scandinavian languages- which one i'd better to learn

Get thee hence, vile daemon of the abyss!

Yeah, as a Finnish speaker I can say that I can't really understand Hungarian at all, or even recognise any words.

Surely you'd prefer if I went beyond the yonder! I love Icelandic because of its pure culture and identity!! It has the same everything for 2000 years! They can still read the damn sagas in school ffs! In fact I love Scandinavia in general.

Apparently at schools in Iceland you get taught a language they call "Scandinavian", which is an archaic hybrid of all the Norse languages, and being fluent in that enables you to understand Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Pretty handy.

Who told you that?!

My old roommate was icelandic (although, to be fair, he didn't go to school in iceland, so it might all be ********)

How similar are Icelandic and Faroese?

Apparently at schools in Iceland you get taught a language they call "Scandinavian", which is an archaic hybrid of all the Norse languages, and being fluent in that enables you to understand Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Pretty handy.


What about Estonian/Karelian/Mordvin, assuming you've come across them? (just out of interest :P )

I haven't ever really seen Karelian or Mordvin anywhere, but Estonian is often fairly easy to at least basically understand.

Is the Sami language related to Finnish?

Yeah but, I thought I'd just say. I can't believe the amount of people I've met in England who when I say I live in Sweden and stuff they're like "Oh.. so you can understand Finnish too?!"

But seeing as only Norway, Sweden and Denmark are a part of Scandinavia shouldn't leave you with much choice as in which language to learn. (Sorry if I'm mistaken here).

I'm kinda biased, but i'd say Swedish.

Although, if you speak german, Danish is pretty easy to understand.

Personally though, i'd love to learn Icelandic and read the Sagas in their original language...

I wouldn't bother with Finnish.....It's really hard, and whilst a knowledge of norwegian/swedish/danish would allow you to understand bits of all three languages as they're so similar, Finnish is just...different.

If you're fluent in Swedish you can also read Danish and Norwegian like 80% (I don't know how it works the other way around), if spoken you could communicate with Norwegians on a basic level but Danes you're unlikely to understand, just because of the vast difference in pronounciation. Danish in terms of pronounciation could be easier for you since you know German, but grammar-wise you'll going to do fine choosing any of the three.

Finnish isn't impossible to learn, but a lot harder since you won't have any kind of linguistical base for it. It's an interesting langauage but as said before, it won't be of the largest use..

To be honest, go with Norwegian, purely because out of the three mainland Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian), it gives you the most access to the other two. Swedish speakers cannot understand Danish so well, but Norwegian speakers can understand Swedish and Danish.

Finnish is not a Scandinavian language and many would argue it's not even a Nordic language.

Icelandic would be good if you want a challenge, but only opens up Iceland to you. Danish will not open up Iceland to you at all. They are taught it at school, but few keep it up to fluency.

Faroese only opens the Faroe Islands up to you.

I've studied Icelandic at UCL, and Swedish too, so I say go for whatever. Norwegian would give you greater access to the other languages, but it is your own choice.

They're all right, Norwegians understand both Swedish and Danish, and can have conversations with both nations, whilst they seem to have more difficulties understanding each other. Finnish is completely different, I'm 100% Norwegian and can't understand a word. They don't speak very much English either, as Swe/Dan/Norwegian people does.

Another thing is that because of the oil-industry, I would recommend Norwegian. I've heard there's quite the opportunity to make a great deal of money, being able to speak Norwegian&Russian or Norwegian&Chinese. We do a great deal of business with both countries.