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The Scandinavian Semi-Communication
I found this article by Lars. S. Vikør quite interesting. It's taken from the book "The Nordic languages", chapter 4 121-135, Ovus Press, Oslo 2001. (Yeah, I made the effort to type it all up; if that isn't a show of true love I don't know what is.)
It might give someone who stumbles over this journal inspiration and a better look into how the two Scandinavian dickheads from Metalocalpyse communicate when the others don't look, perhaps even may clear up some questions :3 I especially love the part where Swedish is the language that is most likely adopted, huahaha. That would stroke Skwisgaar's ego so much...
Note: It's long. And contains graphics. A map can be found HERE in case you need one.
THE SCANDINAVIAN SEMI-COMMUNICATION
The term "semi-communication" was coined by Einar Haugen (1966b) with reference to the linguistic situation in Scandinavia, defined as "the trickle of messages through a rather high level of 'code noise'". By "code noise" he means differences in the linguistic codes concerned which hamper communication without positively barring it.
This term of Haugen's may give a more accurate picture of the Scandinavian linguistic situation than the somewhat idealistic notions sometimes expressed about the ease and smoothness with which Scandinavians can communicate with each other if they really want to. However, the act of "understanding" another language or variety, or "understanding" speech in general, is a very complex one. We cannot discuss this theme in depth here, but in very brief terms we can say that there are three factors involved:
1) linguistic closeness vs difference
2) motivation (on the part of both speaker and listener)
3) experience and training (also on the part of both participants)
Some studies have been carried out on how well Scandinavians can understand each other's language. They are limited in scope and reliability, but they all show a similar picture of the situation despite differences in method and selection of informants, and this picture moreover corresponds well with the "common sense" impression shared by most people experienced in Scandinavian language contact. We shall summarize the most important of them briefly (cf. also Ohlsson 1979:11-23).
The first study was done by Einar Haugen in 1952 (see Haugen 1953 for the original report and Haugen 1966b for an English-language summary). He sent a number of questionnaires to some hundreds of Norwegians, Swedes and Danes who were selected from the national telephone directories. 245 responded: 117 from Norway, 85 from Denmark and 54 from Sweden. The questions they had to answer covered their inter-Scandinavian contacts, their language comprehension, and their strategies to make themselves understood. The most important question for our purpose was: "Do you now understand X speech without difficulty?" The response alternatives were: "Yes. No. Fairly well." The result based on the percentage of "Yes" answers, is summarized in Figure 1:
Figure1
The arrows in the figure point in the direction from the target language to the respondent's language, so that the figure should be understood as follows: 61% of the Swedes understand Norwegian without difficulty, 70% of the Norwegians understand Swedish without difficulty, etc. We see that the figures concerning Norwegian vs Swedish are fairly high, those concerning Danish vs Swedish considerably lower, and those concerning Danish vs Norwegian intermediate. The marked difference in the Danes' comprehension of Norwegian (57%) and the Swedish (40%) is remarkable because these languages are believed to sound quite similar to Danish ears, so that Danes often have difficulties in distinguishing them. The fact that Danes seem to have more difficulties with Swedish than the other way around also runs counter to expectations.
Since this survey was based on the respondents' own assessment of their language comprehension, it may contain a certain degree of self-overrating. The first researcher to test actual comprehension was the Norwegian sociologist Øivind Maurud, who carried out his research in 1972 and published it in 1976. His informants consisted of around 500 recruits doing their compulsory military service. Most of them came from the capital region of the respective countries. They were asked to listen to some short texts read aloud in the neighbor languages and retell the contents afterwards, and they also had to explain some "difficult" words in isolation. A similar test based on written texts was also carried out. Thus, Maurud was the first to compare the comprehension of written and spoken language.
Maurud's study is the most comprehensive one so far, and has therefore become a classic in the field. We can summarize his findings in the smae kind of figure that we used above (Figure 2 and 3). The percentages now reflect the test results of the different groups of recruits, according to a method of calculation which we cannot describe here:
Written language
Figure 2
Spoken language
Figure 3
First of all, the difference in comprehension between written and spoken language is very conspicuous: Written languages are generally understood much better than spoken. The lowest percentage (25%) reflects, not unexpectedly, the Swedes' understanding of spoken Danish. However, the Danes' understanding of spoken Swedish and the Swedes' of spoken Norwegian are also below 50%. For written texts, we see that Swedish-Norwegian and Danish-Norwegian communication functions rather well in both directions, while Swedish-Danish reading comprehension is somewhat less successful (but still attains a level of nearly 70%).
The results are not very surprising in general, but some details are. The low rate of the Swedes' understanding of spoken Norwegian contradicts other surveys. It is also odd that the Swedes should understand written Norwegian so much better than written Danish - considering that the graphic impression of these two languages is quite similar. (The only Norwegian variety tested was Bokmål - which, as we have shown earlier, was originally derived from Danish.)
The general impression is that Maurud's tests seem to confirm the other surveys: the most difficult language is spoken Danish, and the nation with the lowest overall comprehension rate is Sweden, while the Norwegians consistently achieve the best scores. Other studies, more limited than those discussed here, show the same pattern, with variation only in details. The most recent studies, done by Ulla Börestam Uhlmann and published in Uhlmann 1991a (briefly summarized in Uhlmann 1991b) and 1994, are no exceptions. (Uhlmann 1994 is a qualitative study of communication strategies between Scandinavian youngsters working in neighboring countries, and is therefore less comparable to the quantitative studies which I survey here.)
Uhlmann analyzed the communication patterns at a selection of 24 Nordic meetings, surveying both comprehension and communication strategies across language barriers, as well as polling attitudes towards the different strategies. She used questionnaires to elicit her data. We shall discuss her findings more thoroughly in the next section, since her surveys involve Finns, and Icelanders as well as Scandinavians, but we shall cite here the figures directly comparable to the ones given above. Uhlmann, unlike other researchers in the field, treats the Finland-Swedes separately from the Swedes of Sweden, and they are therefore included in Figure 4. The figure gives the percentage of each nationality who could understand the specified languages/varieties "very well" (the other choices were "fairly well" and "badly").
Figure 4
Here again, we see the same pattern as before. Norwegian-Swedish communication is nearly fluent, and Norwegians communicate quite well with Danes and Finland-Swedes, too. On the other hand, Danish is again the tough nut for the Swedish-speakers - whether from Sweden or from Finland. For the Danes, Finland-Swedish is less accessible than Sweden-Swedish, which they understand quite well. (A possible source of error here is that Danes may confuse Finland-Swedish with Swedish spoken by Finns - a variety also separately surveyed by Uhlmann and reported to score somewhat lower than Finland-Swedish: 43.0% for the Danes, 69.2% for the Norwegians.)
There is one aspect which all these studies neglect, however - although Maurud mentions it. The regional differences within each country must be an important feature in the degree of understanding of the neighbor languages. In Sweden, for instance, the two largest population centers are the central-eastern Swedish area around Stockholm, and the southwestern and southern area around Gothenburg and Malmö. We may assume that Danish is understood better in the south than in the Stockholm area. When we remember that Maurud used informants mainly from the capital areas in his tests, we may ask whether this has not led to an underrating of the Swedes' neighbor-language comprehension compared to that of the Danes and Norwegians - since both Copenhagen and Oslo are located relatively close to Sweden (and within easy reach of Swedish television!), while Stockholm faces Finland. This factor may have something to do with with the difference in the Danish comprehension of Sweden-Swedish vs Finland-Swedish, too.
In the 1970s, two investigations were carried out into the effects of cross-border television transmissions on the neighbor-language comprehension in the three countries. The results seem to indicate that the possibility of receiving television programs from the neighboring countries does indeed enhance comprehension (Ohlsson 1979:24-27; both surveys discussed used school pupils in their early teens as informants.) It seems that the effects were most marked in Denmark, where the difficulties in relation to Swedish are considerable, as we have seen, and less in Norway, where the general level of comprehension was already relatively high.
The high Norwegian scores can be explained in several ways. It may be that the historical position of "underdog" has something to do with it (as we have seen, Norway was in former ages dominated by both of the other nations). Members of the dominant nations are always less inclined to learn the language of the dominated populations than the other way around, as we know from countless examples from all over the world. It is also a fact that Norwegian linguistically is "intermediate" in relation to Swedish and Danish - phonetically resembling Swedish, but idiomatically, lexically and orthographically closer to Danish. This is true especially for Bokmål, but to a certain extent even of Nynorsk (although this variety in many respects, especially in morphology, is closer to Swedish).
An interesting explanation is that the Norwegians are more accustomed to linguistic variation - both in speech and in writing - than the other nationalities, due to the strong position of the dialects and the large degree of flexibility in the written standards, both Bokmål and Nynorsk. This makes them more tolerant towards what Haugen calls "code noise" - whether it appears in the speech of fellow Norwegians or that of other Scandinavians.
I shall include here communication strategies employed by Scandinavians to enhance comprehension and understanding among each other as I found it quite interesting and perhaps helpful for later references.
SIX COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Haugen and Uhlmann in their questionnaires did not limit themselves to the problem of understanding others, but included questions about how to make oneself understood as well. Haugen asked: "Do you usually make any changes in your own language when you speak with X, in order to ease comprehension? Speak more slowly? Avoid words that can be misunderstood? Mix in words from X? Change your pronunciation? Adopt the other language? Adopt a non-Scandinavian language, and if so, which one?"
These are examples of different communication strategies available to those who communicate across the language borders in Scandinavian. Here, we shall distinguish six such strategies and discuss them separately, to a large extent based on the material collected by Uhlmann. They are:
1) a limited adaptation of one's natural speech (slowing it down, pronouncing more distinctly, avoiding particular words)
2) a more systematic adaptation, involving deviations from the norms of one's own language
3) speaking some kind of "common Scandinavian"
4) using a language other than one's own
5) relying on professional interpreters to and from the non-Scandinavian languages
6) using a non-Nordic language, in practice English
Of course, in real life combinations of these strategies are common.
1) a limited adaptation of one's natural speech
Haugen found that "when speaking to Danes, two thirds of the [Norwegian and Swedish] informants found it necessary to slow down their speech", while "about one fourth [of all informants] admitted using words from the other language when they spoke". Uhlmann's results indicate that the Danes make the most effort: 86% of them speak slower and more clearly, as compared to 68% of the Norwegians and 65% of the Swedes - and only 48% of the Finland-Swedes. The general pattern, that the biggest communication barrier exists between the Danes and the others, is neatly confirmed by these results.
2) a more systematic adaptation in one's speech
"Very few admitted changing their own pronunciation, the highest proportion being 22 per cent of the Danes when they spoke to Swedes", reports Haugen - quite in accordance with the general pattern demonstrated above. Uhlmann found much higher percentages: 65% of the Danes in her material made changes in pronunciation and vocabulary when speaking to non-Danes. Of course, the fact that her respondents were directly confronting the problem at the time is an obvious explanation for the difference. For other nations, she found that 49% of the Norwegians, 39% of the Swedes and 16% of the Finland-Swedes made such changes when speaking to others.
The fact that the Swedish-speakers - both Swedes and Finland-Swedes - score so low here calls for an explanation. There is a tendency to regard Swedish as the prestige language of Scandinavia (at any rate, this is a widespread feeling in Norway), and for that reason linguistic accommodation in inter-Scandinavian communication tends to take place in the direction of Swedish. But in this case Uhlmann draws attention to the fact that the largest meetings in her sample took place in Finland and that the Finns were active participants. This means that the communication burden came to rest more heavily upon Danes than upon Swedes and Finland-Swedes. The Finland-Swedes, of course, would tend to speak Finnish with the Finns, and thus solve that particular communication problem.
The kind of changes involved mostly pertain to the use of words from the neighbor language. There are many "false friends" in these languages; words that sound alike but have different meanings. Well-known examples are anledning (Danish/Norwegian 'opportunity', Swedish 'reason'), må (Danish/Swedish 'may', Norwegian 'must'), rar (Danish/Swedish 'nice', Norwegian 'strange'), rolig (Danish/Norwegian 'quiet', Swedish 'amusing'), semester (Danish/Norwegian 'semester', Swedish 'holidays'). And there are many words that are totally different: 'girl' is flicka in Swedish, pige in Danish and jente in Norwegian; 'cream' is fløde in Danish, fløte in Norwegian Bokmål, fløyte in Nynorsk, but grädde in Swedish; 'newspaper' is avis in Danish/Norwegian, tidning in Swedish; 'pillow' is kudde in Swedish, pude/pute in Danish/Norwegian; 'pocket' is ficka in Swedish, lomme in Danish/Norwegian; 'window' is fönster in Swedish, vindue in Danish, vindu in Norwegian Bokmål - while Nynorsk retains the Old Norse form vindauga, lit. 'wind-eye', hence English window- and we could continue with such examples at length. The most conspicuous peculiarity, however, is the Danish numeral system. Danes are consistently advised to use North Scandinavian numerals in order to be easily understood by other Scandinavians (Karker 1990).
As for other changes, the tendency seems to be that non-Swedes adapt towards Swedish more than the other way around (with the exception of Swedes permanently settled in other countries); dialectal speech is adapted to the national standards; Nynorsk speech is often changed towards Bokmål, which is supposed to be easier to understand for Swedes and Danes; colloquial speech is changed towards more conservative, spelling-bound variants. The problem is that such adaptations may give the speaker a feeling of being "stiff", "artificial" and perhaps a little bit silly - especially if there are compatriots present. So, a certain psychological adjustment to the situation is also needed if communication is to succeed. Grünbaum 1986 contains a description of the problems involved and gives concrete advice on how to adapt each of the three languages in inter-Scandinavian contact situations; see also the discussion in Haugen 1981.
3)"Common Scandinavian"
When people adjust their languages to those of the neighboring countries, they often have the impression that they speak an artificial kind of language which is neither their own nor that of the communication partner(s). It is perceived to be a kind of "common Scandinavian" - usually simply "Scandinavian". Uhlmann's respondents showed different attitudes to this "Scandinavian" - some found it practical, others confusing and artificial. Their examples show that this "Scandinavian" amounted to little more than the small changes mentioned above: using North Scandinavian numerals on the part of the Danes; choosing words that were known across the borders; pronouncing words more distinctly and more spelling-bound etc.
However, there exists a kind of institutionalized "Scandinavian" - namely the variety often used by Icelanders and Faroese. As we have mentioned, they learn Danish in school, but traditionally they learn it with a pronunciation adapted to their own phonetic background (discussed in Haugen 1981:133-135).
The result is, as already indicated, a kind of Danish as spoken by North Scandinavians - which is more easily understood by Norwegians, Swedes and Finns than authentic Danish. This has become a point of debate both in Iceland and Faroese: some want authentic and pure Danish to be taught in order to be better understood in Denmark (and because it is the "real thing"), while others prefer to retain the "Scandinavian" pronunciation, which is, after all, also understood in Denmark and at the same time functioning better in the rest of Scandinavia. The trend is that middle-aged and older people use the "Scandinavian" pronunciation while today's school children an students are taught authentic Danish pronunciation (thereby, of course, also enhancing their comprehension of this pronunciation). Some people master both accents, switching between them according to the requirements of the situation.
The formal codification of a "common Scandinavian" has been discussed from time to time, but never undertaken seriously.
4) Using a language other than one's own
The basic characteristic of the primary Scandinavian languages community is the notion that communication can take place across the language boundaries, so that nobody needs to change to another language. Haugen ([1966b] 1972:233) reports from his survey that "virtually no one admitted to adopting the other language in toto, only about six per cent of the Swedes and Danes doing so in relation to one another [sic. The real figure is 0.6%, see Haugen 1953:246]. In most cases even these rare instances may have been along lines noticed by one Danish professor, who wrote that in talking to the rural residents of Sweden he made use of a 'homeknit Swedish', where he mixed in 'as many Swedish words as possible' and pronounced Danish words with a 'Swedish accent'.
Uhlmann's respondents, however, indicated that code-switching to another Scandinavian language did take place to some extent during the meetings - in all directions, but with Swedish as the dominant target language. Here again, the strong representation of Finnish participants may have played a role: when Danes and Norwegians switched to Swedish, it may often have been out of consideration for the Finns. But Haugen's reservations are probably valid here too: What is perceived as "code-switching" may in reality have been a more or less systematic adaptation of one's own language. The lack of formal instruction on Danish pronunciation for Swedes, Swedish for Danes etc. makes it probable that real code-switching is almost impossible for anybody without rare linguistic talents - unless they actually settle in a neighboring country for life.
on the other hand, the non-Scandinavians must, of course, base all their communication on code-switching - towards Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. To them, the only alternatives are the following two: professional interpretation, or the use of English.
I shall skip 5, because it's rather pointless and just deals with Scandinavian vs Finnish.
6) Using English
The only non-Scandinavian language functioning well in inter-Nordic contact today is English. The use of English between Scandinavians is rare, although young Swedes and Danes (who may feel more accustomed to English than to each other's language) may sometimes resort to it when talking together. But the real importance of English lies in the secondary Nordic community, above all where Finns and Icelanders are concerned.
Uhlmann has measured the (perceived) comprehensibility of English compared to the Scandinavian languages among her respondents. It appeared that Icelanders, Finns, and Finland-Swedes found English easier than Scandinavian (for the Finland-Swedes, easier than Danish and Norwegian). Swedes, Norwegians and Danes rated English as less easily comprehensible than the Scandinavian neighbor languages. (Of course, there is a great deal of individual variations in this.) Uhlmann also found that 36% of the Finns in fact did use English during the meetings, 27% of the Norwegians, around 20% of the Danes, Swedes and Icelanders - and almost none of the Finland-Swedes (who, as stated before, normally can speak Finnish with the Finns). Uhlmann also took age and socio-economic status into account and found, not unexpectedly, that young people and students tend to use English to a significantly higher degree than others.
[...]
The whole question is an example of an inevitable conflict of values: on the one side egalitarianism, which is better served when all nationals use of a foreign language than when only some are forced to do so, and on the other side idealistic Nordism. However, the use of English serves the cause of egalitarianism only between nations, not between individuals, as there are sizable segments of populations (of the middle-aged and older generations) in all the countries who do not master English. It has also been argued that if English is adopted as an inter-Nordic lingua franca, this would still not preclude the continuation of purely Scandinavian networks more or less to the exclusion of the non-Scandinavians.
[...]
It might give someone who stumbles over this journal inspiration and a better look into how the two Scandinavian dickheads from Metalocalpyse communicate when the others don't look, perhaps even may clear up some questions :3 I especially love the part where Swedish is the language that is most likely adopted, huahaha. That would stroke Skwisgaar's ego so much...
Note: It's long. And contains graphics. A map can be found HERE in case you need one.
THE SCANDINAVIAN SEMI-COMMUNICATION
The term "semi-communication" was coined by Einar Haugen (1966b) with reference to the linguistic situation in Scandinavia, defined as "the trickle of messages through a rather high level of 'code noise'". By "code noise" he means differences in the linguistic codes concerned which hamper communication without positively barring it.
This term of Haugen's may give a more accurate picture of the Scandinavian linguistic situation than the somewhat idealistic notions sometimes expressed about the ease and smoothness with which Scandinavians can communicate with each other if they really want to. However, the act of "understanding" another language or variety, or "understanding" speech in general, is a very complex one. We cannot discuss this theme in depth here, but in very brief terms we can say that there are three factors involved:
1) linguistic closeness vs difference
2) motivation (on the part of both speaker and listener)
3) experience and training (also on the part of both participants)
Some studies have been carried out on how well Scandinavians can understand each other's language. They are limited in scope and reliability, but they all show a similar picture of the situation despite differences in method and selection of informants, and this picture moreover corresponds well with the "common sense" impression shared by most people experienced in Scandinavian language contact. We shall summarize the most important of them briefly (cf. also Ohlsson 1979:11-23).
The first study was done by Einar Haugen in 1952 (see Haugen 1953 for the original report and Haugen 1966b for an English-language summary). He sent a number of questionnaires to some hundreds of Norwegians, Swedes and Danes who were selected from the national telephone directories. 245 responded: 117 from Norway, 85 from Denmark and 54 from Sweden. The questions they had to answer covered their inter-Scandinavian contacts, their language comprehension, and their strategies to make themselves understood. The most important question for our purpose was: "Do you now understand X speech without difficulty?" The response alternatives were: "Yes. No. Fairly well." The result based on the percentage of "Yes" answers, is summarized in Figure 1:
Figure1
The arrows in the figure point in the direction from the target language to the respondent's language, so that the figure should be understood as follows: 61% of the Swedes understand Norwegian without difficulty, 70% of the Norwegians understand Swedish without difficulty, etc. We see that the figures concerning Norwegian vs Swedish are fairly high, those concerning Danish vs Swedish considerably lower, and those concerning Danish vs Norwegian intermediate. The marked difference in the Danes' comprehension of Norwegian (57%) and the Swedish (40%) is remarkable because these languages are believed to sound quite similar to Danish ears, so that Danes often have difficulties in distinguishing them. The fact that Danes seem to have more difficulties with Swedish than the other way around also runs counter to expectations.
Since this survey was based on the respondents' own assessment of their language comprehension, it may contain a certain degree of self-overrating. The first researcher to test actual comprehension was the Norwegian sociologist Øivind Maurud, who carried out his research in 1972 and published it in 1976. His informants consisted of around 500 recruits doing their compulsory military service. Most of them came from the capital region of the respective countries. They were asked to listen to some short texts read aloud in the neighbor languages and retell the contents afterwards, and they also had to explain some "difficult" words in isolation. A similar test based on written texts was also carried out. Thus, Maurud was the first to compare the comprehension of written and spoken language.
Maurud's study is the most comprehensive one so far, and has therefore become a classic in the field. We can summarize his findings in the smae kind of figure that we used above (Figure 2 and 3). The percentages now reflect the test results of the different groups of recruits, according to a method of calculation which we cannot describe here:
Written language
Figure 2
Spoken language
Figure 3
First of all, the difference in comprehension between written and spoken language is very conspicuous: Written languages are generally understood much better than spoken. The lowest percentage (25%) reflects, not unexpectedly, the Swedes' understanding of spoken Danish. However, the Danes' understanding of spoken Swedish and the Swedes' of spoken Norwegian are also below 50%. For written texts, we see that Swedish-Norwegian and Danish-Norwegian communication functions rather well in both directions, while Swedish-Danish reading comprehension is somewhat less successful (but still attains a level of nearly 70%).
The results are not very surprising in general, but some details are. The low rate of the Swedes' understanding of spoken Norwegian contradicts other surveys. It is also odd that the Swedes should understand written Norwegian so much better than written Danish - considering that the graphic impression of these two languages is quite similar. (The only Norwegian variety tested was Bokmål - which, as we have shown earlier, was originally derived from Danish.)
The general impression is that Maurud's tests seem to confirm the other surveys: the most difficult language is spoken Danish, and the nation with the lowest overall comprehension rate is Sweden, while the Norwegians consistently achieve the best scores. Other studies, more limited than those discussed here, show the same pattern, with variation only in details. The most recent studies, done by Ulla Börestam Uhlmann and published in Uhlmann 1991a (briefly summarized in Uhlmann 1991b) and 1994, are no exceptions. (Uhlmann 1994 is a qualitative study of communication strategies between Scandinavian youngsters working in neighboring countries, and is therefore less comparable to the quantitative studies which I survey here.)
Uhlmann analyzed the communication patterns at a selection of 24 Nordic meetings, surveying both comprehension and communication strategies across language barriers, as well as polling attitudes towards the different strategies. She used questionnaires to elicit her data. We shall discuss her findings more thoroughly in the next section, since her surveys involve Finns, and Icelanders as well as Scandinavians, but we shall cite here the figures directly comparable to the ones given above. Uhlmann, unlike other researchers in the field, treats the Finland-Swedes separately from the Swedes of Sweden, and they are therefore included in Figure 4. The figure gives the percentage of each nationality who could understand the specified languages/varieties "very well" (the other choices were "fairly well" and "badly").
Figure 4
Here again, we see the same pattern as before. Norwegian-Swedish communication is nearly fluent, and Norwegians communicate quite well with Danes and Finland-Swedes, too. On the other hand, Danish is again the tough nut for the Swedish-speakers - whether from Sweden or from Finland. For the Danes, Finland-Swedish is less accessible than Sweden-Swedish, which they understand quite well. (A possible source of error here is that Danes may confuse Finland-Swedish with Swedish spoken by Finns - a variety also separately surveyed by Uhlmann and reported to score somewhat lower than Finland-Swedish: 43.0% for the Danes, 69.2% for the Norwegians.)
There is one aspect which all these studies neglect, however - although Maurud mentions it. The regional differences within each country must be an important feature in the degree of understanding of the neighbor languages. In Sweden, for instance, the two largest population centers are the central-eastern Swedish area around Stockholm, and the southwestern and southern area around Gothenburg and Malmö. We may assume that Danish is understood better in the south than in the Stockholm area. When we remember that Maurud used informants mainly from the capital areas in his tests, we may ask whether this has not led to an underrating of the Swedes' neighbor-language comprehension compared to that of the Danes and Norwegians - since both Copenhagen and Oslo are located relatively close to Sweden (and within easy reach of Swedish television!), while Stockholm faces Finland. This factor may have something to do with with the difference in the Danish comprehension of Sweden-Swedish vs Finland-Swedish, too.
In the 1970s, two investigations were carried out into the effects of cross-border television transmissions on the neighbor-language comprehension in the three countries. The results seem to indicate that the possibility of receiving television programs from the neighboring countries does indeed enhance comprehension (Ohlsson 1979:24-27; both surveys discussed used school pupils in their early teens as informants.) It seems that the effects were most marked in Denmark, where the difficulties in relation to Swedish are considerable, as we have seen, and less in Norway, where the general level of comprehension was already relatively high.
The high Norwegian scores can be explained in several ways. It may be that the historical position of "underdog" has something to do with it (as we have seen, Norway was in former ages dominated by both of the other nations). Members of the dominant nations are always less inclined to learn the language of the dominated populations than the other way around, as we know from countless examples from all over the world. It is also a fact that Norwegian linguistically is "intermediate" in relation to Swedish and Danish - phonetically resembling Swedish, but idiomatically, lexically and orthographically closer to Danish. This is true especially for Bokmål, but to a certain extent even of Nynorsk (although this variety in many respects, especially in morphology, is closer to Swedish).
An interesting explanation is that the Norwegians are more accustomed to linguistic variation - both in speech and in writing - than the other nationalities, due to the strong position of the dialects and the large degree of flexibility in the written standards, both Bokmål and Nynorsk. This makes them more tolerant towards what Haugen calls "code noise" - whether it appears in the speech of fellow Norwegians or that of other Scandinavians.
I shall include here communication strategies employed by Scandinavians to enhance comprehension and understanding among each other as I found it quite interesting and perhaps helpful for later references.
SIX COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Haugen and Uhlmann in their questionnaires did not limit themselves to the problem of understanding others, but included questions about how to make oneself understood as well. Haugen asked: "Do you usually make any changes in your own language when you speak with X, in order to ease comprehension? Speak more slowly? Avoid words that can be misunderstood? Mix in words from X? Change your pronunciation? Adopt the other language? Adopt a non-Scandinavian language, and if so, which one?"
These are examples of different communication strategies available to those who communicate across the language borders in Scandinavian. Here, we shall distinguish six such strategies and discuss them separately, to a large extent based on the material collected by Uhlmann. They are:
1) a limited adaptation of one's natural speech (slowing it down, pronouncing more distinctly, avoiding particular words)
2) a more systematic adaptation, involving deviations from the norms of one's own language
3) speaking some kind of "common Scandinavian"
4) using a language other than one's own
5) relying on professional interpreters to and from the non-Scandinavian languages
6) using a non-Nordic language, in practice English
Of course, in real life combinations of these strategies are common.
1) a limited adaptation of one's natural speech
Haugen found that "when speaking to Danes, two thirds of the [Norwegian and Swedish] informants found it necessary to slow down their speech", while "about one fourth [of all informants] admitted using words from the other language when they spoke". Uhlmann's results indicate that the Danes make the most effort: 86% of them speak slower and more clearly, as compared to 68% of the Norwegians and 65% of the Swedes - and only 48% of the Finland-Swedes. The general pattern, that the biggest communication barrier exists between the Danes and the others, is neatly confirmed by these results.
2) a more systematic adaptation in one's speech
"Very few admitted changing their own pronunciation, the highest proportion being 22 per cent of the Danes when they spoke to Swedes", reports Haugen - quite in accordance with the general pattern demonstrated above. Uhlmann found much higher percentages: 65% of the Danes in her material made changes in pronunciation and vocabulary when speaking to non-Danes. Of course, the fact that her respondents were directly confronting the problem at the time is an obvious explanation for the difference. For other nations, she found that 49% of the Norwegians, 39% of the Swedes and 16% of the Finland-Swedes made such changes when speaking to others.
The fact that the Swedish-speakers - both Swedes and Finland-Swedes - score so low here calls for an explanation. There is a tendency to regard Swedish as the prestige language of Scandinavia (at any rate, this is a widespread feeling in Norway), and for that reason linguistic accommodation in inter-Scandinavian communication tends to take place in the direction of Swedish. But in this case Uhlmann draws attention to the fact that the largest meetings in her sample took place in Finland and that the Finns were active participants. This means that the communication burden came to rest more heavily upon Danes than upon Swedes and Finland-Swedes. The Finland-Swedes, of course, would tend to speak Finnish with the Finns, and thus solve that particular communication problem.
The kind of changes involved mostly pertain to the use of words from the neighbor language. There are many "false friends" in these languages; words that sound alike but have different meanings. Well-known examples are anledning (Danish/Norwegian 'opportunity', Swedish 'reason'), må (Danish/Swedish 'may', Norwegian 'must'), rar (Danish/Swedish 'nice', Norwegian 'strange'), rolig (Danish/Norwegian 'quiet', Swedish 'amusing'), semester (Danish/Norwegian 'semester', Swedish 'holidays'). And there are many words that are totally different: 'girl' is flicka in Swedish, pige in Danish and jente in Norwegian; 'cream' is fløde in Danish, fløte in Norwegian Bokmål, fløyte in Nynorsk, but grädde in Swedish; 'newspaper' is avis in Danish/Norwegian, tidning in Swedish; 'pillow' is kudde in Swedish, pude/pute in Danish/Norwegian; 'pocket' is ficka in Swedish, lomme in Danish/Norwegian; 'window' is fönster in Swedish, vindue in Danish, vindu in Norwegian Bokmål - while Nynorsk retains the Old Norse form vindauga, lit. 'wind-eye', hence English window- and we could continue with such examples at length. The most conspicuous peculiarity, however, is the Danish numeral system. Danes are consistently advised to use North Scandinavian numerals in order to be easily understood by other Scandinavians (Karker 1990).
As for other changes, the tendency seems to be that non-Swedes adapt towards Swedish more than the other way around (with the exception of Swedes permanently settled in other countries); dialectal speech is adapted to the national standards; Nynorsk speech is often changed towards Bokmål, which is supposed to be easier to understand for Swedes and Danes; colloquial speech is changed towards more conservative, spelling-bound variants. The problem is that such adaptations may give the speaker a feeling of being "stiff", "artificial" and perhaps a little bit silly - especially if there are compatriots present. So, a certain psychological adjustment to the situation is also needed if communication is to succeed. Grünbaum 1986 contains a description of the problems involved and gives concrete advice on how to adapt each of the three languages in inter-Scandinavian contact situations; see also the discussion in Haugen 1981.
3)"Common Scandinavian"
When people adjust their languages to those of the neighboring countries, they often have the impression that they speak an artificial kind of language which is neither their own nor that of the communication partner(s). It is perceived to be a kind of "common Scandinavian" - usually simply "Scandinavian". Uhlmann's respondents showed different attitudes to this "Scandinavian" - some found it practical, others confusing and artificial. Their examples show that this "Scandinavian" amounted to little more than the small changes mentioned above: using North Scandinavian numerals on the part of the Danes; choosing words that were known across the borders; pronouncing words more distinctly and more spelling-bound etc.
However, there exists a kind of institutionalized "Scandinavian" - namely the variety often used by Icelanders and Faroese. As we have mentioned, they learn Danish in school, but traditionally they learn it with a pronunciation adapted to their own phonetic background (discussed in Haugen 1981:133-135).
The result is, as already indicated, a kind of Danish as spoken by North Scandinavians - which is more easily understood by Norwegians, Swedes and Finns than authentic Danish. This has become a point of debate both in Iceland and Faroese: some want authentic and pure Danish to be taught in order to be better understood in Denmark (and because it is the "real thing"), while others prefer to retain the "Scandinavian" pronunciation, which is, after all, also understood in Denmark and at the same time functioning better in the rest of Scandinavia. The trend is that middle-aged and older people use the "Scandinavian" pronunciation while today's school children an students are taught authentic Danish pronunciation (thereby, of course, also enhancing their comprehension of this pronunciation). Some people master both accents, switching between them according to the requirements of the situation.
The formal codification of a "common Scandinavian" has been discussed from time to time, but never undertaken seriously.
4) Using a language other than one's own
The basic characteristic of the primary Scandinavian languages community is the notion that communication can take place across the language boundaries, so that nobody needs to change to another language. Haugen ([1966b] 1972:233) reports from his survey that "virtually no one admitted to adopting the other language in toto, only about six per cent of the Swedes and Danes doing so in relation to one another [sic. The real figure is 0.6%, see Haugen 1953:246]. In most cases even these rare instances may have been along lines noticed by one Danish professor, who wrote that in talking to the rural residents of Sweden he made use of a 'homeknit Swedish', where he mixed in 'as many Swedish words as possible' and pronounced Danish words with a 'Swedish accent'.
Uhlmann's respondents, however, indicated that code-switching to another Scandinavian language did take place to some extent during the meetings - in all directions, but with Swedish as the dominant target language. Here again, the strong representation of Finnish participants may have played a role: when Danes and Norwegians switched to Swedish, it may often have been out of consideration for the Finns. But Haugen's reservations are probably valid here too: What is perceived as "code-switching" may in reality have been a more or less systematic adaptation of one's own language. The lack of formal instruction on Danish pronunciation for Swedes, Swedish for Danes etc. makes it probable that real code-switching is almost impossible for anybody without rare linguistic talents - unless they actually settle in a neighboring country for life.
on the other hand, the non-Scandinavians must, of course, base all their communication on code-switching - towards Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. To them, the only alternatives are the following two: professional interpretation, or the use of English.
I shall skip 5, because it's rather pointless and just deals with Scandinavian vs Finnish.
6) Using English
The only non-Scandinavian language functioning well in inter-Nordic contact today is English. The use of English between Scandinavians is rare, although young Swedes and Danes (who may feel more accustomed to English than to each other's language) may sometimes resort to it when talking together. But the real importance of English lies in the secondary Nordic community, above all where Finns and Icelanders are concerned.
Uhlmann has measured the (perceived) comprehensibility of English compared to the Scandinavian languages among her respondents. It appeared that Icelanders, Finns, and Finland-Swedes found English easier than Scandinavian (for the Finland-Swedes, easier than Danish and Norwegian). Swedes, Norwegians and Danes rated English as less easily comprehensible than the Scandinavian neighbor languages. (Of course, there is a great deal of individual variations in this.) Uhlmann also found that 36% of the Finns in fact did use English during the meetings, 27% of the Norwegians, around 20% of the Danes, Swedes and Icelanders - and almost none of the Finland-Swedes (who, as stated before, normally can speak Finnish with the Finns). Uhlmann also took age and socio-economic status into account and found, not unexpectedly, that young people and students tend to use English to a significantly higher degree than others.
[...]
The whole question is an example of an inevitable conflict of values: on the one side egalitarianism, which is better served when all nationals use of a foreign language than when only some are forced to do so, and on the other side idealistic Nordism. However, the use of English serves the cause of egalitarianism only between nations, not between individuals, as there are sizable segments of populations (of the middle-aged and older generations) in all the countries who do not master English. It has also been argued that if English is adopted as an inter-Nordic lingua franca, this would still not preclude the continuation of purely Scandinavian networks more or less to the exclusion of the non-Scandinavians.
[...]
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I always find it odd when I hear about people using English as more of a means to cross the language barrier, odd because I was always under the impression English was a pretty awkward language to learn compared to others, what with our words coming from so many different language roots and our general laziness and crazy linguistic rules. Wouldn't it be easier for these younger Scandinavians to just learn what they need to tweek in order to understand each other more?
I DON'T KNOW.
Maybe there's some underlying factor for it to be easier like that, like maybe they listen to too much of the devil's music, aka Rock n Roll, or watch too much American reality TV.
But for some reason I find it adorable the Norwegians are better able to understand both Dutch and Swedes because both those nationalities have dominated them in the past. Awww, Norway.
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It is an awkward language, but as it is, it's dominating in technology and economics :/
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1) English is cool
2) National pride
3) They act a bit bitchy with each other because of their shared past...
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Every few years or so I take an interest in a new language and try to learn at least some basics... I've become curious about Scandinavian languages through metal music and Metalocalypse, maybe I'll check one out ^.^ Too bad I'm almost done with school now though, so I'll have to do it on my own, haha.
LOL so I haven't related this comment at all to Metalocalypse and I've just been blabbing about myself, sorry DX But I do think this is good stuff to consider for fic writers! Also adds some depth to Toki and Skwisgaar's relationship, if they did indeed meet each other before going to America - Toki would already be "submissive" to Skwis on account of the language situation; Norwegians catering to Swedes when communicating ^_^
Thanks for posting all this!! Good stuff, man :D
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The Dutch have a better grasp of German, though.
Same with Scandinavian, in a way. It's so odd, once you get the general patterns of the sound-shifting, you understand most of it without difficulties (at least with reading, people talking is always eeeeh a bit tricky) xD I feel like cheating so much, srsly.
Yeah, you should check it out. They're one of the easiest languages you can learn (similar grammar to English) and it sounds so awesome. Not many ppl speak a Scandinavian language, too, so all the more fun.
Norwegians catering to Swedes when communicating ^_^
Yeah, but you must understand, that the Norwegians are still superior because they get what the Swedes are saying but the Swede's are in the dark with Norwegian (if only a bit. Still enough to make Skwisgaar practice harder on his XPlorer oh the inferiority complex) so it's easier for them to adjust.
All considered, I think they might have picked up very fine peculiarities of each other's language, since they've been hanging around each other so much and been at least a year or two away from home...so that there are few obstacles left in their communication :O
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And maybe now we know why Skwisgaar doesn't like the Dutch (Danes...but shh, don't tell him!) because he can't understand them. Maybe one was saying hello and it sounded like an insult to him? XD Maybe he really just doesn't like them because Nathan read Hamlet to him and he hated it. Who knows?
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I don't know if you ever heard the Danish talk. Compared to Swedish it's like with a potato in their mouthes, that makes weird stops at seemingly random intervals. Less melodic, as in, no melody at all (no tonem1&2). So it sounds quite crude to their ears. And seeing as Skwisgaar already hates hearing someone else playing the guitar I wouldn't be surprised if he also hated someone else speaking a less than melodic kind of Scandinavian language....rofl.
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If I understand this article right, most Scandinavians of any nationality can kinda -sorta- at least comprehend each other, if not actually hold intelligent trans-lingual conversations, and the Norwegians are the best at it. Since it's adaptability and not the Norwegian language that allows for this however, Learning Norwegian wouldn't help an American much more than any of the others.
This Icelandic-Dutch thing is interesting though. I can't say I'm crazy about the idea of having to learn two languages, but it's interesting. I've heard poems read in Icelandic and Old Norse, and I know exactly what you mean by, "You just feel like you SHOULD understand it, but you don't really."
I'm fascinated by what I've read here, and I think I can safely rule out Regular Danish, Finnish and Swedish, but beyond that...
DAMN. Still stuck.
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Oh they can hold a debate. Not so the Danish with the Swedish, but Swedes with Norwegians and Norwegians with Danes. It's just like a dialect of the same language, all considered. With different pronunciation and different words now and then. But the grammar is basically the same (except for a few differences that are so minor, you can ignore them). It's quite a complex language situation that I myself have yet to fully grasp.
I found however that I can understand Danish quite good and some of Swedish without having the latter ever taught to me. But that is mainly due to being German. Passive vocabulary, etc. I have no idea how it feels for English speakers, tho.
Icelandic is very beautiful. I love it. It's like a long lost language of fairies, rare and undiscovered. You have to think a lot in order to translate it and go a long way back to recognize certain words sometimes. Icelandic is one of the harder European languages you can learn. Harder than German. If you can't decide for one, check this out. It's guaranteed to be a tough nut, but damn rewarding.
(Finnish is a bitch though. 15 noun cases? And four different infinitives? No thanks. D:)
Danish is still awesome ;.; Why do you want to rule it out DDDX
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Pfft. Watch THIS.
"(Finnish is a bitch though. 15 noun cases? And four different infinitives? No thanks. D:)"
Yeesh. Screw THAT.
"Danish is still awesome ;.; Why do you want to rule it out"
No interest in going there. (shrugs)
"Passive vocabulary, etc. I have no idea how it feels for English speakers, tho."
...Hmm. If passive German helps, that's good. I do speak -some- german, but I can't really converse in- ...oh, I can't BELIEVE I missed that... Toki talks more than Skwisgaar because he can -understand- more of what's being said, and Skwis has too much pride to ask Toki to translate.
Heh.
Back on topic though, the question seems to be Norwegian versus Icelandic. There's probably more lyrics and general travel utility in Norwegian, but Icelandic would open lesser-used doors. ...Wait a minute. You speak Icela- -how many languages DO you speak?
PS
I know 'Tokig' means 'to be silly/crazy' in Swedish. Do you happen to know what Skwisgaar means in any language? Is it, as I suspect, one of those Lili Von Shtupp things? (G)
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Maybe his real name is something boring like Lars Asbjornson. xD
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Then there was Dethfam, and EVERYBODY's name became their real name. Didn't buy it at the time, Don't buy it now.
I'm chalking it up to the same artistic license that let both people Dethklok talked to in the pub in Finland speak perfect English. (shrugs)
"-and I didn't want it to be German because somebody I know is already fluent in that, and it would just turn into a gigantic Teutonic pissing match."
Solved my language dilemma. I'll finish learning German, and just not TELL her. (G)
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Fuck. Oh well.
There was some very good and constructive in there about how some of the comments are a bit on the offensive and naive side, as well as some sht that wasn't mentioned here (in the article) that I'm sure you didn't know, but I have to get dressed and get going, now. :/
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Offensive? Was I offensive? I didn't mean to, I love you ;_; (and Norwegian)
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It wasn't anything you said. I dunno, it was perhaps because of nativity that it seemed offensive, because when you talk without knowing something, sometimes you will metaphorically step on someones toes without meaning to. Maybe tomorrow I will attempt to see if I can recreate the comment in some sense. I'm at my parents now, and then I have to go to work. I really want to think my words through before saying anything, like I had originally. ;_;