Speaking foreign lingo

[LissaJous]

French: Je suis, du es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont --- 6 different forms
German: Ich bin, du bist, er/es/sie ist, wir sind, sie sind, sie sind --- 4 forms (plus ihr seid)
English: I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, you are, they are --- 3 forms

Swedish: Ja är, du är, han/hon/den/det är, vi är, ni är, de är --- 1 form

Sentence structure is a lot easier than German and a lot like English (in some ways simpler). Pronunciation may stymie some people, with the intonation and double-stressed words. It sounds so beautiful, how could you not want to learn it!

[shaunaneto]

You could have fooled me. Seriously, you could have fooled me. The booties* I knew who who were studying Norwegian were always at pains to tell me how difficult it is.

Ah, Slartibartfast. Didn't he win an award for the fjords?

For difficult you should look at Polish. I did, then quickly walked away.

This map of Germanic languages kind of illustrates another reason why Nordic languages are sort of easy'ish to pick up. We fit into the West German group, and Nordic is North German.



That's not to say there's any mutual intelligibility, but there is something of a head start. As there is with learning French to be honest. Although I'm finding Bokmal Norsk far far more logical as far as rules of the language go.

Hello, Hallo, Hallo, Hej, Hei, Hej, Hallo.

[LissaJous]

I like maps. Especially colourful ones. You give me maps, I give you bullet points Tackatack!

[Martyn P]

For difficult you should look at Polish. I did, then quickly walked away.

This map of Germanic languages kind of illustrates another reason why Nordic languages are sort of easy'ish to pick up. We fit into the West German group, and Nordic is North German.

[snip!]

That's not to say there's any mutual intelligibility, but there is something of a head start. As there is with learning French to be honest. Although I'm finding Bokmal Norsk far far more logical as far as rules of the language go.

Hello, Hallo, Hallo, Hej, Hei, Hej, Hallo.

Polish ain't so bad really, it shares a lot with other Slavic languages (verb roots etc) and if you know one of them moderately well, learning Polish is pretty straightforward. The problem that I had with Polish is that it is (unlike, say Russian) quite dialectical and you can find some miserable bugger in the North speaking what appears to be a totally different language to someone in the (say) South.

Out of all those Eastern European languages, I found Romanian to be the one that stumped me, but then as you noted above, I just took one look then quickly ran away. Albanian is hard too.

[TheReverand]

For difficult you should look at Polish. I did, then quickly walked away

Its not so difficult really, and its a beautiful language, once you get your head round a few rules of the language it all falls into place