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Similar languages

  • 28-08-2020 12:25pm
    #1
    Upforthematch
    Registered Users Posts: 1,328 ✭✭✭


    Just wondering which of these languages are the most and least similar

    Norwegian / Danish
    Croatian / Serbian
    Czech / Slovac
    Irish / Scottish Gaelic
    Estonian / Latvian
    Spannish / Portuguese


Comments

  • #2
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 5,121 ✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    Upforthematch wrote: »
    Just wondering which of these languages are the most and least similar

    Norwegian / Danish
    Croatian / Serbian
    Czech / Slovac
    Irish / Scottish Gaelic
    Estonian / Latvian
    Spannish / Portuguese

    Haven't a clue but I think you are mixing up Estonian/Latvian.
    Estonian is related to Finnish, Latvian is related to Lithuanian.


  • #3
    SouthWesterly
    Registered Users Posts: 6,436 ✭✭✭SouthWesterly


    Portuguese is similar to Romanian. It's easy for Romanians to learn portugese
    There are also 400 Portuguese words with an English root.


  • #4
    Upforthematch
    Registered Users Posts: 1,328 ✭✭✭Upforthematch


    pg633 wrote: »
    Haven't a clue but I think you are mixing up Estonian/Latvian.
    Estonian is related to Finnish, Latvian is related to Lithuanian.

    Thanks pg633 I meant Lithuanian and Latvian!

    But now that you said it I can add Finnish & Estonian to the list!


  • #5
    iamwhoiam
    Registered Users Posts: 16,067 ✭✭✭✭iamwhoiam


    Dutch and German are similar


  • #6
    New Home
    Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 76,307 Mod ✭✭✭✭New Home


    I remember a Swedish girl telling me that to her Dutch sounded like a mixture of Swedish and German.


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  • #7
    Yurt2
    Registered Users Posts: 9,381 ✭✭✭Yurt2


    Serbian and Croatian (you can also throw in Bosnian and Montenegrin in there) are basically the same language.

    A Norwegian speaker I know says Danish is highly intelligible to the Norwegian ear (but for whatever reason the reverse isn't true. Danes have to strain a bit to understand Norwegian.) Norwegians consume a lot of Danish media which probably accounts for that phenomenon.

    I haven't been exposed much to Scots-Gaelic but it sounds awfully similar to Donegal dialect (my Irish is poor however so I can't judge).


  • #8
    Yurt2
    Registered Users Posts: 9,381 ✭✭✭Yurt2


    Schweizerdeutsch is another weird one. It sounds like a Nordic person speaking German getting the pronunciation wrong.


  • #9
    KevinK
    Registered Users Posts: 659 ✭✭✭KevinK


    Serbian and Croatian are pretty much the same language, used to be called Serbs-Croatian until relatively recently. Interestingly enough SErbian uses Cyrillic script and Croatian uses Latin.
    Bosnian and Montenegrin are pretty much the same also.

    Czech and Slovak are very similar, (e.g. A lot of TV in Slovakia is in Czech), but there definitely are some differences,

    My experience of travelling with Norwegians and Danes are that Norwegians can understand the Danes but not vice versus, I think Norwegian is a bit faster. In fact I think Swedish and Norwegian are a bit closer.


  • #10
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    SouthWesterly wrote: »
    Portuguese is similar to Romanian. It's easy for Romanians to learn portugese
    There are also 400 Portuguese words with an English root.


    Romanian vrs Portuguese.


    Written portuguese i can understand. But spoken its a diff story. THere are some rules a spanish word with n with often becomes m ..una becomes uma .etc.

    With italian its the opposite ...written is harder spoken is easier.

    Catalan is close to italian french and spanish.

    Dutch is like in between german and english.

    The grammar in Romanian is very different from the grammar in portugese. They still have declension in romanian. And word order can be VERY different from other latin langauges. But some words are the same.

    In Italian Spanish and portuegese ..the grammar rules word order and vocab are ALL similar. In french comapred to spanish and italian ..the rules are similar but the vocab is more diff ..for portugese its a little more similar. Whereas in romanian the grammar is diff but the vocab is similar to portugese.


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