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Southern Swedish, or Scanian as its actually called, is indeed closely related to Danish and is by some people considered as Danish and by some people considered as a language of its own, however it is officially a dialect of Swedish, which is the language they learn in school, or should I say we, since I live in Southern Sweden. It is one of the major dialects in Sweden since 13% of this country speaks it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanian_dialect
Fun fact: the dialect spoken on the Danish-owned island Bornholm (located off the coast of Southern Sweden) is viritually the same as that spoken in Southern Sweden, but the dialect on Bornholm is officially considered as Danish, because its a part of Denmark. In other words they use the same argument as Sweden does to say that Scanian is Swedish. There is an old saying that "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy", and that is very true in this case.
I recently watched the original (Swedish) version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." To me it sounded like tapes/records being played backwards. I hope you don't find that offensive!
(In the 1980's there was a big thing among American fundamentalist Christians claiming that rock and roll music had hidden, Satanic messages and if you played the music backwards you could hear these messages.)
I recently watched the original (Swedish) version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." To me it sounded like tapes/records being played backwards. I hope you don't find that offensive!
(In the 1980's there was a big thing among American fundamentalist Christians claiming that rock and roll music had hidden, Satanic messages and if you played the music backwards you could hear these messages.)
No offense, I have also heard others saying that Swedish sounds like English but with different words, or that it sounds like English backwards.
In Orkney and Shetland they actually spoke a North Germanic language for not so long ago called Norn, which went extinct in the 1800's. Norn was fully intelligible with Faroese and possibly Icelandic, which is alot different from Norwegian so I dont think they could communicate with Norwegians, but they could most likely communicate with Faroe islanders and Icelanders. For those who dont know, the Faroe Islands is that archipelago between Shetland and Iceland, it is an autonomous and self-ruling territory of Denmark but they speak Faroese which is a language of its own, and its unlike Denmark not a part of the EU, it also has its own Prime Minister. Norn language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Of course Finnish has been influenced by Swedish since Finland was a part of Sweden for hundreds of years, but we cannot commincate with eachothers if we use our own languages, the similarities are very small. Finnish has also been equally influenced with Russian, because it was part of Russia for over 100 years and borders populated areas of north-western Russia.
How so?????
How the language that has nothing, nothing in common with another one can be influenced by it???
If anything else, I've heard that Old Russian ( like REALLY old,) had something in common with Swedish because of the prominent presence of Norse who basically established first Russian state, but Russian language influencing Finnish????
How so?????
How the language that has nothing, nothing in common with another one can be influenced by it???
If anything else, I've heard that Old Russian ( like REALLY old,) had something in common with Swedish because of the prominent presence of Norse who basically established first Russian state, but Russian language influencing Finnish????
I guess you are referring to the Rus' people, they were Swedish vikings who settled in Russia. If I'm correct, the Rus' people gave the name for Russia.
And yes, there is plenty of both Swedish and Russian loanwords in Finnish, the Helsinki accent in particular, but to suggest that Finnish is a Germanic or Slavic language is very, very misleading, they have completely different ancestors. The influences are not significant, and I think it's amazing that Finland has been able to keep their own unique language for so long without being a country (Finland declared indpendence for the first time ever in 1917), with only very minor influences from its Germanic and Slavic neighbors.
If you want to hear something that sounds even more similar to English, try Frisian, which is officially the closest related language to English (unless Scots counts as a language)
Last edited by Helsingborgaren; 10-15-2013 at 08:58 PM..
I guess you are referring to the Rus' people, they were Swedish vikings who settled in Russia. If I'm correct, the Rus' people gave the name for Russia.
Yes, starting from the first prince of Kiev, who was of Norse origin ( what language did he speak and how he and his men were communicating with the rest of population, good question ) but I am looking up some texts now and it does look like certain basic words pertaining to the family do carry a number of meanings that are similar both for Swedish and Russian.
Quote:
And yes, there is plenty of both Swedish and Russian loanwords in Finnish, the Helsinki accent in particular, but to suggest that Finnish is a Germanic or Slavic language is very, very misleading, they have completely different ancestors. The influences are not significant, and I think it's amazing that Finland has been able to keep their own unique language for so long without being a country (Finland declared indpendence for the first time ever in 1919), with only very minor influences from its Germanic and Slavic neighbors.
God no, Finnish language is so strangely unique and so distinguishably different comparably to both Swedish and Russian languages, that I can't see how it can be EVER changed.
I like the sound of German, though I think it sounds harsh. To me, Swedish seems to sound somewhat like German but without the harshness. I like it. Actually, there are very few foreign languages that that I dislike the sound of. And I live in Houston, Texas, a city that is VERY multicultural, so sometimes I think I have heard just about all of them.
I took some basic Swedish classes a year ago. Personally, I don't think that it sounds anything like German. Most letters get pronounced differently. Finland Swedish sounds the best in my opinion. It's not as soft as the standard one and pronunciation is a bit more similar to German, so it's a easier for my to understand and speak
I think it sounds like the most beautiful language in the world, specially the northern dialects.
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I hope you don't find that offensive!
had something in common with Swedish because of the prominent presence of Norse who basically established first Russian state, but Russian language influencing Finnish???? 
