She speaks Swedish


Hello,

I watched this movie last night with subtitles in French (which is unusual). When he calls the restaurant to describe her, he talks about a beautiful woman who speaks Swedish.
Now I can understand a few words in Danish or Swedish but I can't hear the difference. So if she is Swedish and he is Danish, what language did they speak to each other? I didn't hear any English? Did she speak Danish to him all the time? Or... is it true that Swedish and Danish are mutually intelligible?

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It's true: she speaks Swedish to him and he speaks Danish to her. The two languages are quite similar, so they can "easily" communicate. Kind of "inter-skandinavian". Lars von Trier once used the same situation in his hospital-series "Riget", where one of the doctors speaks Swedish, though he is working in a Danish hospital.

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Wow! Thanks!

Similarity between languages is always a controversial topic. Some consider Dutch (my native) to be a dialect of German. While I can't think of any language more similar...I will still speak English to Germans.

You write "easily', but I know from experience that Danes, Swedish,... are all quite fluent in English, so if they don't use English as a bridge...they have to be similar to an amazing degree.

And what about Norwegian? (I often hear about the union between those three, Finland is left out )

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Yeah, like sarahafs says, Danish and Norwegian as written are quite similar, the most similar of all the Scandinavian languages. There are a few words and phrases that will cause confusion if you don't know them though.

The differences between Swedish and the other languages are bigger, but still it's quite easy to understand written Swedish for Danes and Norwegians - the gist of what is being said at any rate.

When it comes to the spoken languages, the most difficulty is in Swedes and Norwegians understanding Danish. It is a very "soft" language, in truth quite unclear or indistinct. Even the Danes themselves sometimes have difficulty understanding each other..!

When it comes to the actual knowledge and skills of people though, Norwegians are much better at understanding their sister nations' languages than Swedes or Danes. Most Norwegians can understand Swedish very well, and Danish pretty well (if written, very well; if spoken, it helps if the Dane is speaking slowly). Sometimes English has to be employed to make Danes and Swedes understand someone from another of the three countries.

A big reason for this is that Norwegians have always been interested in what goes on in Denmark and Sweden (especially Sweden in later years). Norwegians, although most would never admit it, in general have somewhat of an inferiority complex towards the other two lands. And with good reason, as Denmark and Sweden have had a lot more going on culturally. Danes and Swedes on the other hand are not really that interested in Norway. This is certainly true about Swedes, I don't know that much about the Danish mentality.

Norway was at one point in history a part of Denmark, and at another point a part of Sweden. So that explains a lot. :) I'm Norwegian by the way.

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