As a "language person" who really loves and speaks several, it is so fascinating to follow your journey. I noticed an error in the Germanic language map. Swedish and Danish are East Scandinavian languages. Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese are West Scandinavian languages. Just have a look at a map. I love your channel Brandon! Your views on how it is living here in Sweden.

I would say most swedes think that a conversation with a norweigan is easier than with a dane, except for the swedes living in Skåne. They are more used to listening to danish. I, myself, as living in the middle of Sweden, prefer to speak english when I visit Denmark. While in Norway I have no problems speaking swedish and understanding the norweigan language.

Interesting input on the scandinavian languages. And a nice colourful background to the video. 👍

I am from Stockholm and I have contact with many people in the academic world from a multitude of countries where English is the lingua franca. In Denmark I use to speak Swedish, switching to English if we don't understand each other. You should try to read Dutch! Spoken Dutch is much harder. The more language you learn, the easier to learn or understand even more. A technical text from a field you are familiar to, is of course much easier to read in any language than a novel or a newspaper.

For me as a native Swedish speaker, it is a matter of "getting one's ear used to" Norwegian and Danish. I have worked with Norwegians, so Norwegian is easier for me to understand than Danish. Lately I have begun watching videos in Danish here and it does help me understand Danish better, albeit very slowly. Reading Danish or Norwegian works though.

Really admire your interest in learning another language Brandon, guess you really have to in your line of work. I have a hard enough time getting people to understand my English. Hope your doing well over there.

My experience with norwegians or danes living in sweden or vice versa is that they'll eventually adapt their speech to be more easily understood, kind of like how a scotsman living in america might stop using words that americans have never heard before, or might pronounce things more americanly if someone is having a hard time hearing what they're saying.

After 20 plus years in Sweden, and a fluency in Swedish, I can't understand spoken Danish. Norwegian generally is another matter. I live on the west side of Sweden and perhaps that makes a difference. I can probably, with a bit of effort, understand 75% of the average Norwegian. Which is often enough when communicating.

Swede here. I worked with danes for a couple of months and I found it impossible to understand them. They really insisted on speaking Danish but we constantly had to switch to English instead. I could probably understand close to 99% of written Danish, but listening is

I'm from Stockholm and I don't understand Danish even a little bit. I really don't. But many swedes do, especially if they visit Denmark regularly. Furthermore, all danish people understand swedish perfectly well, so it can be really awkward to explain to them that I didn't get what they just said, over and over again. They can take it as some kind of rude deliberate unhelpfulness. It gets awkward. If I go to Denmark I'll just speak English and pretend I'm not from Sweden. I can read it just fine though, it's the spoken language that gives me trouble. Your collegue is probably using a kind of pidgeon swedish-danish where she avoids some danish expressions (their counting system is particularly challenging) and just speaks more slowly and clearly than she would when spaking to danes. When danes do this, even I understand, well mostly.

Adapted Danish is normal , as a Swede from the region I do understand but people from the middle of Sweden struggles

I can't watch danish tv shows without subtitles, but I'm from northern sweden and we don't hear danish very often. I actually worked with a dane but he had been living here for a few years and spoke swedish, but still a bit hard to understand some times. Norwegian on the other hand is easier, and I love that language.

There's a wonderful channel here on youtube called NativLang that has made a video about the asymmetric mutual intelligibility of the three Scandinavian languages -- highly recommended. Also their video on the weird Danish phonology is quite entertaining! As a Norwegian, I have noticed that many younger Swedes -- not sure where the cut-off point is, but maybe people born after 1993 -- steadfastly refuse to speak their own language with other Scandinavians. We Norwegians think this is slightly bizarre. So there is definitely a cultural shift happening, and not a very positive one IMHO. Among Swedes older than that cut-off point, a large proportion actually spent time living here in Norway in their twenties because of the high wages and availibility of jobs in the service sector, especially bars and restaurants. They might have struggled a bit with the language in the first week, but after that it's no problem at all, and of course this familiarity is something they take with them for the rest of their lives after they move back to Sweden. But after the slight economic downturn around 2014, this temporary migration was happening a lot less, and the cultural exchange has somewhat dried up. (Just my impression, but I'd be happy to be corrected.)

I lived in western Skåne as a kid, started watching Danish TV when I was 2 years old. I think that the Danish spoken across the water is not difficult to understand. However, most Swedes would not agree. Most Swedes find Danish completely incomprehensible. Which it isn’t, if Swedes would take the time to learn the sound differences and the common false friends. In Denmark you can never discount the mumbling factor, though. You see, in Denmark it’s socially acceptable to mumble (which it isn’t in Sweden), and the more people mumble, the more difficult they are to understand... But apart from that, I personally find Danes more difficult to understand the further south in the country you get. Older Danes understand Swedish, since they have watched a lot of Swedish TV in earlier decades. You shouldn’t count on younger Danes understanding it as well as older people, though.

you probably know more Danish (understand them) than I do as a Swede, I always give up and switch to English, I grew up in northern Sweden so maybe that's why =)

As a swede I can say that in general we have a harder time understanding danish then they have us, but it's the other way around with norwegian, most swedes understand norwegian but they have a harder time understanding swedish. Also I think norwegians understand danish better then the other way around. Anyhow if you want to try something really hard, try counting numbers in danish ;)

Some say that Danish isn't a language it is a speech impediment. Jokes aside, I have also heard that Danes understand "up-Swedes" better than they understand Scanians. You are right in your observation that any Scandinavian language is a gateway to the others. The languages are more like dialects and we understand each other more or less depending on how far away our dialects are from each otherr and how used we are of hearing them.

I understand danish fine, but danes do not understand me. Borned and raised in Skåne. Quite strange, but most danes understand people from Stockholm better than from Skåne.

Don't ask me! As a Swede I "know" you shouldn't be able to, but I may be wrong. The words are mostly the same, but the pronunciation is so different that Swedes and Danish with no experience have a *very hard time* understanding each other. Finish people that speak Swedish, speak the same Swedish as is spoken in Sweden. (Except speakers of some Ostrobothnian dialects, that have to code switch to standard Swedish to speak with other Scandinavians). As for Norway, it has two languages. Bokmål is essentially Danish with Swedish pronunciation. Bokmål speakers and Swedish speakers speak with each other pretty fluently, but they may want to take care about a few false friends. Nynorsk speakers and Swedes don't always understand each other.

Dette er en test, for at se om du kan forstå dansk?

If Scandinavians (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) use TEXT, we understand each other 95%. When it comes to speech, Danish is really hard to understand, Norweigan is much easier. // Swede

You had the East and West germanic groups switched. Danish and Swedish are East.

inte ens danskar förstår vad danskar säger