For many languages with official status, more often than not, there would be some sort of standardisation of that particular language, at least to that country itself. In some non-English languages, this standardisation would center around the variety used in the capital or largest cities. For instance, Standard Japanese is developed around the Tokyo variety … Continue reading Norwegian’s many dialects
Norwegian
What makes the Danish language so… incomprehensible?
In Scandinavian country banter, Denmark usually gets the short end of the stick by having the language everyone would make fun of. Several comedy videos have shown how garbled the Danish language sounds to Norwegian and Swedish speakers, and to much more hilarious effect, even fellow Danish speakers. If one thinks this cannot appear any … Continue reading What makes the Danish language so… incomprehensible?
So, how did Swedish (and Norwegian) gain word accents?
If you hear spoken Swedish and Norwegian, you would find that these languages tend to sound considerably more melodic compared to many of their Germanic counterparts. This difference is predominantly attributed to their 'pitch-accent' feature, where certain stressed syllables tend to come with some form of tone, or more rather, accent. To recap, in Swedish, … Continue reading So, how did Swedish (and Norwegian) gain word accents?
Putting a ring on it — The å’s diacritic
The letter 'å' (typed using Alt+0229) is perhaps one of the most recognisable letters in the languages of Scandinavia, as you may have recalled the last time you went strolling about in an Ikea store. It is even the entire name of certain places in Norway and Sweden. So too does it represent a unit … Continue reading Putting a ring on it — The å’s diacritic
A Non-Anglocentric Language Tier System?
1. How many languages do you know ? Okay, lemme define this question. To “know” a language, usually means to have the knowledge to speak, read, write, understand and communicate in a language. So yeah, as of now, I do know quite a bunch of languages to varying standards, like English, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, French, Japanese, […]
The Language Closet 