Is it easy to learn Swedish if you know Danish?

Most Swedes will be able to understand and make themselves understood in a few weeks, if they do not already are able when they arrive in Denmark. But for the same reason that it is so easy to start with, it is hard to obtain what you might call fluency in Danish.

Are Danish and Swedish intelligible?

By the linguistic definition of ““mutual intelligibility,” yes, Danes and Swedes are mutually intelligible to each other. The languages are quite similar when compared to mutually unintelligible languages, such as Mandarin and Swahili.

Is Danish harder to learn than Swedish?

Danish is really closest to English but hardest to learn because of the porridge like pronounciation and the glottal stop. Swedish is a singing language and you will never learn the differences in melody and the grave and acute accent making the same word mean different things (like in Chinese).

Can Swedes and Danes just speak their own language without effort?

Popular Scandinavian television series have spread the rumor internationally, that Swedes and Danes can just speak their own language and understand one another without making any kind of effort. The reality is a little more complicated.

Which type of Swedish is easier to understand for Danish speakers?

Danes tend to understand Norwegian better than Swedish. Some say that Norwegian is the type of Swedish you can understand =). It makes sense as the vocabulary is almost identical, so when you get the phonetical differences, it is straightforward to understand.

What is the difference between Danish and Swedish?

The reality is a little more complicated. Danish and Swedish are two very closely related languages, but they have some important differences in how they’re pronounced, and generally, a Swede wouldn’t necessarily understand Danish if he or she hadn’t had a lot of previous exposure to the language.

Do Scandinavians speak English and Danish?

Well, the reality is a little more complicated. The Scandinavian languages are close. But a Dane speaking Danish like he would with his fellow countrymen would be difficult to grasp for a Swede who hasn’t got a lot of exposure to Danish. This doesn’t mean that Scandinavians switch to English when communicating, though.