okay so I watched this movie "kitchen stories" and it is supposed to be in both Swedish and Norwegian. but the thing is, I couldn't even tell there were two different languages. I did not notice a difference. I don't want to be naive, but are they fairly similar languages? I think they derive from an older language. But what are the key differences in the language? If you are from Norway can you generally understand Swedish and Finish?
Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are related. Finnish are of some odd reason more related to hungarian. Norwegian and Danish are most similar - they are socalled west-scandinavian languages, while Swedish as a socalled east-scandinavian language is more different, but still related to Danish and Norwegian. On Iceland they speak an old kind of Norwegian, and so they do on Faroe Islands (despite Faroe Islands are part of Danish territory). It's very difficult to explain what's the difference between single scandinavian languages, but Swedish and Norwegian are more vocal, singing languages than Danish which has some common characteristics with the way German language is spoken. love, -wolf-
and by some odd reason, people from norway more easily understand what the swedish are saying, without the swedish understanding the norwegians.
Finnish language is not indo-european, it's fenno-ugrian. Swedish and Norwegian are part of the indo-european family. Finnish is close to estonian and carelian languages..
Sounds like the differences are similar like with the Slavic nations. Some can understand one language others more. Very confusing!
But Swedish is the second official language in Finland, although only 6% of the finnish population (5,2 million) speak it.
