Darn, I don't speak swedish!

[Xander]

Dont the Danes originate from Sweden?

[Pirog]

Dont the Danes originate from Sweden?

Nope. As far as where Swedes and Danes originate from from the beginning it might be the same, but the Danes have not come from Swedes...they even did their best to crush Sweden at times.

[Coramon]

Un'uomo, di Blojt, de, "Noi abbiamo molti grani."

[Liljum]

Dont the Danes originate from Sweden?

As far as i know the danish, swedes, norwegian, german, dutch(or was it netherland? The one closest to germany anyway.) and austrian people comes from the same branch from the european tree.

I think the icelandic population belongs to the same gruop too.

So actually danes and swedes orginate from the germans.

Last week a professor from Iceland wanted the scandinavian countries to all start to talk swedish, just to preserve the scandinavian language and prevent the scandinavian countries from merger into a english talking region.

Every day the scandinavian people losses their own language and moves towards having english as the main language.

The idea the professor had was that all the scandinavian countries should start to talk to eachother in swedish instead of english.

[SekoETC]

As long as no one's trying to convert Finns then I'm all for it. Even at the moment, if you look at shampoo bottles and such, they tend to have Swedish and Norwegian in the same description, they just put sömething/sømething there when needed. And sometimes it includes the Danish version as well.

When I was playing RaceWarKingdoms, there was a large community of Norwegian players and surprisingly I understood like half of what they were saying.

[Liljum]

Yes, mostly you can understand danish and norwegian if you can talk swedish (at least their written language). But there are some differences. They have some words that exists in swedish but means something completely else in their language.

If i dosen't remember it incorrect the Swedish and (i think it was danish) are closer related to eachother than the norwegian. But, i would say that the swedish people in general have it easier to understand the norwegians.

Between the Danish and the Norwegian language, me as swedish, can't see any difference in the written language between thos two countries.

I can give an example to you Seko.

Rolig:
In swedish it means funny.
In Norwegian it means calm(if my wife dosen't remember it wrong).

So reading the norwegian language and comparing it with the swedish might not give you a complete sentence. Or a sentence that make sense.

The same thing is with our "big brother" in our language group(the germans).

I have never studied german but understand lots of their written language. And also some of their spoken language.

Later on my father have remarried and i have got me a set of new grandparents, germans to be exact. And now i can even pronounce the german words correct. But i can't still speak with a german person.

And there have been americans that have studied dutch that can understand a person that speaks swedish.

So if you can speak and write in one of the languages in the german language group, you may be able to somewhat understand the other languages in that group.

But Finnish are a language that really dosen't fit in. Their language cusins are down in the balkans. In the area of slovakia and downwards. If i'm not incorrect. You might know that better than me Seko.

The same relation might be there between the other language groups too.

[SekoETC]

Finnish is relative to Estonian, and a far relative to Hungarian although that relation wouldn't be spotted by other than linguists. Mosts of the languages in Fenno-Ugric group have become extinct, since they were spoken by small tribes that got swallowed by the big Russia.

[Jos Elkink]

dutch(or was it netherland? The one closest to germany anyway.)

Dutch is the English word for the language spoken in the Netherlands ...

(Which shows its roots: German is in German "Deutsch", very close to "Dutch" ... Dutch was originally called "Niederdeutsch" ... and now the English just use it to confuse people ...)

[Sicofonte]

The same relation might be there between the other language groups too.

Oh, yes.
The Romance languages, those arisen from Latin, have the same relation (more or less mutually intelligible):

Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalonian, French (and Oïl languages), Occitan (Lenga d'oc, including Provençal), Italian...

Among all these languages, I would say that the pair with more difficult mutual understanding is Spanish - French.


BTW, It is pretty funny the mixture of languages in Cantr:
Turkish with Swedish, Spanish with German, now together with Dutch and Frenche...
Which language group is with Chinese?

[Liljum]

dutch(or was it netherland? The one closest to germany anyway.)

Dutch is the English word for the language spoken in the Netherlands ...

(Which shows its roots: German is in German "Deutsch", very close to "Dutch" ... Dutch was originally called "Niederdeutsch" ... and now the English just use it to confuse people ...)

There is two small countries there, netherland and? I can't figure out why i call it Dutch. But in swedish the other country is called Holland.

Or mayby i'm just geograficly confused and those to names are the same country.

[Bear]

Same country, Netherland and Holland.

[Liljum]

Ok. Always seen it as two different countries. Don't know why.

[SekoETC]

I thought Holland was a province of Netherlands, kinda like England is a part of the Great Britain...

[Sicofonte]

Maybe someone is talking about Belgium?

[Chris Johnson]

I thought Holland was a province of Netherlands, kinda like England is a part of the Great Britain...

It's two - North and South Holland - and there are another 10 provinces in The Kingdom of the Netherlands