Nordic Languages?

[Just Another Jen]

My now 9th grade daughter wants to spend her future gap year traveling in Europe. She wants to go to Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and possibly Iceland. I told her she should probably pick one of those as her foreign language. Which language would have the most overlap amongst the others? (besides english :) )

 

 

[Penguin]

Written Danish and written Norwegian are so close that if you can read one, you can easily read the other. This does not apply to pronunciation.

 

 

If she chooses Danish, I will gleefully inundate you with ideas for resources :)

[Renaissance Mom]

Finnish has very complex grammar and is not at all related to other Scandinavian or Germanic languages.  It is not for the faint of heart!  My grandmother was a native speaker.  She and her relatives used to speak it on the party line telephone line so that none of the neighbors on the same party line could listen in and understand what they were saying! 

[Just Another Jen]

Written Danish and written Norwegian are so close that if you can read one, you can easily read the other. This does not apply to pronunciation.

 

 

If she chooses Danish, I will gleefully inundate you with ideas for resources :)

 

 

 

Well, right now she is leaning towards Danish. So please begin the indoctrination.  :)

[Penguin]

I will come back later and begin the inundation :)

 

Like previous poster mentioned, Finnish is unrelated to the other Scandinavian languages.  It is actually closer to Hungarian.

 

 

Here is my completely anecdotal assessment - based, ahem,  on the boxes of cereals and other foodstuffs sitting in my kitchen.  All of the information is written in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish.  Some items also include Finnish.  I read Danish and can therefore easily read the Norwegian.  I can kinda sorta make out the Swedish.  The Finnish is incomprehensible to me.

 

For fun, I just now looked at a sample of Icelandic.  I can only make out a  few words. 

 

edited for accuracy

[FaithManor]

Danish. Icelanders speak Icelandic as their primary language but are educated throughout most of their school years in English and Danish which makes them tri-lingual, and many are quad lingual having chosen to study German as well due to trade and business relationships with Germany. Iceland is relatively new to independence as modern countries go, so it's ties to Denmark are still very strong. She'll be able to converse in two countries, and Swedes tend to be fairly well versed in Danish as well so it's entirely possible that the Norwegians and Fins are too. Denmark controls a vast amount of the waterways of Northern Europe so business persons from the other Scandinavian countries may be able to understand and converse in Danish.

 

Our son is studying Icelandic. It is not an easy language to find study resources for here in the states.

 

 

[Penguin]

OK, here you go!

 

Before we moved to Denmark, I studied with the Beginner's Danish course.

 

Danish courses online:

 

Dansk her og nu is a nice free online course.  The English button doesn't seem to work at the moment, but I think that is just a temporary glitch.

 

Another good (and free) online course is Netdansk.

 

Lexin is free.  It is just vocab, but there is a ton of it.

 

Copenhagencast:  The podcasts are free but you have to buy the pdfs. 

 

Danish Verb Study:  Subscription site with a free trial.

 

Speak Danish is not free, but it looks pretty good. I have not used it.

 

 

Good stuff online:

 

Nyheder pÃ¥ dansk:  Danish news in Danish specifically designed for foreign language learners.

 

Ligetil:  Danish news that is written at a lower reading level than standard newspapers.  You can click on "Læs op" and the article will be read aloud to you.

 

DMI Vejr:  This is the official weather website.  I love this site!  You can read the weather and then click on Læs op and have it read to you.  But the best part is to then watch the daily WebTV portion.  The meteorologist usually uses many of the same words that are in the text, so it is easier to comprehend than a random TV clip.

 

Grammars and Dictionaries:

 

Online Grammar book

 

Online Grammar book.

 

I have yet to find a Danish / English dictionary that gives the pronunciation of the Danish words.  They all seem to be written for Danes learning English.  If you find one, let me know :)  BUT...if you can use the phonetic alphabet you can use Den Danske Ordbog. 

 

 

Once you can listen to Danish without intense frustration, listen to the Grammatik for Dummies videos.  They are quite entertaining :)

 

Min første røde ordbog.  I LOVE this book. Each entry has a sample sentence.

 

Print books:  I can recommend two, but I will have to go dig them out...

 

Textbooks and workbooks:

 

 

We use the textbook series that is used in the adult Danish courses. for  Book One is  PÃ¥ Vej til dansk. When I went to Danish Language School, this is the series that my instructor used. 

 

We use the Alfabetas grammatik workbooks.

 

Both series have support material available on the publisher's website.

Note that these series are completely in Danish - there is no English.

 

I don't know if you can find the textbooks / workbooks / Min første røde ordbog in the USA, or if it is only available from Denmark.  I gave you the links to Saxo, just in case you would want to go that route. 

 

 

Hope this helps your research :)

[stephinsocal]

Just to be contrary here, Scans tend to speak excellent English, so I might think about focusing on another language entirely--one more widely spoken in the world, such as Spanish or French--unless your dc's interest goes beyond a single gap year. 

[dirty ethel rackham]

Total thread hijack (thanks for bringing this up Rivendell.)  My son wants to learn Norwegian.  He was accepted to St. Olaf but it really is too far away and too expensive.  Any resources for learning Norwegian?  We have distant relatives in Norway that I would love to visit one day.

[Just Another Jen]

Just to be contrary here, Scans tend to speak excellent English, so I might think about focusing on another language entirely--one more widely spoken in the world, such as Spanish or French--unless your dc's interest goes beyond a single gap year. 

 

 

Good point. Since we are just slogging through requirements this year it might make more sense to pick a language with more resources. 

[Lizzie in Ma]

Many Danes I know speak excellent English but are also fluent in German if that helps.

[Amy in KS]

I was a college exchange student in Helsinki, Finland. As stated above, Finnish is crazy challenging. It's actually bilingual, and everything is printed in both Swedish and Finnish. To get into University, students must be fluent in a third language, and it's almost always English. Over 90% speak English fluently. The same is true of Sweden and Norway, and only slightly less in Denmark (I travelled to all of them). Swedish and Danish are similar to German, which would be useful. It's a common business language.

However, I would highly recommend Spanish. I say this as someone who graduated top of her class with a Russian degree, who also studied French, German, Finnish, and Swedish. Even though I thought Spanish was too mainstream in high school and college, it would have been the most useful in my adult life...