates for the corresponding words in Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

[@MagnusItland]

Growing up in western Norway in the 1960es, my school books also said "spendyr" which was Nynorsk for mammal. If I ask in Nynorsk: "Kva slag spendyr kan verpa?" (What kind of mammal can lay eggs?), it would be harder to understand in Oslo than on Iceland.

[@nirutivan9811]

It‘s interesting how many words with a different word origin the Germanic languages use to say mammal, while they all basically mean the same thing. In German we say „Säugetier“, which literally translated also means „suckle animal“. So again a different word with the same meaning. Additionally in dutch they use the word „zoogdier“. The word „zuigen“ has the same origin as the German „säugen“ and also means „to suckle“.

[@seragott6406]

In faroese it is “súgdjór” which also “to suckle”

[@LittleWhole]

In English "mammal" is directly taken from Latin. Interesting how English doesn't have a native word for mammal and instead adopts an Anglicized version of the Late Latin word.

[@malthesse]

As a Scanian - from southernmost Sweden, next to the border with Denmark - I find both Danish and Norwegian really easy to understand. It just takes a little while to "adjust" to the different accents, but that's true when listening to other Swedish dialects as well. The Scanian dialect has many similarities with Danish, such as using many diphthongs, having a more drawling and less sing-songy rhythm compared to Norwegian and Standard Swedish, and using throaty French-style r-sounds.

[@acrojen03]

Scanian? What's the definition of that word? It's the first time I've ever heard of it! I know Scandinavian, obviously, so I'd guess it might be similar to that, but please do enlighten me! ^^

[@vharmi.]

@@acrojen03 Scania, or Skåne in Swedish and Danish, is the southernmost province of Sweden. Due to it's proximity to Denmark, the dialect there shares some similarities with Danish. Including some words like wheelbarrow, which in Skåne you can call a rullebör(same as Danish), where as in the rest of Sweden it's always called skottkärra.

[@acrojen03]

@@vharmi. Omg, of course! I am pretty sure I have actually heard about that region, but I clearly didn't remember it. XD Thanks for the explanation! ^^

[@meadish]

In the present day at least, there seems to be many more (and much more pronounced) diphthongs in Scanian than there are in Danish? If we take the pronunciation of 'mor' (mother) for example, Danish is like a short 'moo'a' with the r sound at the end being almost like an 'ah' vowel with the glottis doing a little closing and opening. In some kinds of Scanian though, 'mor' sounds more like 'mieooRRR' with an emphasized throaty R at the end and the 'o' vowel becoming a triple(!) diphthong, which is really quite different from both Danish and Swedish dialects further North. To my ear, Danish just seems to have a whole heap of vowel sounds that speakers of other languages find tricky to distinguish from each other, and also a tendency to slacken off certain consonant sounds (what would be unvoiced p t k in Norwegian or Swedish become voiced (b d g) in Danish)... and at the ends of words, the Danes are probably already a bit 'ked af det' so they collapse all the consonant sounds into what is sometimes just a hint of a pitch change.

[@Hin_Håle]

@@acrojen03 Skåne, along with the regions Halland and Blekinge, has historically also been a very contested region between Sweden and Denmark. It was a part of Denmark for long periods from the late 900's and in 1658 it finally became a permanent part of Sweden. But there has always been a lot of romantic talk about "Snapphanar" (scanian freedom fighters loyal to the danish crown) and the "good old danish days". My own scanian mother talked for a while about changing her last name to Snapphane. Edit: Oh, and the word Scandinavia does derive from the word Scania. I can't remember exactly how but I believe it was some roman cartographer who crossed the straight to scania and gave it that name after a local "tribe". And then the name was later used to describe the whole peninsula.

[@tripleseis81]

I think these videos are fascinating. I love seeing related languages being used in this way. Even with my basic Swedish I was able to work out the first three answers. Being a fan of Germanic languages, it's great to see how they are both related and different at the same time.

[@beorlingo]

You said it: "both related and different"! When I read a book in Norwegian it strikes me how different it actually is from Swedish. What I mean is that when hearing Norwegian I understand It so effortlessly that it does not strike me the differencies that I notice only once reading a book.

[@akumayoxiruma]

As a Swedish speaker, I could understand everyone quite well but I was glad to read the subtitles for Danish and Icelandic.

[@darkknight8139]

This is an amazing comparison, these languages differ more in pronunciation than one might think. I am Dutch and I have heard some Norwegian and Swedish, when I was on holiday there. I did not studiy these languages, but when I hear it I try to remember some words. For me the challenge was to guess all phrases without English subtitles. I managed to get the first two words right. The third and last words were a complete mystery, however I got the fourth word right after hearing the discussion. A surprising result. I think that Norwegian is the easiest to learn as a foreigner. I know that Swedish has some interesting caveats in grammar, so that is a bit more difficult to learn. If you change the sound of some vowels and leave out most consonents except the first one of each word, you get the Danish pronunciation. Jacob speaks Danish very clearly, and I still had some major difficulties to understand any of it, I had to see it written. "stadigvaek" becomes something like "stuhhhvuhk" with a really soft v... Icelandic sounds great and it is a really, really beautiful and unique language. It is equally hard to learn as it is interesting to listen to. Edit: In my order of difficulty, I have to switch Danish and Icelandic. I think Danish is the hardest to learn of these four, just because of the pronunciation. Icelandic may sound weird because of uncommon sounds, but it is at least consistent.

[@argantyr5154]

Danes seems to speak more from deep as from the throat, there is a reason why Swedes in fun say that danes sounds like they have a potato in their mouth :-). And danish grammar is Hell, we have so many exceptions, silent letters (specially the "h"). Danish don't seem to have that many words in it so several danish words several meaning. For example the danish word "Skat" kan mean 3 different things (Taxes, treasure & a nickname for your boyfriend/girlfriend) also the word "Klar" can mean both Ready & Clear. To me the Dutch language seems "easy" to get an idea of what you are saying. Because dutch sounds like a mix of German, English & danish. And with German & English being taught in school it makes it easier to get an idea of what you are talking about. HoweverI will never be able to write or say a dutch sentence but I can get an Idea.

[@IvoTichelaar]

A friend of mine (I ambDutch, Sonos she) moved to Denmark to marry her love. Her description of Danish is "luhluhluh, luhluh, luhluhluhluh." My sister in law lives in Sweden and says that Danish sounds like a barking dog. I understand what both are saying. A dog barking luhluhluh, luhluh, luhluhluhluh.....

[@FutureChaosTV]

Yeah, to me danish is to the scandinavian languages as french is to the roman language group. Or how people from New Zealand speak english compared to the U.S. or the UK. Lots of supressed vowels. Just difficult to decode by hearing. Seeing it written it is not all that bad to understand.

[@jt_norway9129]

Wait until i speak old-times "posh" Norwegian ;) like my Grannys generation spoke :3 IT wont be as easy then my dudes 😎

[@MarkRose1337]

As a native English speaker, Danish is definitely the hardest to hear. What makes Icelandic difficult to learn is a lack of available educational materials. Though I still remember laughing when I read my first full sentence in Icelandic and understood it, which was written on a mug in a shop in Reykjavík: Ég hef ekki hugmynd um hvað stendur á þessum bolla. So of course I had to buy it for the irony.

[@martelkapo]

Awesome video, the North Germanic languages are fascinating...Icelandic is particularly beautiful. Excited to see the Discord server too, can't wait to join!

[@chuggon7595]

I'm an American trying to learn Norwegian, and it's crazy that I BARELY know anything, but I can actually some what understand what they're all saying! I never realized how much these languages had in common!

[@kilipaki87oritahiti]

Well 1. English is a Germanic language so related to Norwegian etc. 2. Of course we have many things in common being all related and being neighboring countries. We all spoke the same dialect of Norse once, but over time they evolved into separate languages. The Danes used to sound like us, until for whatever reason they decided to change with the heavy influence of German and Dutch. And as a Norwegian we all grow up being fluent by default without necessarily having to actually learn the language because it’s so similar, but also the exposure through media, TV shows, movies, music etc. And if course we all have a Dane or a Swede in our family somewhere. My aunt is Swedish and my 3rd cousin’s husband is also Swedish. We where also conquered and colonized by both Sweden and Denmark at one point in history. Also there are several million Norwegian Americans in the US… shouldn’t be too hard to learn seeing that English exists due to the influence from Latin/Roman, Anglo Saxon (Germanic), Danish and Norwegian (Old Norse), as Old English was very similar to that before they changed it.

[@iuveniseques]

I am currently learning german and i just started to Norwegian and it's kinda easy for me to understand and memorize vocabulary because it's like mixed version of german and English ✨😌

[@SaturnineXTS]

@@kilipaki87oritahiti English is related to Norwegian on more grounds than it just being "a Germanic lanugage". The ties of modern English to the Scandinavian languages are in fact much closer, since under the Danelaw English inherited a lot of absolutely basic Old Norse vocabulary, which makes modern English feel way closer to the Scandinavian languages than to say, German, despite genetically being a West Germanic language (like German), while the Scandinavian languages are from a different branch.

[@TheDanishGuyReviews]

Alt? Arr, nok næppe, islandsk er så meget anderledes end de andre.

[@XiyuYang]

Indo-European Germanic language, French, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian all have some common linguistic roots. Finnish, on the other hand...

[@ivanos_95]

As a Pole, I find the Swedish language as the most solid one in pronunciation amongst those four, while as someone who's personally learning Swedish, I also understood Norwegian very well, but Danish was much harder to understand without reading, due to its indistinct pronunciation, and Icelandic sounds and reads almost like a different language-family, so it was very hard to guess.

[@toastyboi9427]

Polski

[@svenkarlsen2702]

Icelandic is very close to Old Norse. Which is probably the root of all these languages. Isolation due to distance may be why it is less influenced by other European languages.

[@Damian-el1sw]

Same!

[@freyjulundr]

if you are from scandinavia you may understand icelandic much more than foreigners outside of our viking history but its really simular if you really look at it maybe its cause im from norway and sweden is why i can see it more clearly its like the word for I love you in norwegian its Jeg elsker deg in swedish its jag älskar dig and in icelandic its ég elska þig so for us scandinavians its literally our cousins so its relatively easy for us atleast

[@toastyboi9427]

@@freyjulundr i agree but Danish is very hard to understand because they wowels while other scandinavian language don't

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

I'm Norwegian so of course I understand everything he says, but even I struggled to understand exactly what he was describing.. at least the first one. There's quite a lot of words for lakes to choose from. Swedish and Danish is easy. But Icelandic is about 50% straight forward Norwegian with a different accent and 50% completely unknown. And weirdly it's often whole sentences that are fine and then whole sentences I don't understand at all. Makes it frustrating to watch Icelandic films and TV because I start listening to the parts that makes sense, and forget to look at the subtitles and then I'm suddenly lost and have to rewind to read the subtitles.

[@MeatzB]

Islendingen minner meg mer om nynorsk, selv om jeg ikke snakker det flytende. Islandsk minner meg om det gamle språket. For meg var svensk lett, og dansk var greit, men vanskeligere.

[@tootallno]

Totally agree with you re the first one. Your analogy about Icelandic is spot on :)

[@aularound]

Exaclty. Most of the time you don't understand a thing about Icelandic, and then all of a sudden a fully scandinavian sentence pops up out of nowhere :)

[@MalawisLilleKanal]

Also Norwegian - Him saying it could be saltwater made it very confusing. When I think of "innsjø" it's always fresh water, as it means "innland sea", while my other alternative would have been "fjord" where I would mainly think of saltwater.

[@TurboJor]

Norwegian here, I also think when he actually said the word, it kinda destroyed the first one. Also, is he phrasing himself very wierd? "Jeg tror dette neste ordet blir sikkert lettere" 06:06 like who says that? He should be able to speak normal in this kind of setting: "Jeg tror det neste ordet blir lettere" ..anyways

[@blooeagle5118]

As an English speaker I was a little shocked by how much of the Norwegian was actually very intuitive and I picked up on it after a while, that's crazy!

[@jamiestokes7776]

Wow! I was just watching the Old Norse episode, wishing that you would do one for Norwegian! It'll be interesting because before I started learning Norwegian I learnt some Swedish with a friend, and transitioning from Swedish to Norwegian was surprisingly easy.

[@annebutler5169]

My grandfather was Danish and my grandmother was Norwegian. They spoke a mixture of the two languages and understood each other. My mother grew up in Norway so had to speak Norwegian at school. I tried to learn, but they didn't speak to us, only on English. I recognized some of the words in your chat. Loved it. Thank you.

[@KenKobayashiRasmussen]

I was born and raised in Denmark, learned swedish trough a boyfriend, and then moved to Norway where I live now, I have now been here for two years, and it is still hard for me to switch my swedish to norwegian, that might be because I am danish, who knows...I still use my danish with norwegian pronunciation when I speak to people up here..

[@arvid4409]

Swedish and norwegian are so similar that you only need to learn 1 to understand both. If you know 1 language you could learn the other in like a month

[@SmonAverageLifeEnjoyer]

Being able to speak both Icelandic and Danish kind of gives you an ability to understand the rest of Scandinavian languages.

[@IQzminus2]

I mean learning one, you sort of get all of them or atleast a part for free. As a native Swedish speaker, I understood the Norwegian perfectly. The Danish person spoke very clear Danish, but still it’s a bit hard. I can read Danish super easy. And I understood like maybe 95% of what he said. Danish feels like someone not articulating. So I actually know all the words he is saying, it’s just Danish sounds are hard to separate from each other. It all melts together. Sort of hard to understand in the same way like if someone spoke with their mouth full. Icelandic I was at maybe 70%. And understood what she was saying most of the time. But she is one of the most easy to understand Icelandic speakers I’ve experienced. Once in a while there was a word I wouldn’t understand at all. But not the same problem as with Danish. Super easy to understand all the sounds in Icelandic, crystal clear. The grammar is different, but it sort of clicks how you should change things. But the problem is just that I don’t understand what all the words mean. Most, but not all.

[@viharsarok]

@@IQzminus2 Can Icelandic speakers understand Swedish easier than the other way around? If so, why? Is it because they are exposed to other Nordic languages more than the other way around or because Icelandic being a more archaic language boosts their ability to understand more a innovative one?

[@Magnus_Loov]

@@viharsarok I also guess that the fact that the other languages have been exposed to foreign influence (german during the Hansa years, french for Sweden during the 1700 and english the last couple of years) makes it a lot of words easier for an icelandic person to understand than the other way around. Iceland seems to be keen on using their own words instead of "loan words" from foreign languages. For example when it comes to things like IT/computers they use their own words instead of just using the english word.

[@GoogelyeyesSaysHej]

Maybe, but norwegians and swedes will not really understand you lol

[@eurovision50]

Icelandic or Danish, plus one other might be a more powerful combo. Because then you could also make yourself understood :P

[@corinna007]

It's amusing coming here from the German/Dutch/Swedish/Norwegian video and hearing how relaxed Emma's voice is compared to Freja's Energizer Bunny speech.

[@flutterwind7686]

This is something I've been curious about. Thank you!

[@ekaterinagrnvc6848]

I've been learning Danish since recently and it was a very useful video for me!! Thank you ♥

[@mudkip_btw]

Som et nederlender jeg er overrasket over hvor mye jeg ha forstått (med undertekst naturlig), fordi jeg språker bare litt norsk og svensk. takk så mye for å gjøre dette video!

[@Tanya_Maria]

I am finnish and our language is nothing like the other skandinavian languages but I guessed every word correctly! :) I'm very surprised! I know a little swedish only. Please do more of these languages, this was so much fun! :)

[@UsoundsGermany]

Finnish sounds a bit like Japanese :) I am German and must say the words are simmilar but sound very differenent

[@MD-zr1wy]

@@UsoundsGermanyrespectfully, it sounds nothing like Japanese😂 It does have some similar words though, or false friends. Also Finnish isn’t an Indo European language, that’s why it’s so different. Finnish has only a few relatives in Europe, that being Hungarian, Sami, Esti as well as some other indigenous languages in west Russia, like Mari, Komi, Mansi etc etc❤️ I’m of Sami and Finnish heritage, with ancestry in west Russia with these indigenous groups. Sadly I do not speaj any Finnic languages:(

[@haeleth7218]

So amazing how these Norse people speak, technically, different languages but can understand each other. I love it!

[@kilipaki87oritahiti]

Lol most of us can’t understand Icelandic nor Farose. Our languages has evolved to far from each other for that. Of course they understand us because they have to learn a Scandinavian language in school, and the majority chooses Danish as they where under Danish rule. We learn either French or German beside English. And on the flip side most people have a hard time understanding Danish, as they used to sound like us before they changed it under the heavy influence of German and Dutch. And nobody says Norse anymore, which is equivalent to Vikings, and the culture died with the coming of Christianity and the Vikings loosing to their Anglo/Norman kin in England. We’re not in the dark middle ages anymore. Yet many foreigners seem to romanticize this idea of the Norse still existing like we never developed into modern day countries🙄🫣🫠

[@spencerfrankclayton4348]

​@@kilipaki87oritahiti Angry.

[@raimat66]

@@kilipaki87oritahiti It's just fun and nice that people refer to us as "Norse". I take it in and feel wonderfully exotic. (Swedish.)

[@RedSntDK]

Fascinated by these videos. It's so interesting to see how cultures deviated through language like this. Honestly the best use of KZbin so far.

[@elisabethgustavsson4517]

Please, more videos like this one, with Icelandic and the other Scandinavian languages!

[@Hugovika]

The host is excellent. Terrific job!

[@kbnen]

I'm Finnish and have learned Swedish at school, so I was a bit surprised that I understood this so well and even remembered words for whale and so on. It's been 10 years since I studied Swedish and haven't really used it. Norwegian was very understandable as well. Danish and Icelandic not so much but I could read the Danish text quite well too.

[@默-c1r]

Love your vids, thanks Norbert and everyone who participated!

[@turukano]

Such a fun video! I've been learning Danish for two years now and somehow got all five without subtitles/just listening to the audio. Makes me want to seriously pick up Norwegian now seeing as it's pretty comprehensible to me already.

[@peterfireflylund]

Norwegian is all dialects. My experience as a Dane is that some dialects were as clear as Danish, others slightly harder, and some were impossible. I have since worked hard to get better at Norwegian and can now understand everybody I hear on the radio but I had to work really, really hard to get there. So: you’ll get some varieties of Norwegian for free because you know some Danish, the others will require time and effort (and learning them wont improve your Danish).

[@mogywithahardg]

This was so much fun. I understood more Icelandic than I thought I could, but some vocabulary, like "lest" were very surprising. Sometimes the Danish is most difficult 😆

[@theodorn]

This was a lot of fun. I'm from Iceland, so I'm glad how well Hólmfríður did. I can understand written Norwegian, but not so well when it's spoken, except in the case of bokmål. Having spent some time in Sønderjylland, where the Danish participant comes from, that dialect can be hard to understand. Especially near the German border, but Jacob's Danish was very clear / forståelig / gut verstandlich. =D I've lived in Sweden for many years, so I understood Emma's svenska very well, and the Stockholm dialect is one of the easiest to understand of the Swedish variants, for me at least. Some of the Skåne dialects are hard to grasp, even after years of listening to them.

[@Raiseren]

The danish participant had copenhagen dialect.

[@Zekiraeth]

As a Dane, to me it sounded like the Danish guy was really enunciating his words, to the point where it sounds just a little bit weird. Just a tiny bit tho.

[@starrbergman2671]

So for context I'm fluent in Dutch, German and English. I tried to learn some Norwegian once on duo lingo for like 2 days but afterwards forgot about. I can honestly say understood most of what was said in the following order: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic just sounded magical to me. Somehow Danish really reminded me of German in a way. Just goes to show how similar germanic languages still are.

[@carlinberg]

Super fun to see this! I'm from Sweden. I understand very little from the icelandic and I've even studied Icelandic for a summer... But it's easier when she talks together with the others, because the context helps a lot! A future idea would be to have some dialects from Scandinavia, because the Danish and Norweigian are almost too easy to understand :D

[@carlinberg]

It would also be fun to see how much Swedes and Danes understand from nynorsk, since that's a bit more different!

[@peterfireflylund]

The Dane spoke Standard Danish with a slight regional tinge. I promise the others would have been lost if he had spoken sønderjysk :) (I think he comes from 20km or so North of where they speak sønderjysk.)

[@meadish]

@@peterfireflylund Yep, out of these 4 he took the most care to speak slowly - which is a good thing, because normal everyday spoken Danish is a lot less easy to follow for us other Nordics.

[@Borrelaas]

@@carlinberg nynorsk is hard because "noone" actually speaks nynorsk, it's mainly a written language

[@kirstireinholdtsen5844]

@@Borrelaas Nynorsk er ganske lik nordnorsk dialekt.

[@forg6641]

It was really interesting and fun to watch as someone who's studying Norwegian (and Swedish too, but I'm just getting started with it). Personally, I had a lot of trouble understanding anything in Icelandic. All the Nordic languages are so beautiful, though!

[@madisonm5361]

I really loved the video! 😍 I am currently learning Swedish as I worked with Swedish children who shared their culture and language during several months with me. They were my teachers. Danish is similar but the pronunciation is slightly different. It sounds so cute too. It is my first time to listen to someone speaking Icelandic. I am so surprised because I understood lots of words. It was wonderful!!!

[@Nakiimushi]

I had a hard time understanding Icelandic, but its a very interesting language. I understood Norwegian the best and of course Swedish because I speak Swedish. I also found Danish to be easier to understand written than spoken. I would like to see this version but with Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, or maybe even Sami. I speak Finnish as well and it would have been intersting! I know the languages sound similiar but are different, but it would have been fun to see how similar they really are 😄

[@HannahHäggAutisticTransWoman]

I am also speak Swedish since I am native Swedish speaker, I feel the same islandic was hard and norwegian was easy, danish for me is easy to understand when written but when they speak it's harder to understand.

[@Nakiimushi]

@@HannahHäggAutisticTransWoman Exakt, men det är väl sant det dom säger, att det är lättare att förstå norska när det talas men inte i skrift medans det är lättare att förstå danska i skrift men inte i tal 😂

[@alexj9603]

Finnish and Estonian definitely will probably work to some extent, but a Hungarian speaker won't understand a word. Finnic languages and Hungarian are as far apart from each other as Germanic and Slavic languages. I have no idea how much Finnish a Sami speaker would understand (or vice versa).

[@Nakiimushi]

@@alexj9603 Yeah I know as i mentioned they are different from each other, my best friend is Hungarian so I know, but it would be fun to compare words or sentences 😁

[@alexj9603]

@@Nakiimushi Then take a look at Bahador Alast's channel. He recently made a video on similarities between Estonian and Hungarian.

[@nomoreescape4084]

Icelandic is one of the most beautiful languages in europe, but also one of the most difficult to learn

[@ulisesdiale4004]

Remember finnish (and some others) aren't even indo-european languages, so 'difficult' would fit more to them

[@jonamariajonsdottir2252]

No its not try learn from me hæ ég á heima á Íslandi

[@meginna8354]

​@@ulisesdiale4004 From anecdotal experience, English speakers will actually have an easier time picking up Finnish than Icelandic, even though Icelandic is very closely related to English.

[@ulisesdiale4004]

@@meginna8354 man you sure? How's that possible? Tell me pls haha

[@francisdec1615]

@@meginna8354 I doubt that very much. Icelandic is very similar to Old English, while Finnish belongs to a completely different language family.

[@ulcbroadcasting]

Fun fact, the second word, tog, translates both to "lest" in Icelandic and to "togvagn" which literally means "carriage that is pulled".

[@russetmantle1]

As a native English speaker, I always find it mind-boggling when people don't even bother to list English in the languages they speak because they assume everyone will just take it as a given! People from Nordic countries do this quite often, I've noticed. Astonishing. Much respect. *tips hat*

[@oskich]

Everyone is kind of expected to know English once they become adults. Personally I hardly even remember learning the language, it just happened as we watched a lot of English speaking media and computer games as kids.

[@kilipaki87oritahiti]

@@oskich Well dhu English is our 2nd language taught in school. We become fluent already then. If not fluent until adulthood you’re quite slow.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

As someone who speaks neither of the languages, but english and german, I'm surprised how much I could understand. Some words are like in english, some are like in german, some have cognates with a slightly different meaning (but related), and a couple are completely different. Also helps seeing which words in english and german have been replaced or went through some vowel or consonant shifts.

[@mohamadmosa8116]

Absolutely fantastic video yet again Norbert 👏!!! I hope to see more of Scandinavian Languages comparison, and maybe getting back to Romance series (which was the best by far to me). Thanks a lot for your content, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance🎉🎉

[@lelinguechepassione4698]

Amazing, very amazing ! This was a hard challenge for me, because I do not know Norwegian, I do not know Danish and I do not know Icelandic, I am just learning Swedish since July of this year. Nevertheless I could guess quite quickly the first word ("lake"), and the fourth word ("Greenland"). For the second word I found two solutions: "train" and "ship", and I found two solutions also for the last word: "whale" and "dolphin". Anyway I am satisfied with my "performance", and now I await a new video like this for another challenge. Thanks for this video and greetings from Novara, Northern Italy.

[@CouchPolyglot]

Jag älskar dessa germanska serier❤Jag lär mig svenska och det är trevligt att se att jag kan förstå en del norska, , lite öländska och lite danska. Undertexterna är till stor hjälp, tack! 😁

[@joniskahavet]

Icelandic = "isländska". "Öländska" är namnet på de svenska dialekter som talas på Öland, den väldigt långsträckta ön utanför sydöstra Sveriges kust. En helt magiskt vacker ö med helt unik natur som mer liknar den vid Medelhavet än övriga Sverige. Annars var det helt korrekt skrivet :)

[@mohamadmosa8116]

Hola Laura, I really enjoyed the videos featuring you in Catalan with other Romance Languages. Maybe you could convince Norbert to continue this amazing series 😅, and feature another Languages of Italy/Spain/France or more of Eastern Romance (Romanian ,Aromanian, ...), I would absolutely love these☺!!!

[@CouchPolyglot]

@@joniskahavet oooh tack för korrigeringen :)

[@CouchPolyglot]

@@mohamadmosa8116 good idea :D

[@raskolnikov9067]

Easy for me as a Swede. You even found a Dane i could understand. Maybe include a Faroese next time?

[@eddy_music_log]

the reason you understood the danish guy was probably because he made an extra effort to speak slower and more clear. When danes do this, it’s not hard for swedes to understand, until you come across words that are exclusively different. Like “Fun” in danish is sjov, and it’s rolig in swedish, just 1 example

[@thebronywiking]

@@eddy_music_log You kan also use Skoj for Fun in swedish, at least on the west coast.

[@sylvassasalladsbestick1342]

@@eddy_music_log It's a matter of exposure too. I've grown up in the South of Sweden, and I understand most Danish just fine. I've noticed that most Danes don't understand the Bornholm dialect as well as I do. What's up with that? 😅

[@eddy_music_log]

@@sylvassasalladsbestick1342 True, exposure to the language is the key, that’s also what i hinted at when i said go to denmark for 1 or 2 weeks. Yeah the bornholm accent sounds kinda like a mix of danish and swedish, if the accent is thick it can hard for a dane to understand. Why? Probably because Bornholm is an isolated island away from the mainland, so their way of speaking has deviated from the more “standard” way of speaking in sweden/denmark

[@omega1231]

@@sylvassasalladsbestick1342 There are very few speakers of proper Bornholmsk dialect, and incredibly few of them speak it if they visit the mainland. My mother's cousin married a Bornholmsk woman whom has lived in Copenhagen for over 40 years and she still speaks proper Bornholmsk, intentionally even she just doesn't care lol and it does take some time to get it, but it's honestly easier to understand for me than proper sønder Jysk - the Dane in the video is not speaking proper sønder Jysk, he's basically avoiding all dialectal words and speaking formal Danish with a sønder Jysk "accent" one easy sign of it is that he never once used the sønderjyske article 'æ' instead of en/et, they also don't put the definite article at the end of words like the rest of Scandinavia (like, 'hvalen' and 'en hval' would both be 'æ hval') the pronoun 'jeg' in sønderjysk is also 'æ' (so 'I have a dog' in sønder jysk would be 'æ har æ hund') I mean there's a tongue twister in sønderjysk that is 'A æ u å æ ø i æ å' which means 'I am out on an/the island in a/the lake'

[@dubious_potat4587]

I feel like the reason Hólmfríður struggled a little bit with the whale question was because in Icelandic, padda as in paddedyr (mammal in many of the other languages) actually means insect. Mammals in Icelandic are called spendýr which is what she was asking about. And so I think she initially thought he was describing some kind of insect.

[@perberger809]

Pattedyr, not padde.

[@k1lkenny]

Well by context I as a swede could get what spendyr (spena=tit, Dyr=animal) meant. Though Padda in Swedish is toad so that's quite interesting perhaps. Per says Pattedyr, which I would think to be dyr=animal patte=breast. Which is a mammal (patte is a slang for breast in Swedish today)

[@northbreeze0198]

In Swedish padda means toad but I got the meaning of it anyway. In Swedish we would say blötdjur I think (wet animals).

[@raimat66]

@@northbreeze0198 No, paTTedyr=bröstdjur, i.e. däggdjur/mammal. Blötdjur är sniglar och molliusker.

[@StaaijH]

Really enjoyed this video!! You should invite a Faroese speaker sometime, I am curious if a Danish or Icelandic speaker would understand them better

[@NorwegianNationalist1]

Get someone from Western Norway, it’s closer to Icelandic and Faroese than this dialect and the dialects of every other Norwegian they bring on here

[@vanefreja86]

Sometimes....depends on the sentence. But in general I find Faroese to be easier (I'm Danish)

[@NellasxElensar]

As a Finn who understands Swedish fluently and speaks it almost fluently, I could understand almost everything here! Only had some trouble understanding Icelandic 😅 The subtitles helped me though! And I got all the words right 😁 These videos are awesome!

[@callmekells802]

Ah, I just love these beautiful languages. Currently learning Swedish. Hopefully one day will be fluent is Norwegian as well 🤞🏻💡🤲🏼

[@mirekbiek534]

I am Polish and I speak English and Norwegian. I understood Swedish and Danish (I had to focus a little bit more) and I was struggling with Icelandic, but I understood the core meaning.

[@mirekbiek534]

@@brazzo975 Of course I understand. It is your right not to like Poland.

[@lollol-pw6gv]

@@brazzo975 i dont like your being

[@apoptose1558]

​@@mirekbiek534 Based af

[@mirekbiek534]

@@helena_5456 Hi Helena. For Polish people Norwegian is very simple. There is no declension, no verb conjugation. The level of difficulty is the same as English. There are two factors which make Norwegian difficult. The first one is: there are actually two varieties of the language: bokmål and nynorsk. And the other one: there are the dialectal differences. But anyway Norwegian is one of the easiest languages in the World.

[@MuseFanPL]

@@helena_5456 If one knows English at a decent level, and most Poles do, then Norwegian is quite simple. I would say it's one of the easiest languages to learn. But I am afraid it doesn't work the opposite way, so learning Polish will be quite difficult for Norwegian speakers. But nevertheless, good luck/lykke til/powodzenia with your Polish :)

[@Thematic2177]

I don't speak any Nordic languages but I still like this content ^^

[@raymondwalters2723]

Native Afrikaans speaker here, tried to participate for the lols. I got: 1. Coast/shore 2. Boat 3. - (was too abstract for me obviously XD) 4. Greenland (probably due to the number of loanwords used, could piece this one together) 5. Some fish So obviously there are some major differences here, just the odd cognate here and there but not enough for decent understanding.

[@Borrelaas]

the first word makes sense that you got wrong, since he threw everyone off by saying it could be fresh water or salt water. Hearing the word salt would make anyone remove lake from the equation ^^

[@Ellary_Rosewood]

Yay! I got four right! I'm feeling very proud of myself. I've been using these videos to help me practice my Swedish, without the help of English subtitles. It makes me realize that I know a lot more than I give myself credit for. Hope to see more of these Nordic language videos! 🥰

[@marlena.4605]

Nie znam żadnego z tych języków ale brzmią bardzo ciekawie. Zupełnie inaczej niż języki słowiańskie. Dzięki temu, że oglądam twoje filmy na bieżąco zaczęłam interesować się innymi językami. Nigdy nie jest za późno na naukę. Fajnie, że łączysz ludzi z różnych krajów.

[@КнязьЗаза]

Вот и я говорю, что ничего не понятно(((

[@Mediaflashmob]

Даа, польский язык намного понятнее!

[@ivanmaslov7540]

Pol’skij jazyk ochevidno gorazdo bolee ponjatny, odnako zhe mne kazhetsja interesnym tot fact, chto v Skandinavskich jazykach frazy tipa “på svenska”, “på engelska” napisany pochti tak zhe kak i v russkom

[@Mediaflashmob]

@@ivanmaslov7540 Indo-European roots!

[@KasiaB]

@@ivanmaslov7540 То же самое и на польском, например: po norwesku, по-норвежски, på norsk, på norska :)

[@lalilulelo2990]

These are great fun to watch. Hope you will do one with Irish/Welsh/Scottish/English.

[@alyonadarskaja]

So cool! I will show it to my Norwegian as a foreign language students.

[@user2kffs]

Iceland, the lost brother that ended up on a boat and drifted away to a remote island.

[@MarkDDG]

As a Dutch person I was very surprised by how well I could understand. Especially when reading the subtitles

[@ole7146]

All of the Scandinavian languages was influenced by Low German during the middelages so than may explaine it, besides the fact that we share original share the same language roots.

[@SiboWoW]

Interesting: I tried to learn each of these languages once in my life, in different periods of time. Swedish tones made me freak out; Icelandic morphology and phonology are crazy AF, so I gave up immediatly; Danish is...well, it's full of useless letters, so I gave up. The only one I was very close to learn is Norwegian. I'm italian, but I can speak both German and English, so Norwegian to me is like the perfect combination of both: it has the simple morphology of English, keeping the pure germanic root in the vocabulary. I eventually gave up even with Norwegian, but I kept some information in my mind such that I can understand from 40% to 75% of a norwegian text. I may try again in the future when I'll have an income good ennough to afford a private teacher. Tusen takk for the video :)

[@marikaserasini2315]

Hi, I'm italian too and I'm fascinated that you tried to learn, I guess by yourself?, some nordic languages! As I'm a starter with German idiom, I can hear phonetic similarities with the others, but written differently. That's awesome, I woukd like, once learned a good level of German, also try to learn some Dutch 😄 Greetings from Ligury!👋👋👋

[@BurnBird1]

Well... Norwegian has the exact same tones (called pitch accent) as Swedish, so I don't quite understand what made you freak out.

[@FoakHome]

Feel free to try Norwegian again! Once you get the hang of it, the rest is a breeze! I'm actually trying to learn Latin on my own, and that is quite the adventure!

[@lmatt88]

Norwegian grammar is easier than Swedish one but it has so many dialects that it gets confusing. Swedish is more homogeneous which ends up helping in the long run.

[@herrbonk3635]

Regarding tones, I know a few italians that speak swedish largely with their native prosody or melody. It works fine, although they sound more italian than swedish of course. The context usually makes up for the lost information. And if it doesn't, you could always ask.

[@luminoustarisma]

Interesting video, I knew I'd understand most Norwegian as I grew up in south west Sweden and we had a lot of Norwegian visitors (and even some access to NRK) in the areas i've lived in. I am happy I was able to understand Danish as well as I did, as I started working in a Scandinavian speaking market, and I am daily communicating with Norwegians and Danes. I was pleasantly surprised how well I understood Icelandic, normally I struggle a lot, but perhaps she spoke slower or more clearly than Icelandic I have heard in the past. I guessed 4 of 5, with mistaking the first for fjord, since I did not consider insjö (and it sounded like lake was out of the question).

[@beorlingo]

I think he made the "insjö" somewhat overexplained. And when he falsely (I'd say) claimed that sometimes they put dams in them it even ruled out "insjö". They only put dams in lakes that are part of rivers and are hence per se actually rivers.

[@Nekotaku_TV]

Haha, you just need to be a Swede to understand most of Norwegian, don't need any experience with it.

[@annapg.4626]

She was speaking slowly

[@AndreaAvila78]

Very interesting thank you! All these languages sound so beautiful !!!

[@Kire1120]

I am a native English speaker and have learned some Swedish and it is much easier to understand the other languages than I expected. I knew that Norwegian would be easy but I am surprised that at least with subtitles even the icelandic was more comprehensible than I expected.

[@cmillivol98]

I’m pretty much in the same exact boat there

[@Maggies87]

Same here.

[@beorlingo]

To me as a Swede Icelandic goes from almost completely non understandable to mostly understandable. "Mostly" meaning only just over 50% though. But understanding 50% makes it very guessable the general meaning of what she is saying.

[@meadish]

@@beorlingo Yes, the experience of listening to Icelandic is a bit like hearing a mass of words, and then suddenly a phrase or sentence pops out and makes 100% sense.

[@IQzminus2]

As a native Swedish speaker. The difference between the Nordic languages are pretty small, mostly feels like just pronunciation (except Icelandic, it’s actually quite different). Swedish is nasal with a bit melody, Norwegian is more nasal with loads of melody, while Danish is extremely guttural with next to no melody. As a native Swedish speaker Norwegian sounds about as different to me as like a Irish accent and a Californian accent is to each other. Not a exact comparison, but pretty close. Different pronunciation of some letters, different melody, a few different words and ways of using words. But you should be able to speak with each other really easily without much problem. Maybe one word needs clarification once in a while. But if you didn’t get the Danish. Eh don’t worry about the Danish. It’s hard. The words and spelling in Norwegian and Danish is 99.9% the same. The only difference is really pronunciation. Norwegian is crystal clear. Danish is a struggle. But not that the words are hard, but in the same way as trying to understand someone who speaks with their mouth full, it’s just hard to differentiate one sound from the other.

[@ridinwithjake]

I’m a Pole 🇵🇱 living in the U.S. 🇺🇸and I find this fascinating. I’m listening and reading with almost zero understanding of either language but it’s so captivating. Oh did I mention I’m on my 2nd glass of wine? 🍷😎 oh yes and I spent a week in Iceland. 🇮🇸 amazing place!

[@GeekFurious]

As an Icelander, I feel like I can understand the Swedes more but in reality the Danes are saying words I should actually understand (their pronunciation is just wild).

[@Theholyone999]

Einmitt! 😂😂

[@northbreeze0198]

Haha yeah, I mean it's only logical since Iceland was a part of Denmark for half a millennium. Still they chose to pronounce words so that no one can hardly understand. Written it is almost exactly like Norwegian, yet I get 99% of spoken Norwegian. Danish? Not even close.

[@ohrusty]

This was so interesting to watch! I had it a bit easy being able to read what you all were saying, but just hearing it, especially via voice/video is a whole other thing. I wouldn´t been able to understand icelandic at all if I didn't have the text to guide me.

[@jonathanemslander6896]

Thanks!

[@jonathanemslander6896]

Thank you for all the Germanic content, it always makes my day!

[@Ecolinguist]

Thank you for supporting the channel! :D

[@Mattmooncfb]

I appreciate you showing Icelandic more often!

[@xlmlq]

Hi Ecolinguist. I would love to see one of these videos with speakers of different Celtic languages.

[@typhoon2minerva]

Yes thats what im also anticipating from Ire, Alba, Mannin, Cymraeg, Kernewek and Briton.

[@xlmlq]

@@typhoon2minerva Yes, that would be amazing.

[@typhoon2minerva]

And of course it would be interesting to hear the comparison of Romani Gypsy language vs Rahjastani Language of India

[@mr.wagenaar]

As a Dutch person, moved to Sweden half year ago, it's very cool to see and understand what is said in the conversation (little bit thanks to the subtitles)

[@hvasomhelst]

I started learning Norwegian 4 years ago and from what I taught myself with using duolingo and some other sources I understood almost all the Norwegian which was so pleasing, I also understand Swedish quite well due to the similarities. I think Jacob was speaking very clearly and even though I normally have hard time understanding Danish this time it wasn’t that bad. When it comes to Icelandic I can understand 60-80% by looking at the written form and voice at the same time but just with voice it downs to 30-40%. Tusen takk for videoen 👍🏽

[@Miamia_01]

Duolingo er 👍🏼, jeg lærer spansk der ☺️

[@Borrelaas]

The funny thing is that he actually spoke with a few grammatical errors which made me ponder if norwegian was his 2nd language, but i think he was just nervous. And it was kinda funny how he threw everyone off the track on the first question by saying it could be either freshwater or saltwater

[@northbreeze0198]

@@Borrelaas men hur kan en insjö vara saltvatten?

[@animabianca230]

That was so much fun! Thanks for the video and a big "thumbs up"! My native language is German and I'm currently learning Norwegian and Swedish, so I could understand Vebjørn and Emma best 🙂! It was a little difficult for me to understand Jacob because the pronunciation in Danish is pretty different from Swedish and Norwegian. While I was reading the transcript in Danish, I pronounced the words Norwegian in my mind. "Old habits die hard" ;-) ! I could only understand a little of what Hólmfríður said. It would be interesting to learn how much Old High German and Icelandic resemble each other - in my opinion, they may still be closer than Modern Standard German and Icelandic. (Fun fact off topic: when I visited Iceland in 2004, our tour guide in Ákureyri was also named "Hólmfríður" and she told us if we didn't understand her name or couldn't pronounce it, we should call "Ho-Ho-Ho!" - then she'd know we were calling her ;-) !) My guesses for the words were: 1st: a river 2nd: a plane 3rd: sadness 4th: Greenland 5th: a whale So I got 3 out of the 5 correct. The other 2 were not too far off ;-) ! Happy New Year to everyone!

[@TheOddOne2]

Poor Hólmfríður, the others have difficult to understand her. Still her language is closest to Old Norse. Thanks to all of you!

[@FoakHome]

We all talked for a bit after what you see here, which sadly wasn't included in the video. At that point we started to get the hang of Icelandic more, fortunately. But yeah, during this she was the hardest to understand unfortunately. I'm planning on learning Icelandic eventually however! (:

[@TheOddOne2]

@@FoakHome Good on ya Vebjørn, yeah I can also imagine the stressful situation makes it even harder. But it's a really intriguing language! :)

[@stoutjudas9868]

Yea i felt bad for her. Icelandic is beautiful though. (Swedish speaker)

[@piktasvaikasvid]

thank you for this video! it was v fun to watch!

[@elisabethgustavsson4517]

It would be very interesting with a comparison between Norwegian and Icelandic and another one with a comparison between Icelandic and the Swedish dialect in Dalecarlia (that is very similar to Icelandic).

[@joannabjorkell7100]

I'm a finnosweed I could understand Swedish and Norwegian perfectly and I could understand the writing in danish pretty well. The hardest for me was Icelandic, but I could pick upp the general meaning. My dialect is pretty old so that could be the reason. Great video!

[@pheluma2394]

I (Norwegian) went to school in Sweden, where I understood the Swedish teacher from close to the border very well. He had a similar intonation to me, but my classmate from Stavanger was often more difficult to understand. Swedes had to ask him to repeat himself much more often than with us South-Easteners, naturally. Maybe for an Icelandic person it would be easier, as they have a closer connection linguistically.

[@Mnnvint]

Stavanger and further south along the coast are odd, they have vowels and soft consonant sounds similar to Danes, but they can have VERY west Norwegian vocabulary and grammar. Kaizers Orchestra lyrics are instructive!

[@FrankNestel]

As a German having learned a bit of Icelandic, this was a tough but enjoyable one. While not understand any Norwegian, I kind of would have guessed all words. En takk, Hólmfriður, ég skíl þig best!

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

If it were the Icelandic person explaining a word the Scandinavians would be almost completely lost. If the Norwegian was a nynorsk user they might have the most comprehension. Bokmål is really a form of Danish, but nynorsk is based off dialects in Norway that actually are more closely related to Icelandic

[@northbreeze0198]

Nej inte nynorsk! Sure en d l ord är mer likt svenska men bokmål fungerar helt ok. Alla förstår det redan så finns ingen anledning att gå bananas med nynorsk.

[@Hin_Håle]

I enjoy these a lot. I'm swedish and can understand norwegian and danish perfectly well. I'm trying to work on my understanding of icelandic but obviously, that's a bit trickier. I think you all did a great job!

[@Utgardaloki76]

Sicket namn :) Hin/den hårde (litet äldre svenska) Hinn harði (isländska) Hinn harði (vikingasvenska)

[@northbreeze0198]

@@Utgardaloki76 hin håle är väl annars mest ett smeknamn för djävulen?

[@Utgardaloki76]

@@northbreeze0198 Det stämmer och betyder egentiligen "den hårde".

[@kl1541]

English used to have that silent H infront of words and in older version of Swedish literature we can also see words like Vilken and Vilket were spelled Hvilken and Hvilket

[@Zapp4rn]

as a swede, i wish that we could go back to spelling things with an "h" in the front, so we're closer to danish, bokmål, nynorsk and icelandic

[@HweolRidda]

Some English accents have the "silent" h. I pronounce "what whale?" "hwat hwale" with a very light h. The mystery to me is how/why "hw" in old English spelling (hwaet hwael) was reversed to "wh".

[@meadish]

@@HweolRidda It is usually safe to blame the French. ;-))

[@TasnuArakun]

​@@HweolRidda Blame the Greeks and Romans. Greek had these three aspirated letters , and . The Romans decided to spell Greek loan words with these letters using , and . (There was also which was transcribed .) Later, the sounds for the Greek letters changed into [θ], [f] and [x]. English still spells words like "telephone" and "elephant" with where many other languages use an . Other languages started using as a way to mark either fricative or aspirated consonants. In English, some [k] and [sk] became [tʃ] and [ʃ] before or after front vowels. Their spelling was changed to and . English also replaced the letters and , which did not exist on German printing presses, with and . The reason why was changed to was simply to keep it consistent with the others (even though it comes from an older [kʷ]).

[@andreafalconiero9089]

@@HweolRidda Long ago I read that this change in spelling was introduced by the Normans, so if that's correct, you should actually blame the Danes! -- well... _some_ of them, anyway. ;-)

[@ukhtiiiii]

hes so pretty

[@meeshka16]

Fascinating. Only Germanic language I speak is English, and trying to play along, listening and reading, I got: 1. Lake (yes!) 2. Ferry (at first I also thought train, but something threw me off) 3. Had no clue… 4. Newfoundland! Ha! I understood that it’s some northern land associated with Vikings, that’s geographically in North America but culturally European, so I thought it was Leif Ericsson’s fabled settlement, but didn’t remember it’s name and just chose the modern place. I did pick up on some Danish politics talk so can’t believe Greenland didn’t click, doh! 5. I knew it was some animal but not much beyond that…

[@northbreeze0198]

Vinland is the name Leif Eriksson named Newfoundland since he for some reason found that they grew grapes there (which I still have a hard time to believe). Grape=Vin.

[@ame7165]

I have absolutely zero exposure to any of those languages, but just from being a native English speaker, was able to figure a few of them out. It's strangely one of those situations where it's backwards from normal. Reading the text made it more difficult, but if I closed my eyes and listened carefully, I could make out words that sounded very similar to the English equivalent. How cool

[@andreafalconiero9089]

That's exactly what I noticed with the Dutch videos on the Ecolinguist channel. Due to differences in orthography between English and Dutch, I found the written forms more of a hindrance than a help in understanding. A lot of the Dutch was comprehensible just by listening carefully. Unfortunately, I can't really say I had the same experience when listening to these North Germanic languages. Yes, I could pick out some words, but not enough for comprehension.

[@allesindwillkommen]

Some German dialects in the German-speaking countries are a lot more different than Danish-Swedish-Norwegian but are still considered "one" German language. 😆

[@leftaroundabout]

Likewise for Norway. Oslo-Bokmål is often more similar to Swedish and Danish than to Norwegian dialects from the west or north of the country.

[@acrojen03]

Please, same could be said about some of the, sorry not sorry (you know it's true), VERY weird Norwegian Dialects... XD And I also do know Sweden and Denmark have dialects that everyone agree are hard to understand and really just something of their own. XD

[@XortiXz]

same as elfdalian is considered a swedish dialect but it sounds more like icelandic.

[@mattybrunolucaszeneresalas9072]

No?

[@stefansoder6903]

Very true. The definition of what is a language and what is a dialect is arbitrary from a linguistic point of view (well not totally, but for the spoken language it is almost). Mandarin is probably as diverse as all the Germanic languages.

[@callmekells802]

What a neat video concept!!

[@davida3970]

As an English speaker in Scotland, I was able to understand most of what was being said with a mix of spoken and written forms. I found the Norwegian and Swedish the easiest and even got the words correct!

[@jebbo-c1l]

for some reason this video gave me so much asmr lol much love

[@yasho8927]

Beautiful Nordic languages full consonants! As they speak I can hear the crunchy sounds of steps in the snow and cheerful crispy sound of breaking icicles! Greetings from a south European ear!

[@adameczek4541]

As a person who has been learning Norwegian in the spare time (I managed to get to A2 level by using Duolingo and some other resources) and has never spent more than couple of days in those countries I understood pretty much everything what Vebjorn was saying. When it comes to Danish and Swedish it is really difficult to understand words by ear but when it is written it's sort of understandable. To me, it's easier to understand written Danish than Swedish but spoken Swedish is easier than spoken Danish. Icelandic - I had no clue what Hólmfríður was trying to say.

[@FoakHome]

Good job on the Norwegian learning then! (:

[@Miamia_01]

This is how it is for many Norwegians too. Written Danish is very similar and easy to understand but spoken is not always so easy unless they slow down, and for Swedish it’s pretty easy to understand most of it, also because we have been exposed to Swedish in television from a young age. I actually thought Icelandic was much easier than I initially had thought because many of the words sounded similar with a twist so in the context you could guess what she was saying. I am Norwegian though. And she may have spoken very clear to be understood.

[@stevenschilizzi4104]

Så fint! Great video, utmärkt! Jag har lärat mig en lite svensk og så kan jag förstå en lite norsk, men dansk, o nej! Íslenska tunga… ég skil litill - málfraeði er mjög erfriður, men hún hljómar svo fallegur og þokkafullur! Takk, tack og þökk.

[@fabiolimadasilva3398]

The familly meeting I always waited. Brazilian here. Of course the only words I could understand were Latin origin. And some ones related to English.

[@emzz2263]

God damn Ive never felt this smart understanding all of them. Let me have my moment.

[@TomWaldgeist]

Interessting. The german Translation of "klar" -> "fertig" can also mean "ready" and "exhausted" like in norwegian but its not a regional difference it can mean Both depending on the context.

[@oskich]

Similar in Swedish, where "klar" means both "clear" like a window glass and "ready". "Färdig" means "ready" but can also mean "exhausted" -> "Jag är helt färdig!" = "I'm totally exhausted!".

[@BobWitlox]

In Dutch klaar means ready or done. It also has the meaning of clear but only in some phrases, such as klare taal (clear language / speech).

[@Nekotaku_TV]

@@oskich Färdig is done, not ready. Unless you can use ready as done.

[@darkknight8139]

An also very common meaning of klar in German is clear. The well known phrase "alles klar" is a difficult one to translate, it can mean "everything is clear" (literal) and also something like "everything settled".

[@Kristian-li7uk]

In my dialect (norwegian) it's also about the context. "Blir du med og går en tur?" (Are you ready for a stroll?) Nei, jeg er så klar (No, I'm so exhausted). Kommer du snart? (Are you coming soon?) Ja, jeg er klar. (Yes, I'm ready.)

[@acirumvonheiligen6979]

I'm brazilian but I studied German for 1,5 years and since Norwegian is a germanic language, I could understand only a couple words in this language. In Norwegian he said "ord" which means word and for some reason I thought it was very similar to "wort" which means "word" in German. The swedish woman said "tänkte" which for me sounded like "denken" in German, which means "to think". Well, obviously, since my native language is Portuguese, I didn't understand anything of what they said. But I had no idea that the Icelandic language sounded so beautiful! For me it's the most beautiful language right now.

[@Ferreira0504]

Reconheci a palavra bilhete (em Norueguês, billett)

[@RegebroRepairs]

My guess: Yes, yes, and if they took the obligatory Danish lessons seriously, also yes. Conclusion: Yup.

[@lunaslurkingtales]

Jag älskade detta! Fin video - mvh Finlandssvensk 🇫🇮🇸🇪

[@JossgorkOnemanBand]

Listen to this. I live in Ostrobothina, Finland and we speak only Swedish here but we are speaking in very unique and complicated dialects. We can't for example go to Sweden and speak in out native dialect, they could not understand us! What strike me the most is what we have in common with the Icelanders! for us us water is "vattn" like in Iceland. Sorg = "leidur". We say "leidu" and in proper Swedish they say ledsen. I have suspected this and many others aswell that we in Ostrobothnia are speaking an older from of Scandinavian languages. Norwegians from the north are very easy to understand.

[@northbreeze0198]

Wow, det hade jag ingen aning om. Ja det stämmer nog som du säger. Svenskan i Sverige har ju tagit in extrema mängder låneord genom åren, framförallt från tyskan men pågår än idag. Brukar läsa hufvudstadsbladet då och då och de har oftast en bättre svenska än svenska tidningar. Men Leidu har jag aldrig varken hört eller sett tidigare.

[@JossgorkOnemanBand]

@@NoumenonAndPhenomenon ” Ny har jag leidu” = I have enough. , I’m up to my neck in this in a negative tone.