When people from different Scandinavian countries get together, do they speak their own language and rely on mutual intelligibility or do they just speak English?

36 comments

1. From a middle-Swedish I would say it really depends – the mutual intelligibility varies a lot as for example people living in the border regions (Scania, western Sweden close to Norway, Haparanda/Tornio and so on) are most likely gonna have much more “experience” and exchanges with the people across the border than someone not living in a border region.

   But my general views are that Norwegian for Swedes is no problem to understand, Danish is very split – and this is where the Scanians/those living close to Denmark have a big advantage – but after some warmup it should be fine for most Swedes (on the flipside, I believe most Danes have an easier time understanding Swedish than the reverse).

   Finns and Swedes – again it depends – northern, border-region Swedes may have some Finnish in their vocabulary and many Finns have some Swedish vocabulary (while Finland-Swedes are obviously gonna speak Swedish) but in my experience its mostly English for these meetings.

   Not to forget Iceland/Faroe Islands – unless the ice- and islanders speak some understandable form of Danish and/or Scandinavian, most of these meetings are gonna be held in English.

2. Danish and Finnish is absolutely nightmare to understand for me, which I cannot say about Norwegian (I think only nynorsk is understandable?). Both written and spoken is very similar to Swedish. That being said, english is so broadly spoken language in Scandinavian countries that it is just easiest to use while talking to people from abroad rather than playing a guessing game from time to time.

3. Swedes and Norwegians can generally understand each other with a high degree of mutual intelligibility, but if we speak English the mutual intelligibility is near perfect, so we might default to English for pragmatic reasons. Danish is a bit harder to understand for someone with no exposure to Danish, but that’s mainly due to pronunciation. In writing we would understand Danish almost as well as Norwegian.

   I think Gen-Z would default to English, and Gen-X and earlier would try to speak their original language, with millennials falling somewhere in between.

   The very first time you hear another Scandinavian language it can be hard to understand, but that’s mainly because you’re not used to the accent. It takes very little time for one Scandinavian to get used to the accent, learn the very few grammatical differences and 50 or so common words which differs between the languages to be able to communicate somewhat fluently. But unless we make that effort or spend some time in another Scandinavian country that seldom happens unfortunately.

4. The norwegian would speak svorsk to the swede because he know many swedes have problems understanding norwegian/certain word of the norwegian language. Svorsk meaning norwegian with certain words in swedish. Sweden’s most famous talkshow host for many years was a norwegian, and the swedes didn’t understand him fully unless he spoke a mixture of swedish and norwegian. Many norwegians find it a bit akward hearing people using svorsk. Many norwegians has grown up with swedish tv and swedish stuff.. While many swedes have not grown up with norwegian stuff.. So surely it’s a difference. There’s probably also a difference within sweden. Asume those living on the west-coast (gothenburg-side)/those areas bordering norway understand norwegians better than those coming from their east-coast (stockholm-side)

5. Most of my encounters with Norwegians and Danes consists of me speaking Swedish and they Norwegian/Danish. Some people have insisted on speaking in English to me. Mostly children, but also some young adults. All of them have been Danish except one Icelander who spoke Danish but didn’t understand Swedish.

   Some people that move aboard continues to speak their mother tongue without modifications.

   Most that move aboard speak their mother tongue with some modifications. They exchange their vocabulary and numbers (if Danish is involved). Adapt there pronunciation a little bit too.

   A growing amount of people learns the other language to a level where you don’t assume they speak their mother tongue.

   It’s really cool to hear children that grows up with all languages and can speak all, or just more weird dialects and two national languages.

6. [Nordic, not Scandinavian]

   I mostly speak Icelandic when visiting the Faroe Islands, without much problem.

   Icelanders study Danish in school, 3 years is compulsory. That said, I think most Icelanders find Norwegian and Swedish to be much easier to understand in spoken form. And the Danes seem to be quite reluctant to understand Danish with an Icelandic accent – it can sound more like Norwegian than Danish.

   An Icelander visiting Norway or Sweden will typically speak some sort of “Scandinavian mix” (blandinavisk), based on the Danish they learnt at school. Or English.

7. [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSacz4GHQjs) answers your question better than anyone could

8. Both my girlfriend and I have worked places where the working language has been “Scandinavian”. When you get used to it, it’s not really a problem, and if there are problems you can always switch to English.

   Whenever I speak to other Scandinavians I start of in Danish, speaking slowly and clearer, maybe even pronouncing some words in a way that would be easier to understand for the other part. If it doesn’t work at all I’ll switch to English.

   For me Norwegian bokmål is the easiest to understand as it originates from written danish. Nynorsk is as far as I understand put together from different Norwegian dialects (mainly western Norwegian dialects?).

   Swedish is a bit harder, but it really depends on where the person is from. The southern Swedes are often easier to understand as they have some danish influence deriving from Scanian (Skånsk) which before 1658 (where Denmark lost Skåne, to Sweden) was a dialect very close to danish, but over the years has been more and more diluted.

9. It depends. I can understand Norwegian and Scania Swedish just fine, but I struggled a bit when I visited Stockholm. Young Scandinavians are definitely more likely to just use English instead of putting in the effort to understand the other languages.

10. I can generally understand swedes to a degree (they might not understand me though) but danish is gibberish to me so English usually

11. We speak our own languages, especially when it’s Norwegian-Swedish or Norwegian-Danish. Norwegian is the easiest of the three to understand.

    It’s in the curriculum in all three countries that the students shall learn to understand written and verbal communication in the other languages. We don’t learn to write or speak and teachers will obviously not focus on this with weaker students.

    Understanding is unfortunately in decline. And in the immigrant communities it’s very poor.

12. I speak quite fluent Swedish (but Finnish is my native language), so I always speak or try to speak Swedish in Sweden and with Swedes. Norwegian goes, I can understand most and they understand my Swedish. But for professional talk, for full accuracy, it’s English.

    With Danish I maybe understand 20-50% of discussions, much more if reading Danish.

    For some reason Icelandic was as understandable, specially if they put effort to speak more “Scandinaviska”. Maybe the accent is closer to Finnish than Danish.

13. Finland isn’t actually a Scandinavian country, but my Swedish is so poor I’d just rather speak English, which I’m much more fluent in. And at least Swedes speak very good English, and I would guess all other Scandinavian countries as well.

    Obviously Finnish isn’t related to the Scandinavian languages, but it’s a mandatory language to learn for us as well in school, because it’s the second official language of the country. I’m just very bad at it, because I’ve never used it.

14. For me (native Finnish speaker, pretty fluent in Swedish) I usually speak Swedish when I’m visiting Sweden or Norway at least for everyday stuff. However in my experience most Finns will prefer English even in Sweden. In Denmark and Iceland I speak English, too (written Danish is somewhat intelligible, spoken almost nil).

    I belong to a couple of working groups with representation from all Nordic countries. The meeting language is always English for anything official for these groups.

15. Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are dialects of the same language. Most people with a minimum of exposure to each other can understand others with no problem. It is equally difficult for a Norwegian to understand another Norwegian dialect than it is for them to understand Swedish or Danish.

    Written Danish is practically identical to written Norwegian. Spoken Swedish is very similar to certain varieties of spoken Norwegian. It depends on what they’re used to, but it annoys me to no end that some people default to English.

16. In my experience they use their own language and as a nonnative speaker it’s a total mind fuck.

17. I’m a young gen Z and I always speak my own language when speaking to Danes and Norwegians. Sometimes there is confusion and we use English (or if I’m in a cultured situation German or even French).

18. People use their own language 90% of the time.

    Swedish and Norwegian are very similar.
    Danish is *technically* very similar to both Swedish and Norwegian, but have evolved in a separate direction, where the pronunciation has become quite different.
    With some time to acclimatize, and where both parts speak a bit slower and enunciate the words, both Swedes and Norwegians can have conversations with Danes also.

    I’ve never had to retort to English, or any other language, when visiting Denmark, and even less so Norway. Sometimes, one or the other part may have yo repeat themselves, but that’s it.

    Finnish is a special case and doesn’t count. It’s not mutually intelligible with any other majority language in the world, except maybe *partially* with Estonian. Despite that, Finnish tourists can sometimes use Finnish in northern Sweden, and limited parts of northern Norway.
    I personally don’t know any Finnish other than swearwords and names of various staples in the grocery store, so for me, it’s either Swedish in the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland, or retort to English.
    5% of Finns have Swedish as first language, and a certain percentage on top of that also speaks *some* Swedish, but it’s far from the majority.

    (Inb4: “*Finland isn’t part of Scandinavia*”, that’s a separate discussion that I’m not interested in having. It’s complicated, alright? Just let it slide.)

    Icelandic and Faroese are Scandinavian languages, but are unfortunately very difficult for mainland-scandinavians to understand. In that case, I’d personally would have to use English. I can *read* both to some extent, but understanding or making myself understood is very difficult.

19. Depends. It varies greatly how well people understand each other, and I will admit I have often resorted to speaking English with Norwegian and Swedish guests when at a former workplace.

    I experienced something quite amusing, though. I´My colleagues and I interacted A LOT with children, and while they have a really hard time understanding Danish pronounced Danish-y, they had hardly any issue understanding Danish spoken Swedish-y/Norwegian-y, or at least our impromptu effort at speaking something similar to Swedish/Norwegian lol.

    However, I had a Swedish colleague at that same place, and she was the sweetest person ever, but she’d almost always lose me somewhere along a lengthy monologue 😅

20. Swedish – I generelly do but I am pretty good at Danish. At least at understanding it. I have some Danish distant relatives, it helps. And Norwegian is usually fine. Some dialects are trickier than other but usually it works.

    I have found that the trick is usually understanding when the word stops and start in a sentence. Sometimes, in Danish, they just flow into one another. But if one concentrate one understands where they stop and start and then it gets easier. Because the words in themselves are pretty similar.

21. We have what I call a scandinavian stand-off: first one to switch to english is a loser! Personally, I have no trouble at all understanding norwegian and danish most of the times but there are always some weird dialectal exceptions. Icelandic is a little harder because they have a lot of old Celtic loan words, if they speak slowly I can sort of follow but we would undoubtedly switch to English at some point I’m afraid.

    By the way, kudos for correctly using the word scandinavian! They study swedish in finnish schools but rarely enough to speak it (unless they’re already among the 5% fennoswedes).

22. I’m not Scandinavian, but I just wanted to tell a cute story about mutual intelligibility. I live in Scotland and there’s a Polish family who live in my building, and they have a 5 year old son. Last year, a Ukrainian family moved in and they have a son a year or so younger. The adults in the two families speak English together, but I’ve heard the two little boys chatting away in their own languages to each other and they definitely make themselves understood!

23. It depends on the individual and their exposure. For 90% percent of the norwegians that I have met, it has not been a problem using our own languages (unless they have a difficult dialect). For Swedish people it is slightly more mixed. However in my experiance just 20 to 30 hours of exposure to either swedish or norweagean (as a dane) and you will have no problem understanding the other language and for the most part making your selfunderstood.

    Futhermore most scandinavians will have no problems reading eachothers languages, expecially regarding danish / norwegian bokmål

24. I’m a Swedish speaking Finn living in Sweden and I’ll always use Swedish when speaking to Swedes. I’d speak Swedish to Norwegian too but never to danish cause then I’ll switch to English

25. From not a Scandinavian: here is an interesting fact about Icelandic language. Due to the large distance and relatively small exchange with the rest of Europe and Scandinavia. Language of Iceland was changing in much slower pace compering to others. For instance they didn’t adopt grammar articles which is not a ‘native’ Scandinavian notion, but rather something brought from Germany in late middle ages. Furthermore in 19 century during high influx of linguistic nationalism, Icelanders decided to purify their language to even larger extend by wiping off many borrowed words and grammar concepts. Instead adapting a lot of vocabulary derived directly from their early middle age literature.

    Long story short: modern day Icelandic is the closest living language to that spoken by Norsemen during (in)famous viking era.

26. The languages are easy to understand in general. However, Danes have a very different way of pronouncing things, meaning that even if it’s no problem reading Danish, speaking to a Dane is hard for Swedes in particular, but also for Norwegians to some extent.

27. We generally have little issue with understanding Swedish, nor Danish if the speaker slows down his speech a bit and the enunciation is clear. Dialectal variation is the joker in the mix, and this factor is by far most relevant for Norwegian, because we’ll speak in our native dialect much more persistently than Swedes and Danes (who have spoken formal versions of their languages, i.e. *rikssvenska* and *rigsdansk*).

    When I was on exchange, the only Scandinavians I lived with were two Danes. I could understand them just fine, but when I spoke normally, they didn’t understand much of what I was saying. I therefore ended up mostly speaking either my best approximation of Danish (or rather, a strange mix of Danish intonation and words from Bokmål, which is the one of our two written norms closest to Danish) or speaking English.

28. Among younger people (30 or less) English is pretty much fluent in most of Western Europe, so it will always work as a last resort. I noticed in Belgium Flemish people will much faster resort to English now instead of French, altough most have a pretty basic understanding of French. I’m geussing this is the case all over Europe these days or even the world.

29. I (Swedish) always just go with English when speaking to Danes. For them to understand me I would have to strategically switch out some words to be understandable by Danes and that is not a skill I have.

    I know some things like:

    Detsamma -> I lige måde,
    Lugn -> Rolig,
    Äta -> Spise,
    Läsk -> Sodavann

    Most words are the same but then maybe 10% is different and that trips you up too much for it being worth trying when you can just be 100% understandable instantly by speaking English.

30. From my experience, generally we speak our respective languages together and it works fine – not perfect of course. Swedish is very easy to understand, but Danish is a bit tough. Danes are generally clever to slow down when speaking to us Mountain Monkeys, and then it works fine to speak in our native languages.

31. I work in a Swedish hotel and Norwegians and Danes always speak their own languages with no issue, perhaps they dumb it down a bit for ease. Sometimes I have to switch to english with Danes but it’s usually just one keyword I don’t understand, not the whole sentence.

32. I always speak Norwegian with some Danish or Swedish words mixed in and it has never been a problem. Feels so wrong speaking english to my fellow Scandinavians.

33. Scandinavia is made up of the four countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. Against popular belief does Finland have 0 to do with Scandinavia but is a part of the Nordics (which then become even more convoluted since the UK also counts into that pool from time to time depending on history and business).

    1) hardly any country in Scandinavia understand icelandic. It’s slightly easier to understand if they speak slowly but you won’t get a full sentence out of it. Icelandic is based on old norse and is the closest to Old Norse today.

    2) hardly any country will understand old-norwigian. It’s very different in pronunciation than new-norwigian.

    3) hardly any country – including the Danes themselves understand Thybomål. It’s Danish but you only got the vocals. A code language going every so slowly extinct as the school system in Denmark forces newer generations to speak new-danish or now-danish.

    4) Skånska exist and is one of the harder dialects of Swedish. Danes don’t really have many problems understanding it but will have more problems understand dialects from further north in spoken version.

    5) border people understand each other better than the rest of the country. Ex. north Jutlandic people understand Norwegian better than Swedish and people on Zealand understand Swedish better than Norwegian.

    6) in theory a Dane, a Sweden and a Norwegian would be able to speak their own respective languages together but only if they all speak the ‘new’ version of their languages. Iceland is the major loser in no one understand them, but they do in fact understand you, mostly since Danish is mandatory.

    7) Faroe islands have mandatory Danish. No one understand them either though.

    —

    As of the ‘Nordics’:

    No one understands finish and finish-swedish is another branch of language than finish itself is.

    Everyone understands the UK more or less due to mandatory English classes unless Scotland and Wales find their old language instead. No one understands the Celtic languages.

34. I always start out in my own language and encourage others to do the same. I have only ever resorted to English when the other person has requested so explicitly (and I think it’s such a pity to do so). Our languages really aren’t that different once you get past pronunciation, which one can get used to quite swiftly.

    I have little to no issue with understanding Norwegian Bokmål and “standard” Swedish. I (for some reason) have a harder time understanding Skånsk despite Skåne being the region closest to Denmark, while I understand Fenno-Swedish better than standard Swedish despite it not even coming from within Sweden. If someone speaks Skånsk or Nynorsk to me, they will need to speak more slowly

35. When I was in Oslo Norway basically all staff in hotels and supermarkets etc. could understand my Danish and I understood what they said to me. But it wasn’t complex sentences

36. Scandinavians can’t understand us at all. Maybe about 20% if we speak slowly.

    The easiest for me to understand when spoken out loud are Norwegian and Finlandssvenska (Swedish with a Finnish accent) because the Finnish accent is very similar to ours.

    Norwegian and Danish are almost the same when written and are the easiest to read.

    Faroese can be confusing because sometimes it sounds exactly like Icelandic and sometimes like a mix of all the Nordic languages combined. Also some of their words are exactly the same as in Icelandic but they mean something completely different.