Languages in the Nordic region are often grouped together because of their countries’ proximities-but are they really similar?
In this post we’ll see a bit about each language to help you decide which you might want to learn.
Overview of Each Language
Swedish
Swedish uses the same alphabet as English with the addition of these three letters: å, ä, and ö. It’s considered a North Germanic language and has about 10 million native speakers and 3 million second language speakers. The Swedish language is most similar to Norwegian and Danish.
Finnish
Finnish uses the same extra letters (å, ä, and ö) as Swedish. Finnish is a Uralic language. It has about 5.5 million native speakers and not many second language speakers. It is most similar to Estonian and Hungarian.
Norwegian
Norwegian uses the extra letters æ, ø, and å. It’s a North Germanic language and has about 4.3 million native speakers. It is most similar to Swedish, Danish and Icelandic.
How long does each take to learn?
Let’s look at the Foreign Language Institute’s guidelines for how long each language takes to learn, assuming English is your native language. (Click here to go to FSI’s official page)
Swedish: 24 weeks (Easy) Finnish: 44 weeks (Hard) Norwegian: 24 weeks (Easy)
Which is most similar to English?
Of the three, Norwegian is usually considered the most similar in English. Word order, grammar and accents are most similar to English. Don’t be mistaken though, they still are not similar enough as to where you would understand someone without knowing the language.
Here are some examples of Norwegian and English phrases side by side:
God natt. = Good night.
Kan du snakke saktere? = Can you speak more slowly?
Snakker du engelsk? = Do you speak English?
Which is the most spoken?
Swedish is the most spoken, and is considered an official language in both Sweden and Finland. Finnish students must learn Swedish in school. It is also an official language in the Nordic Council and European Union.
Differences in accent:
It’s hard to read about an accent and know what they sound like. So, below is a link to a good Youtube video where Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish speakers have a conversation!
Can Nordic Countries Understand Each Other? (Finnish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian)
Differences in grammar:
Norwegian and Swedish are quite similar grammatically, and are the most similar to English.
Both languages have the same word order as English, which is Subject Verb Object.
Jag sprang (Swe.) = I ran
Jeg løp (Nor.) = I ran
Both languages don’t conjugate verbs in the present tense, so that aspect is way easier than English. Swedish and Norwegian have gendered words, unlike English. There are 3 genders in the both languages – Feminine, Masculine and Neuter. Definite articles (the) are added as suffixes and are not separate words. A and an function the same way as separate words.
Before I keep boring you with these descriptions, here are some good resources to check out an overview of both languages:
Quick Guide to Norwegian Grammar
Now, for Finnish. It is really different than the other two languages. The only thing that’s really the similar here is the word order. They use the same word order as English: Subject-Verb-Object.
Finnish’s key characteristic is that it is agglutinative. This means, you can keep adding suffixes to a verb to add meaning. Sometimes you can make an entire sentence from just one word! For example:
Juoksentelisinkohan. = I wonder if I should run around.
Finnish has vowel harmony and consonant gradation in their language, which means the same word can have what appears to be a completely different “conjugation” while meaning the same thing. This isn’t just for verbs – it applies to nouns too. It must “harmonize” with the words around it. If you aren’t already familiar with the concept, it can be difficult to tackle at first.
There are 6 different verb types, 15 noun cases, no articles, no grammatical gender and no future tense…
While this language is much harder to learn, don’t let that discourage you. If you want to get started, check out these resources to get an idea about it:
Which should you learn?
You should learn the one that interests you most! At the end of the day, learning a language isn’t easy and you’ll have a better time staying motivated if you actually intend to use the language.