# Conversation in English between Scandinavians



## Dan2

(I apologize if this specific question has been discussed before - I can't find any relevant threads.)

I was talking to a Swedish woman visiting the US.  She was about 50 and spoke slightly-accented but really excellent English, as so many Scandinavians do.

Because of my interest in mutual intelligibility, I posed the following question to her: "If you were visiting Oslo, going into stores, restaurants, etc., would you simply speak Swedish as you do at home, or would you speak more slowly and carefully, or would you learn some Norwegian..."  At this point she interrupted me and said, "Oh no no no!  When I'm in Norway I just speak English."  Her attitude seemed to be, "_I _speak excellent English, _they _speak excellent English, why get involved with the difficulties that the differences in our languages introduce?"

That surprised me, based both on discussions in this forum, and on things other Scandinavians have told me.  So I ask: how common is the attitude this woman expressed?

Thanks!


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## MattiasNYC

I've seen that more between the Danish and Swedes, depending on where the latter are from. But generally speaking my experience has been that we speak our own languages until someone notices it's hard to follow along. My personal opinion is that it's a bit harder in general to hear what Danish people say than Norwegians. It probably has a lot to do with me being from the middle of Sweden. Had I been from the south it could have been different.

But anyway, my friends spoke respective language instead of English, at least to begin with.


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## Matthias561

It is surprising indeed! From what I've both heard and experienced Swedes rather stick to their own language unless they speak with somebody who represents some kind of northern dialect. On the other hand using English in a conversation with Dane wouldn't surprise me at all, their pronunciation is really odd.


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## DerFrosch

Hi Dan,

I would definitely say that woman's in the minority. When in Norway, most Swedes simply talk as they would to fellow Swedes, perhaps taking care to speak a bit more carefully. Those with an interest in languages are more likely to also avoid certain words they know (or guess) don't have equivalents in Norwegian, as well as adding some Norwegians words they've picked up.

As Mattias indicated, it's normally only if we experience problems during the conversation that we resort to English. Sometimes it's just single words that need to be translated to or explained in English, and only in some cases, e.g. if one of the speaker has a strong accent, it becomes obvious that it makes more sense to speak in English. My experience, though, is that in most conversations, English isn't needed at all. For example, I spent five days in Norway this summer, and can't remember speaking English to Norwegians even once.

It's surely safe to say that in general both Swedes and Norwegians speak better English now than they did thirty years ago. It logically follows from this that a greater number of Swedes and Norwegians will choose to begin a conversation in English. It seems like this was a very natural thing to do for the woman you spoke with, and of course it does make some sense: Provided that both speakers have a good command of English, holding the conversation in that language will lead to fewer misunderstandings and a better flow. I must say though, that I feel it would be a pity if this attitude would become the dominant one among Swedes. After all, mutual intelligibility between languages with > 5 million speakers isn't all that common, and I think we should take advantage of the fact that we understand each other's languages so well without having ever studied them.


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## Sepia

I'd say, it depends - I would not do it as a general rule or as the first try, but if I knew that a Norwegian spoke English as well as I do I'd probably speak English with him as I don't have much experience in understanding Norwegian. Before I had learned to speak Swedish I have met Swedes who preferred to speak German or English with me. It would probably still happen if I kept speaking in the Scanian dialect which I sometimes deliberately use to annoy non-Scanian Swedes with. (There seems to exist a general aggreement among other Swedes to hate the Scanian dialect. I find it quite cool though. And it is the part of Sweden I have spent most of my time ...)


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## Dan2

Thanks very much to all who responded.  The replies help me better "calibrate" language capabilities and attitudes among Scandinavians.


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## raumar

Maybe a Norwegian perspective could be useful as well. For me, Scandinavian is the default option - not English. Professionally, I have some project cooperation with Swedish and Danish colleagues, and we always speak our own languages in our meetings. In the situations Dan2 described -- stores, restaurants etc -- I always speak Norwegian when I am in Sweden and Denmark. This works well in Sweden - they always reply in Swedish. In Denmark, however, they sometimes answer me in English (and then I of course switch to English). 

Even though I speak English reasonably well, speaking a foreign language always requires an extra effort -- both for me and for the person I am speaking with. Speaking one's own language and understanding the other Scandinavian language does not require the same effort, the way I see it. Therefore, the attitude of Dan's Swedish friend seems absurd to me. Speaking English with a Swede seems just as silly to me as speaking English with someone from Western Norway (another dialect than mine).

We should remember, though, that there is an asymmetry in the relationship between Norwegian and Swedish, at least in my generation (I'm 50). When I grew up, there was only one TV channel in Norway. Where I grew up, in Eastern Norway (not too far from the border), we could watch Swedish TV. As there were two TV channels in Sweden (twice as much as we had ourselves!), we watched a lot of Swedish TV. Those Norwegians who couldn't watch Swedish TV were also exposed to a lot of Swedish language, through Swedish movies, TV series, rock and pop music, and so on. Swedes were not exposed to Norwegian in the same way. Even though the media situation has changed today, with lots of TV channels, I think some of this asymmetry remains.


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## MattiasNYC

I agree Raumar. In my experience Norwegians were always better at understanding Swedes than the other way around. I sort of 'laughed off' the proposition that we should learn Norwegian when I was in school, but boy do I regret not having learned it properly. Our languages are so close it just seems dumb in retrospect. Plus, I love how Norwegian sounds.

Anyway, we agree


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## Ben Jamin

From my part I would add that all Swedes living in Norway (some even up to 40 years) I met, always spoke Svorsk (Swedish, with only a small part of their vocabulary replaced by Norwegian words). There are Swedes working in the Norwegian Radio (NRK) that speak pure Swedish.
I think even, that by many Norwegians, a Swede speaking English to them would be perceived as impolite.


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## ElRubio

I strongly believe that Swedes, Norwegians and Danes should strive to speak their own respective languages with each other since it's a way to keep alive and cherish the common elements in our linguistic history and traditions, so to speak. Once, also the German language and culture constituted a much larger part of this heritage than today.

However, I'm afraid that in Sweden this idea is more and more lost on the younger generations (by younger I mean under 30), many of whom are all too eager to show off their "perfect" AE accent (often combined with a poor vocabulary)

Also, despite the widespread notion that Swedes are good at foreign languages, the reality is that for many Swedes there are basically two languages in the world: a) Swedish, which "we" speak, b) English, which "everybody else" speak or should be able to speak. 

Sadly, a big chunk of the blame for this is to be placed on the growing ignorance and indifference towards this subject among Swedish teachers.


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## MattiasNYC

It's probably off-topic, but I wouldn't blame teachers for that at all. Swedish culture has changed, that's the problem.


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## ElRubio

Well, I'm not out to blame individual teachers per se (I once was a Swedish teacher so that would include me, by the way), and of course the cultural context has changed, but I definitely think there should be a more conscious focus on the other Scandinavian languages in Swedish schools, in the curriculum.

Because after all, the educational system should also be part in forming the culture, rather than just passively accepting external changes.


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## MattiasNYC

Ok, then I misunderstood you. I agree that the curriculum likely could be better.


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## ElRubio

I could have expressed myself better.


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