Should i learn dutch or norwegian

Upload your cv. Apply in 1 click. The 8 easiest languages to learn for English speakers is often debated amongst multilingual people. Language learning is on the up and more popular than ever. As a result, the UK and other native English speaking countries like us, fall short of their European cousins when it comes to multilingualism. Being English myself, I feel like there is a kind of unspoken assumption that language learning is just too difficult a goal to achieve.

Well, native English speakers - fear not. It is not as difficult as you think to escape the grasps of monolingualism. In fact, it has become easier than ever with the huge increase in online resources available.

Becoming multilingual is a great, and potentially free, way of increasing your employability and can help you have that edge over your competition when trying to find a job abroad. As the world is becoming more globalised each day, many companies are looking to relocate abroad in order to expand into new markets.

Therefore, it is vitally important that they employ native speakers in order to communicate effectively with clients. If you have a big desire to learn your English writing or find writing global help, check expert writing reviews , as a trusted customer service. For some, the desire to learn languages is always there, but they often find it is a very time consuming and difficult process.

But with over 7, languages worldwide, are you really content with just speaking one? If they can learn English so easily then Swedish must be an easy language to learn for English speakers. Swedish, just like English, is a Germanic language. Both languages follow the same Subject-Verb-Object word order which should come as a big help to English speakers. To make things even easier, verb forms are normally constant, making it again very similar to English.

Compared to Latin languages where you have to conjugate a verb for every person and tense, Swedish verbs are a doddle. One of the three Germanic languages on this list, it should be easy for English speakers to get to grips with the basics of Dutch. Many people cite it as being somewhere between English and German, making it one of, if not the easiest languages to learn for English speakers.

The language has 23 million speakers , in the Netherlands, regions of Belgium, Suriname, and even parts of the Caribbean. There is an abundance of jobs for Dutch speakers , so learning the language will increase your employability. Dutch has also had a strong influence on how the English language is today, with a considerable amount of vocabulary coming from Dutch, more so than most other languages. Be cautious though, as many are pronounced differently even though they look the same.

The Dutch as a people tend to be very forthcoming in their language learning — take note of fellow Anglophones! Partly, this is due to the similarities shared between Dutch and other languages, and the fact that the English language is ever-present in their lives, through film and music in particular. As a result, they are not very resistant to adopting English words into their language. For English speakers this can be handy at times, as if you are missing a word in a sentence you can often add the English equivalent and most would understand.

Like Swedish and many other Scandinavian languages, Norwegian is one of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers. Like Swedish and Dutch, its speakers are often proficient in English and it can be a hard language to actually be able to practice at times.

I have realised that swedish is most spoken in skandinavian countries, with norwegian i can understand more danish and swedish but it is not the more spoken, danish maybe at least of the three So generalizing, Norwegian appears to be the safest bet. Anatoli Senior Member Melbourne, Australia. Christhiane Senior Member English.

Well, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are all part of a dialect continuum a network of diaclets where neighbouring variants can be understood well, but those farther apart doesn't necciseraly have to understand each other. Norwegian lies between Danish and Swedish, and it is my experience that foreigners who try to learn a variant of Scandinavian, usually sound the most Eastern Norwegian. I'd also recomend using an uvular 'r,' as you avoid some hard-to-pronounce retroflex sounds you'd have to use if you had a tap 'r'.

But as far as written languages go, I'd say that any is just as good. It's a somewhat old thread, but another viewpoint: whatever you choose perhaps depends most on your intentions - you go live somewhere, you'll need that local language most I'd say the languages are pretty intelligible amongst them, but not necessarily immediately.

For one's ears to get used to the Danish pronounciation and distinguish what they say, it may well take some time. In personal dialogue, with efforts to be as understandable as possible, in my experience you can understand each other. But listening to others talk, I'd get very little. Norwegian on the other hand I tend to understand quite well.

I believe I've heard both Danes and Norwegians say they can understand the Swedish spoken in Finland better than Sweden-Swedish varieties. Perhaps because many Swedish dialects in Finland have much in common with Danish and especially with Norwegian nynorsk.

On the other hand, the intonation of Swedish in Finland is often quite "flat" which it's not in Swedish , and sounds are generally more "articulated" ok, not a good explanation, I know.

As for Dutch, or German, or English; if you speak any of these, you'll definitely find it easier to learn Scandinavian languages than if you're only acquainted with, say, Romance languages. But the intelligibility isn't very high. You may recognise many words, and some structures, between all these, but not get the meaning, and you definitely can't carry out a conversation in, say, Dutch and Norwegian if you don't know both languages.

But learning them is way easier if one knows some other Germanic language. Nander Member Sweden, Swedish. Yup, I'm Finno-Swedish also don't know how to say it, I know there's some standard word for it but..

There are a few Swedes aroundon the forums, but perhaps they have to be lured out? Mind you, I've worked on my rikssvenska accent with the help of my Swedish cousins, but I don't get the difference here..! Perhaps foreigners should be advised to learn the Swedish of Finland, to avoid any hassle Oh and Nander - welcome to the forum!! Oh and Nander - welcome to the forum!! Because there also a small Icelandic community here, I'd like to add one more slant, however, which the orginal poster perhaps did not consider.

If one thows Icelandic and even Faroese into the mix, I think that tips the odds further in favor of learning Norwegian, espcially if one learns Nynorsk or some other Norwegian dialect still a little closer to Icelandic. Icelandic is far enough away from all the other Nordic languages not to have mutual intelligibility, but one will be a little closer to it in Norwegian than in Swedish. And Iceland is quite an amazing place, well worth visiting Spectre scolaire Senior Member Moving around, p.

They come in two parts. This is Part I : I think one should discuss either mutual intelligibility between Germanic languages in general like there is one between Slavic languages or — and that is a much better idea, and indeed the one carried out in this thread! In that case, Dutch has nothing to do in this discussion. For the sake of further thematic clarity we should perhaps indulge in a quick glance at the actual subject of the present discussion.

The Germanic group of languages, according to linguistic conventions, is split into a Northern and a Southern group. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish in alphabetical order.

Eventually, they achieved full independence in being catapulted by a national romantic movement through which Nynorsk was born. And yet they ended up with the absurd situation of two national languages, one without a clear-cut dialect basis nor a clear-cut prestigious administrative centre, i.

A delicate national dilemma to say the least! Norway was never a centre — except after they found oil in the North Sea. My point is: periphery would tend to understand the centre whereas generally the opposite does not obtain. Because of a high degree of linguistic anarchy due to lack of prescriptivism and two mutually intelligible Norwegian languages, Norway continued to remain in the periphery.

I am not saying that prescriptivism is a linguistic desideratum, but it has proved worldwide to be a language policy desideratum.

Favouring one standard is important for a small nation. However, such a policy could not be implemented in Norway because Nynorsk is considered, in wide circles, to be the national language as much as Irish is in Ireland. The irony is that both Nynorsk and Irish are artificial constructs kept alive inside the framework of a national romantic agenda.

The British socio-linguist Peter Trudgill is full of praise of this unique situation, but would he ever recommend it for a country like China?

For the sake of argument, this point is somehow exaggerated. It is a fact, however, that Danish language policy has shown a complete lack of clemency towards other [sic] Danish dialects than the one spoken in the capital where I once upon a time was a student for a couple of years. Norway was always a geographical cul-de-sac.

During all recorded history there is a va et vient of numerous civilizations in Anatolia. Norway is more like a backyard, not unlike Ireland; it has been the home of one single civilization — excluding the Sami population mainly in the North. If a person happened to arrive by boat — shipwreck, f. As a matter of geography, a through fare was never on the agenda. Denmark and Sweden were never geographical diverticula to get trapped in with the exception of extremely poor serfs in the Swedish countryside — but they were already there, and they would either starve or escape to America if they could.

Because of their quasi feudal immobility, these people only counted for the posterity in terms of producing a number of local dialects. Neither Swedes nor Norwegians seem to be prepared for such a thing. What appears not to be taught in school — and this is somehow surprising!

There are exceptions galore, especially linked to Danish monosyllables, but the fact remains that Scandinavian mutual intelligibility would gain some terrain if children were actively taught how these correspondences actually operate. Anyway, the present discussion is not focused on foreigners learning Scandinavian languages but rather on how impeccably the Scandinavians intercommunicate.

Spectre scolaire said:. Arrius Senior Member Spain. I am an Englishman with a very good knowledge of German and an inaccurate but functional knowledge of both Dutch and Afrikaans. It took me a few weeks with an ancient secondhand Hugo's "Norwegian in Three Months without a Teacher" to learn to read it fairly well, in fact with greater ease than I read Latin which I studied up to Advanced Level G. It is the easiest written language I have ever come across. Reading a text in Norwegian is like looking at German in a distorting mirror at a funfare - no disrespect to Norwegian intended, which I find to be a fine language.

There are languages that don't have tenses nor conjugations, which is much easier. I've found learning Dutch actually quite easy. To me the grammar seems more straightforward than English and it also seems like there are less exceptions I'm a native English speaker. I also learned a tiny bit of Norwegian and it also seems relatively easy. I believe Dutch is more similar to English so that has it going for it. Get started. Grammar, vocab. From English overanalyze. February 26, Plus Jersebas But I'll admit it may be a bit hard to get the nuances of that one ; As to the OP's question, as a native Dutch who studies Norwegian on Duolingo my guess is that Norwegian is indeed easier.