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Sunday 28 November 2010

Question for Swedes and Norwegians?

I listened to Salem's interview on Bergen student radio this morning (link at http://planetsalem.blogspot.com/2010/11/salems-norwegian-radio-interview-today.html) and was able to understand some of it, so I guess my understanding of spoken Swedish is getting better! Of course there was also lots of music in the show - "4 O'Clock", "Count Me Out", "Virgin Mary", "Backseat" and "Roxy".

Anyway, hearing Salem interviewed on a Norwegian radio station got me thinking about the differences between the Swedish and Norwegian languages. As a native English speaker, I find written and spoken Norwegian so much harder to understand than Swedish.

Can any of you tell me if it is true that all Swedes and Norwegians can understand each other's languages when speaking to each other? For example, I've heard Salem interviewed on Norwegian radio and television programmes and they seem to have no problem understanding each other.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, we have normally no problem to understand each other, the same goes to the Danes.
Both Norway and Denmark can watch swedish television so they are better to understand us swedes than the other way around.

Tina said...

I am Norwegian and yes, most Swedes and Norwegians is able to understand each other. It is very small differences between the languages, but both Norway and Sweden have a lot of dialects which could be difficult to understand.

Laura (EuropeCrazy) said...

Thanks for your replies, they were much appreciated and very helpful!