Swedish or Danish?

Okay, so I'm thinking about learning one of these languages besides the two I'm going to do at university. I'm having trouble deciding because I love both Denmark and Sweden.

I'd like to do Danish because I know that aside from Denmark, it's also spoken in the Faroe Islands, Greenland and parts of Germany, but there's also a large Swedish-speaking minority in Finland and Aland is unilingually Swedish. I'm also in love with Copenhagen and Danish music.

Swedish sounds more pleasing to the ear and has more speakers, plus I've always wanted to explore northern Sweden.

Any advice?

Reply 1

jonnythemoose

Sounds like you'd prefer Danish to me. However don't worry, there's nothing to stop you learning Swedish at a later date...I imagine the two are similar in the same way that Portuguese/Spanish are; so by learning one you'll be learning a lot of the other at the same time. Suerte!

Reply 2

Snufkin

Universities Forum Helper

Swedish does sound nicer in my opinion, Scandinavians often joke about how ugly Danish sounds - but that's no reason not to learn it if you're interested in Denmark.

Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are all mutually intelligible; a speaker of one will usually be able to understand the other. Don't decide which language to learn on the basis of number of speakers or geographic distribution of those speakers, it doesn't really matter which one you learn if your goal is general communication. With regard to the Faroe Islands and Greenland: whilst they are still technically Danish possessions, the Danish language is not and never has been widely spoken there. Greenlanders and the Faroese probably speak better English than they do Danish.

Reply 3

cool pilot dude

Original post by jonnythemoose

Your pic is ****ing scary! :biggrin:

please dont tell me jigsaw is your role model!

Reply 4

Gales

Original post by Samual

I don't know about the Faroese, but the Greenlanders certainly do speak fluent Danish (even though it's not official there). Greenland's education system is carried out in Greenlandic and Danish and most of their media and business is done through Danish :smile:

Reply 5

chrisjar

I've often heard it said (mainly by Swedes/Norwegians) that Danes talk like they've got their mouths full, which actually is quite descriptive...

That said I prefer Danish, plus there are more Danish TV programmes around at the moment, so that's a bonus too.

Reply 6

Snufkin

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Gales

Where are you getting this information? I doubt whether more than 20% of the population speak Danish. I was under the impression that Greenlandic was the sole language of instruction in most schools. I believe Danish is used in higher education and at the university in Nuuk, but most Greenlanders don't go to university.

Reply 7

Gales

Original post by Samual

Some Greenlanders I've spoken to :smile:

That's why I'm unsure about the Faroes. Never spoken to a Faroese person :tongue:

Reply 8

Snufkin

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Gales

Some Greenlanders I've spoken to :smile:

That's why I'm unsure about the Faroes. Never spoken to a Faroese person :tongue:

Presumably you've spoken to Greenlanders who attend university; they are not really representative of the whole population. Danish is not spoken by most Greenlanders or Faroe Islanders. There's really nothing else to say.

Reply 9

nulli tertius

Original post by Gales

Some Greenlanders I've spoken to :smile:

That's why I'm unsure about the Faroes. Never spoken to a Faroese person :tongue:

I have had conversations with Faroese and like all my conversations with Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, Sami and Danes they have been entirely conducted in English.