Article about the Scandinavian languages

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I thought this article about the 3 Scandinavian languages might be of interest to those of you who are interested in linguistics.

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the- ... ice-of-one

It is interesting.

That one phrase they put on audio for you to compare is quite interesting.

All three languages use virtually the same words to ask "what is your name?".

But the lilt and over all sound of each are totally different. The Danish person does sound drunk, the Swede sounds like an upper class Brit stating something with utmost precision (even though it isnt in English). Only the Norwejan sounds like my own notion of the stereotype Norse accent in which every phrase rhymes with "smorgasbord".

There is variation to it as well, talk to an old person on Gotland (Sweden) and you wont understand a single word, most other parts of Sweden is fairly coherent. Or compare the regional languages of Norweigan, one sounds like a southern Swedish and the other more Norweigan and is barely understandable, even to a Scandinavian.

Also parts of Finland (northern part along the coastline) speaks a Swedish based language known as Nerpes-Swedish, but it has also strayed from the original language.

Yes Norwejian, and Swedish have regional dialects.The article gives the simplistic impression that everyone in all three countries speaks the standard Berlitz version of the nation's language. At a party in college an American lady who had lived in a rural part of central Norway, and a Swedish guy tried to speak to each other in that Norwejian dialect, and his standard Swedish. They had a lot of trouble communicating as I recall.

In those "what is your name" examples the "va" must mean "what". The "hetter/hedder" must mean "do you call", and "du" must mean "you". So each is literally "what do you call yourself" (like "como se llama?" in Spanish).

"Va" is abridged for "vad" or "hvad" (what)
"hetter" = "Heter" (name...ish)
"du" = "you"

Literally the construction means: "what is your name"? Almost like "Como se llama" but in a different word order, like "como llama se" like in German: "Wie heisen sie"? Particles like "The", "is" and "it" can sometimes have equivalents ("är" and "den"), but can also be dropped in situations and can be implied by varying the words like "Kyckling" = Chicken, "Kycklingen" = The chicken.

Scandinavian languages, at least Swedish, use a lot of words from German, like Kirche = Kyrka = Church or Haund = Hund = Dog.