It is not mutually intelligible with the languages of mainland Scandinavia. Personally, I have chosen to learn the Scandinavian languages in the following order: Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. Swedish has the easiest pronunciation compared to Danish, however does have a few sounds that you need to learn how to make. Having learnt Swedish, and being fairly proficient in it B2 , I have developed a strong interest in the Danish language.
It just sounds so cool! The problem with Danish, is that pronunciation is crucial, and in order to not be spotted as a foreigner, your pronunciation needs to be bang on.
I plan on learning Danish after I tackle another Romantic language. Finally, Norwegian. I know nothing about it, and want to learn it to have a strong understanding of it. Plus, it means that I can go anywhere in Scandinavia and be understood without the mutual intelligibility barrier.
Nynorsk is less spoken and was written to be different and unrelated to Danish. Just from the spelling, it seems that Mundgeirr had more of a clue about all of this already 4 years ago. I love Scandinavian languages! I discovered Swedish and fell in love with Scandinavia! If you need help with your Swedish or French, let me know! I am at a high proficiency in both. I will ask you if I need any help. I have always loved Scandinavia for its settings, innovation, equality etc.
And watching Frozen cemented my interest in Scandinavia. If you're deciding based solely on linguistic criteria, you might choose Finnish precisely because of how different it is from other languages you've studied. It will open your eyes to things that you might not have known language could do.
As others have pointed out, it doesn't have a Duolingo course yet, so you'd have to find some other way to learn it. Finnish is a non-Indo-European language. Although it's been hanging out with Indo-European languages for a long time and has borrowed words from a number of them, most Finnish words won't be cognates with words you know from other languages, and some of the ones that are cognates won't be immediately recognizable as such some examples: suklaa 'chocolate'; kuningas 'king'; Ranska 'France'; mahtaa 'must do, probably do; can do' [cognate with English 'may' and 'might'].
In terms of phonology, Finnish distinguishes short and long vowels as well as single and geminate consonants. Finnish has rich nominal and verbal morphology. A lot of the things that are done with prepositions in English are done with case endings in Finnish. For example:. When there's not a case ending to express a particular positional relationship, Finnish will usually use not a preposition, but a postposition:.
I chose Swedish now in Duolingo because I had to learn it as a child and I used to know it quite well. I wanted to relearn it in a fast and fun way.
Swedish is also quite useful in Finland and there's a ton of resources. So for me it made the most sense to start with it even though I find Icelandic and Norwegian more interesting. I like Swedish. I'm not saying the others are bad, but if you knew everything about me, you'd see it was a no brainier picking Swedish. But at the end of it, just pick the one you like the most. I fail to see how being in the EU is any meaningful criterion when picking a language to learn.
I like Swedish too, but Norway's oil reserves make it rather more economically significant than either Denmark or Sweden. As EoghanBostock wrote, it's relevant to an EU citizen because they automatically have the right to live and work in any other EU country. Since OP lives in Spain, this is quite relevant to the question.
Even for a non-EU citizen it can be relevant: many people are keen to acquire EU citizenship, so it's useful to know which languages can help you reach that goal. If you learn Swedish and find a job in Sweden, you can, after a few years, gain Swedish and therefore EU citizenship. In Norway you can eventually gain Norwegian citizenship, but of course this doesn't get you into the EU.
Norway's oil reserves make it rather more economically significant than either Denmark or Sweden. Nevertheless, having said all this, it is worth pausing for a moment to assess the weight of opinion in this petition. So this is no fringe movement.
Meanwhile, the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity runs periodic surveys showing broad support for removing the mandatory provision of Swedish. This latter aspect is troubling not least because it is so reminiscent of the sorts of malevolent conspiracies peddled elsewhere throughout history, about minorities seen as secretly pulling invisible strings. In the end, the petition, the right-wing electoral upsurge, and the heating up of this old debate, could just be a historically familiar insular reaction to economic woes.
It could just be a cloud that lifts with economic recovery. Nevertheless, that recovery is not expected imminently: real-terms declines in earnings are projected for years to come in Finland. So, at the very least this debate will lumber on for some time.
Add to this the growth of migration to Finland — in particular Russian-speakers, projected to outweigh Swedish-speakers by — and the debate becomes even more complex and diffuse. Whichever route Finland eventually chooses, it is unlikely to resolve the debate definitively. Finns are a judicious and cautious people. His research interests include language policy and planning, and variationist sociolinguistics. In Finland most speak Finnish and English. A small group of people speak Swedish.
In Sweden the Finnish is not required. WHY in Finland have to speak Swedish? If you want to speak swedish you should travel to Sweden. Here is Finland and we speak Finnish. Sweden never done anything good for Finland , just read the stories and see how much cowered by many facts. Sweden thinks they are the center of the world. People need to be free to make their choices. The money invested in the Swedish education can be used in health. As an exchange student from USA in to pagasFinland I am sad to hear this argument about getting.
Rid of Swedish it is certainly easier to learn and easier to learn for other scandiniavin languages as well as German I tried very hard to learn Finnish also but felt like minority when I heard you eat Finnish bread speak Finnish I feel both languages still have a place you are all Finnish be proud of it and embrace each other and preserve your culture against the incoming tide of foreingers.
And for many studying Swedish makes it more difficult to learn German because the languages are so similar. Besides, I am already a proud Finn. It just demonstrates that what the actual threat here is is actually the fact that they do not approve of us Finnish-speakers in the first place. They can be Swedish all they want, but I will not apologize for being my own person, having my own interests and not giving in to nonsense just because it makes them feel better.
I learnt Swedish when I was an exchange student years ago when I was in Sweden. However, when I moved to Finland, I picked up Finnish instead. Nobody around me is using Swedish anyway. I feel wrong to continue studying Swedish in Finland. It really feels weird to me that Swedish is used here, while it is not a colony itself.
I totally understand about the history and reasons behind the whole matter. I do believe students should avoid Swedish if they want. Why Japan can insist all foreigners to speak in Japanese but the Finns cannot?
Before one understands that, the pro-Swedish argument can seem incredibly unable to treat other people Finnish-speakers with any kind of sense of normal fairness. What they actually want is that the appropriate way to see Finland is Sweden of the s, and in a very Swedish-nationalist way. Of course, anything that happened after is just an aberration of history and Finnish-speakers should have just assimilated into proper Swedes..
Their ego becomes dependent on this idea that everyone who disagrees with the meaning and status of Swedish is the devil and that they stand for The Good. Therefore, recruiting immigrants for their cause is really important, and they will want you reaffirm that the status of Swedish — and believing any and all of the either self-serving or nonsense arguments — is the same thing as for example accepting your presence in the country.
If you do, they love you. As a foreigner in Finland almost 10 years now I have never come across what you describe. Including the two years I did research on the Swedish-speaking Finns. What I have experienced is Finns expressing resentment towards Swedish-speakers and most Swedish speaker I have been in contact with in the past 10 years and independently told stories of how you will have to be careful with where you speak Swedish in order not to get beaten up or verbally assaulted especially in the Helsinki area.
What I can tell you is that a lot of foreigners like Swedish because it is much easier to read and understand for Scandinavians it goes without saying, but also for Germans, Dutch and English speakers etc. People often forget that Swedish was spoken in Finland many years before Finnish even existed as a language. And what will happen if Swedish is no long a requirement? What happens in courts, schools, hospitals etc. Yeah, funny how people resent people who try to make others to act as their servants.
Because that is the main spoken reason why there is a mandatory Swedish: so that the Finnish speakers could serve Swedish speakers in Swedish. Most of them will never need it for anything else but still everyone has to study it. Most Finns like Finnish because it is their native language. Who cares what foreigners think?
Many Finns speak good English anyway. Why Finnish speakers should speak Swedish, anyway? Are the Swedish speakers so much better than the rest of the population? After all they require it on the Russian border, too. They speak with other Finns in Finnish and foreigners with English. If you want to learn additional languages there is nothing keeping you from learning 2, 3 or even languages by the time you finish university or whatever educational goals you have.
First of all, not everyone will learn languages easily and every one of them takes time and effort to learn and keep up. I studied the maximum number of languages in school, four, and one of them was the mandatory Swedish that became my second strongest language. I have had no use for the Swedish I know and have since forgotten most of it.
I also have no interest to keep up my Swedish skills unlike the languages I chose to study. There is no reason to have a mandatory Swedish to all Finns. How is it bad to know several languages? If you truly believe it is a burden then maybe Finland should then completely switch to English. Children have no problem learning several languages without being especially talented, it is a matter of exposing them to it early, and not when they are defiant teenagers.
Ironically, if you look at it from a linguistic point of view Swedish and Portuguese are the two languages that gives you the best tools to learn other languages as they have so many sounds that are also used in other languages. I have never used cosinus calculations outside the classroom and I doubt most people have should that then be dropped as well? There is no more reason to have mandatory Swedish than to have mandatory Sami languages.
Besides, Swedish has only been mandatory for 50 years anyway. It is not a burden for us to keep using Finnish. Swedish has no sounds that would be useful in other languages but knowing French did give me some tools to study Russian. Calculations are studied all over the world. Is Swedish?
Also I never learned anything about Finnish culture in Swedish classes. My culture is mostly Finnish speaking because that is the language I hear spoken around me and what my ancestors spoke as well.
It even has more in common with the Russian culture than the Swedish one. Of course there is always an opportunity cost to studying something instead of studying something else. But this is not allright because… you know the argument is nonsense. I do not believe one bit that the synergy benefits one derives from Swedish are so large that it justifies its position as a language that must or should be studied before other languages.
Of course, in my favoured system of two compulsory languages, the combination of English and Swedish would probably still be quite popular, so I do not expect the studying of Swedish to end altogether. In our Finnish model he either does not become a brilliant engineer, or is supposed to be a brilliant engineer in Swedish… in Sweden, he would have the option of just taking more English. Sweadish is mandatory only because of USSR.
Finlands only free border was to Sweden in the time of cold war. I know the history very well, I have actually always been quite critical of the compulsory Swedish based on most of the arguments presented. Yes we do, but how does this justify a state-wide obligatory Swedish? In addition, parts of eastern and northern Finland have been much longer part of Russia than part of Sweden. On what basis would Western Finland alone be more important in defining the historical relations of modern Finland than would Eastern and Northern Finland, which have historically important relationship with Russia?
If this argument is seen to support obligatory Swedish, it should also be seen to support obligatory Russian. First of all, why the Nordic countries would be more important area for Finland than other neighbouring countries? It is understandable that Swedish speakers feel togetherness with the Nordic countries, but why the Finnish speakers should adopt this identity of the Swedish speakers?
Finnish speakers feel togetherness often with Karelia and Estonia for exactly the same reason, namely because of linguistic affinity.
Secondly, the Russian language is the key to Russia, which is greater than the Nordic countries by both size and population. If this argument is seen to support obligatory Russian. Just as much English and German are gateways to other Germanic languages, and in addition, they are more widely used languages than Swedish. If this argument is seen to support obligatory Swedish, it should also be seen to support obligatory English and German.
Swedish language does not correspond math or history, but foreign languages as a subject group corresponds math or history.
As long as there is compulsory education, all school subjects are compulsory, math as well as foreign languages. However, there have not been presented any sustainable arguments as to why Swedish of all foreign languages should be obligatory throughout the country. If this argument is seen to support obligatory Swedish, it should also be seen to support any other obligatory language. One should not confuse the state identity and the individual identity.
Swedish does not belong in any way in the identity of the Finnish speakers — it is just one foreign language among others. It is unethical to propagate and pressure citizens to adopt Swedish language or any other foreign language as part of their identity.
If this argument is seen to support obligatory Swedish, it should also be seen to support obligatory Saami. Obligatory Swedish has failed to secure the services of public authorities in Swedish — it has only restricted the language selection of Finns. No benefits, only disadvantages. The era of obligatory Swedish has come to an end: at the moment two-thirds of citizens want to get rid of obligatory Swedish.
It is important to understand, that making Swedish optional with other foreign languages does not mean that nobody would anymore learn Swedish; that Swedish would not be anymore the other national language; and that the services in Swedish would come to an end. It would be much more effective to teach Swedish directly to those public authorities, which are expressed in the Language law. No more collateral victims Finnish speakers with obligatory Swedish, who will never become public authorities , no more unmotivated language learners, and no more unjust, oppressing system for forcing the majority to serve the minority.
I also hope that those arguments will be discarded. Similar strawmen are used to force Finnish on people. They are hardly relevant. The fact of the matter is that the same arguments that can be used against Swedish can be used against Finnish. The utilitarian argument works both ways.
The nationalistic argument works both ways. The saami language is a good example of the cultural withering which occurs, when a language is forced in to a weak minority status. Finnish and Swedish are not weak languages and therefore the government could stop enforcing them on its citizens.
Finland is multilingual. There is no point in forcing a closed minded monolingual Finnishness on the people of Finland. He refers to himself as the James Randi of Finnish language politics as if the bilingualism of the state is comparable to the impossible task of scientifically proving paranormal phenomena and he compares the language policies of Finland to those of South Africa as he takes the completely irrelevant identity politics to another level.
He seems to be quite a character, but hardly the authority figure he is portrayed as here. I assume someone else is hyping him here. Who would stoop down to shamelessly plugging his own material here.
You do know that mandatory Swedish and mandatory Finnish both stop at the same time? The freedom of choice has always been freedom from mandatory Swedish and from mandatory Finnish. There has never been just one finnish identity. For many pro-language choice supporters it would be totally fine, if studying Finnish was optional too.
Most Swedish speaking Finns would learn Finnish anyway. That means they will start learning Finnish in third grade instead of eighth grade. Its part of the liberal education. Some areas are more populated with swedes, like Vaasa. In here, everywhere you go, you will bump into a swede. It is our second language, accept the fact And isn't the racist issue the other way? Don't we hate swedes here in Finland? FInnish education is extremly hard though needing to know the two lanugages, but I can see it is very needed if you do live in places such as Vaasa.
Havn't been to Vaasa yet, but I have lot of family there, so I will be going there quite soon I believe. Wildchild87 Doubtful About It All. CadalMord guerrilla. KillerGon UM Troll member. Saartje Supernatural. Guys, be pleased you only have to learn ONE other language. I have to learn three French, German and English and I'm not able to drop one. So be happy you live in Finland and not in Belgium. Yeah but I mean apart from your mother tongue in my case it's dutch.
ViolentForest ;D. I'd like to learn a European language, Swedish or Finnish would be cool, we only learn English in school here, the only languages you can learn in colleges and stuff is Spanish, Italian, French, and Japanese.
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