Old Norse | Can Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic speakers understand it?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 เม.ย. 2024
- Old Norse - the Viking language | Can speakers of modern Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic understand it? Let's find out! 🤓
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🤠💬🤓 Jackson Crawford, Old Norse and Norse mythology expert → @Jackson Crawford
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🇳🇴💬🤓 Torleif Villmones, Norwegian teacher online → @norwegian square
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🇩🇰💬🤓 Michael Rasmussen, Danish teacher online → @MicsLanguages
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🇮🇸💬🤓 Óskar Bragi, Icelandic online teacher → @Learning Icelandic With Speak Viking,
📱Instagram: @speakviking
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro in Old Norse, Danish, Icelandic and Norwegian
2:16 - Intro in English
3:17 - 1. Sentence
05:45 - 2. Sentence
10:03 - 3. Sentence
17:55 - 4. Sentence
25:30 - 5. Sentence
36:07 - Commentary in English and behind the scenes
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#vikings
Me, an Italian, watching the whole thing without understanding a single word: entertained.
Here an Spanish watching it exactly in the same way. I don't understand anything but I loved the video
Me dutch, netherlands the same
And also a Romanian now, guys this is not our zone🤣🤣🤣🤣
same, i'm from germany
Welsh here
Icelandic guy is like "when are we gonna stop speaking Icelandic and get to the Old Norse?"
I know, right? I"m looking at it like, "where's the difference?" lol. Kind of a stretch to call them separate languages
@@hannahwalmer1124 Well it is similar but still it can be quite difficult to read Old Norse poems for us BUT general text is not that difficult. Words have though changed through the centuries.
@@MrPicky ... the words haven't changed that much in form or meaning though a few have, many sound more formal, biblical or poetic... what I feel is the main problem for a modern day Icelander to understand Old Norse has more to do with cultural change. When I read old texts my main obstacle is words related to things and activities that are no longer a part of modern day life, experience and language.
... and that can render a text completely unintelligible. "As he came through the flounk he twank the oomah on the splunker..." if you get my drift ;-)
@@sgjoni words have changed with the changes of pronounciation, like Leifr became Leifur etc., and some words have changed meanings (like sími was a thread but is now phone) but otherwise I agree with you. My answer was just "simpler" ;)
I'm Icelandic and I concur - his Old Norse is tremendously Icelandic, but I also feel his spoken language exaggerated. Languages have the tendency of finding the lazy path. Comparing my experience of written vs. spoken Icelandic, Swedish, English as well as Turkish and Chinese, all have a strict set of how to write which doesn't always harmonize with how it's spoken. I seriously doubt that people would have said "áðr" even if they chose to write it that way - "u" is a natural sound there (áður) - pretty much like how he blows his "wh" in "where", he'd also sound hvalr (hvalur) like "hhúalr" rather than the more correct "kvalur".
Key take away: if you are going to time travel back to the Viking age, take an Icelander with you.
it is an absolute must if you do
@@heartonfire583 just because you learn a language doesn’t mean you know the sound changes from its old form
You could also argue that a Greek would be the better choice, albeit for completely different reasons.
Or, a linguistically interested west Norwegian. Like me! :D
What is called "Old Norse" today is simply middle age Old Icelandic. That has nothing to do with the vikings. The vikings spoke Danish Language (Danelaw) which is a complete different language as attested in the hundreds of British Viking placenames such as Rugby, Baldersby, Arnesby, Hareby, Dalby, Allerby, Stisted, Felsted, Alsager, Overstrand, Riseholme, Birkholme, Marholm, Langholm, Sandtoft, Horning, Lindum etc.
All these names are Danish. None of them are "Old Norse" Icelandic.
As a swede, the pronunciation I could HARDLY understand any of it. But the sentences kind of made sense on some of them. Man I have a lot of admiration for Icelandic people
I totally agree with you there, I couldn't understand what he was saying, but once it was written down I got some of it, which is strange because I speak none of the Scandinavian languages.
I det högsta trädet i skogen byggde två mesar redet sitt. It sounds like old Swedish which makes sence.
@@neilferguson7176 written language is almost always more intelligible for someone speaking a related language than the spoken form.
I can understand a bit of Dutch and German when written despite speaking only English and Esperanto.
As an Icelander I could hardly understand the pronunciation either. Sorry!
But every word on screen I understood.
Jag håller med / I agree! Tycker att det är synd att Sverige inte var representerat i denna video. Lite tråkigt...
icelandic guy : just chilling
danish guy : trying hard to understand
norwegian guy : why i am here
Am I real viking?
þú jafnvel víkingur bróðir?
@@toddwebb7521 það er skemmtilegt!
He wasn't trying. And I really don't know what they taught him at school. Sorry.. probably a bad day - and the way he re heard was.. like he wasn't listening.. bad day on the field for him..
Highly accurate
As an Icelander, I was preparing myself for disappointment, because we've always been told we'd be able to communicate fairly easily with hypothetical Old Norse time travelers, and I half expected this video to come and dash that prideful dream... But no, I understood everything, even without the written form, and am very pleased to see we still got it!
Kemr mann í opna skjöldu
Já okey áhugavert
I honestly don't see any reason at all to call Icelandic that rather than just Norse other than of course that Iceland is a nation now; there's no or very little disconnect between the Viking age and today in terms of population on the island and the language has undergone very little changes except in vowel sounds and some word endings
I’m not sure about that. At the end is not an Old Norse time traveler speaking but an American guy whose Icelandic influence is big and therefore we can’t factually say what he spoke was 100% right both grammatically and spoken.
@@YouGotUnlucky true but he's got likely the best reconstruction anywhere and if we can say with a high degree of certainty that classical latin pronunciation has been reconstructed, we can probably get just as close here
I'm from Iceland and I had the exact same reaction to everything as Óskar did! I knew we were quite close to Old Norse but I didn't realise it was this close.
It would be interesting to travel back in time to medieval Norway and see just how much I'd understand.
Yes Sir,...one Delorean coming up.
Yes, it would be interesting to conduct a more in-depth experiment. Understanding five isolated sentences is one thing. But do you think you could hold a conversation with a speaker of Old Norse?
@@robertstewart239 It depends on the pronounciation. For example, I understand Faroese quite well but only in its written form, the pronounciation is quite different. All we have of Old Norse is the written language, but if most words are pronounced the same, then yes I could absolutely have a conversation with an Old Norse speaker.
Just speak Icelandic with a Norwegian accent.
Well, you people as island dwellers, kind of managed to preserve the old ways, having little to no influences from the continent. That's how I explain it. Greetings from RO!
Super interesting to see how Icelandic isolation has helped to retain a large proportion of the old language.
Not necessarily just isolation, but an active preservation of the language, including modern reforms to remove Danish loan words after independence
Expert: "Snjór fell einn dag í skóginum"
Norwegian: " I don't know this Snjorbert dude"
Yeah. I don't know him either. Perhaps a friend of Norbert walking in the woods on a snowy day?
That would be in swedish: "Snön föll en dag i skogen"
lol
In southern Norway we would say " Snøen falt en dag i skogen" But we have problems understanding the northern Norwegians.
I was laughing because to me, as a native spanish speaker, it sounde almost exactly like "señor" (sir, in english)
Love how everyone is looking in the beginning. The Norwegian, questioning every life choice, the Dane, realising he made a mistake agreeing to this and the Icelander just casually listening. Haha
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Lol!
Fun fact : in French, we have the word "mésange" which comes from Frankish and has the same origin as "meisingar". I would never have guessed, but just checked.
Merci pour l'indice. Je n'y aurais pas pensé.
Oui, j'y avais pensé aussi.
Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering if there was any connection. Perhaps this is why there is a connection in mythology, which Tolkien implied in Lord of the Rings, between birds and spies or messages.
@@matthewgrumbling4993 Seems more likely that came from the use of birds to send messages for much of history.
well if im not mistaken, the vikings did come to northern france which would be modern day normandy today so i guess there might exist some french words with roots in old norse? anyhow, pretty fascinating nonetheless
I'm totally shocked to see that Icelandic and Old Norse are basically the same language... Cheers for Iceland !
I'm not.
What did you expect? "Old Norse" IS Icelandic. Where did you think they got it from? Certainly not from the Scandinavian Vikings who spoke Danske Tunge in the Danelaw. All their villages still have Danish names to this day: Rugby, Baldersby, Arnesby, Hareby, Dalby, Allerby, Stisted, Felsted, Alsager, Overstrand, Riseholme, Birkholme, Marholm, Langholm, Sandtoft, Horning, etc.). There is no "Old Norse" in the Danelaw. No -Stadur´s there, what so ever.
@@Rhoadie1Me neither!
I really want to learn Icelandic. It seems so interesting
@@pxolqopt3597Download the book series “Íslenska fyrir alla”. Free books and free audios. Happy learning.
I love the Icelander just repeating back the exact same sentence when asked to translate
🇮🇸
exactly... he's not translating it at all... just putting Icelandic accent to the old norse. I think he misunderstood what he was meant to do there
@@joi76 The old norse sentences could definitely be used in some very poetic writing, they still make sense in icelandic, even though they aren't really how a normal person would speak. I do agree with you though, that he should've been more consistent in changing them to adhere to how people actually speak.
Ahahaha
@@joi76 There isn't much to translate.
YES finally! Now all we need is “Old English can Dutch, German and West Frisian speaker understand it” video and my life will be complete
I agree with this!
They might figure it out much better than native english speakers
I would love that too, being a German speaker myself, but even more I would like to see one featuring West Low German/Low Saxon.
That video is exactly what we need
@@elenna_alexia Absolutely yes! People just do not realise how diverse the German language is.
I am Norwegian, from Bergen. I can somewhat understand the written language. Understanding the spoken word is far more difficult.
do they speak a significatly different norwegian in bergen?
@@viktorreiter8811 different enough to immediately tell theyre from Bergen (or at least western Norway) but completely understandable for anyone in the country
@@viktorreiter8811 norwegian dialects are so different from each other that they could be considered different languages. For me living in the middle of norway i find swedish easier to understand than for example bergensk
Thoose seaside cities dialects are tricky to understand.
the Islandic is modern =/ i wanted t root language (traditional), i found a dictionary in eng with little words for old norse n then i mixed with t modern uen i dont find, is fk! If someone get some dictionary or gramatic book i thank.
What is really cool is seeing the cognates in English, given the history of old Norse is integral to the history of English linguistically. Literally "þessen" being the root of "this" and "these" is just one the coolest damn things to unpack when looking at Scandinavian languages old and modern.
I guessed a couple of words correctly here or there, but I don't speak any Nordic language. I did however learn German and was wondering if that was why. Now I'm not so sure.
@@warpedweft9004
I speak a tiny bit of Danish and did learn German in school years ago (I'm shite at it though), but I'm the most fluent in English. I think for the majority of the words I felt they were most similar to Danish and quite rarely English. It's difficult to tell, even in the written forms, when English doesn't use ð anymore
@@benas_st Its possible that because I'm an older person there are words we used as children that are no longer used. English vocabulary changed very rapidly after television and the internet became widely available. Becoming a "global village" had it's effect. No one uses words like "weald" anymore, except in place names. I noticed a huge difference when going back to the UK to visit. In the mid 1990s, all the regional accents were very obvious. In 2013, not so much. The accent seemed to have flattened considerably and word choice had changed, particularly in the "home counties".
@@Vini2157 but I think they are under greater pressure now than they ever have been. We're already losing adverbs and some nouns are being used as other word forms, not to mention the misuse of the apostrophe. There was actually a Society for the Preservation of the Apostrophe in Australia. Some work mates joined me up because I was always on their backs about their misuse of them, but sadly, that folded a few years back when they conceded defeat.
Every Icelander watching this has realised they could easily get a qualification in Old Norse
Pretty much yeah😂
If old norse folk happen to come to us, we'll count on you icelanders. You'll be perfect to comunicate with them than 😀
Makes sense.
Are you Icelandic-speaker? If so pleased to meet you. If not, pleased to meet you as well.
@@HasufelyArod No, I'm a Welsh speaker, and also a Japanese and Scottish Gaelic learner
@@NiaJustNia Wonderful. As I said previously, nice to meet you. Braf cwrdd â chi.and
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrowyllllantysiliogogogoch
The Icelander looks like he's trying not to laugh, like he's thinking "So... when does the challenge actually start?" 🤣
_"In the highest tree of the forrest"_
I guess the propability of finding a forrest in Iceland is the same as finding a train station.
@@muslimsrememberapostacyday556 Or a skin pigment
@@filiphelset872 Iceland is actually very diverse
@@sarapesenacker4781 Which is terrible, it should be Icelanders only.
@@sapereaude5121 I think Icelanders dont mind having immigrants living there, as long as they do what Romans do in Rome.
Little sad we had no swedish representative here! I as a Swede did understand parts of this and could have done some good guessing! To everyone complaining about the norwegian guy please stop. I know this dilemma all too well. When put on the spot you easily blackout and things that you normally would find simple get more difficult. Kudos to all participating for an entertaining video! :)
Good to hear someone standing up for the Norwegians! 👍
As a Danish person who has lived in Iceland, this was all really easy to understand, even without the written version.
I would like to add that 12th century Norse and modern Scandinavian languages as well as Icelandic have a lot of words that phonetically sound almost the same in modern English. Just take words like: ship, boat, axe, hammer, sail, mast, anchor, shield, spear, sword, knife etc. 😀
Exactly, as an older literate native English speaker who also understands Scots I am constantly amazed by the amount of words I understand once I've heard them many times. The outrageously complex grammar hides a lot but then you hear that word in the right part of the sentence, sex, singular or plural and suddenly boom it's English
Geordie (English Newcastle dialect) is very interesting from this point as well considering their heavy viking influence and dialectal words such as "bairn/s" for children.
Yeah, I get thrown back with suprise, realizing I can faintly understand some words as a Native english speaker. I would never have guessed that.
Scandinavian borrowed a ton of words from Low Saxon, and English borrowed a ton of words from Scandinavian.
Shall. the slang word in australia to drink all your drink is to Scull your beer, go on a tour, sail, hound, a ford (though it is a difference thing. Way....
This video should be called "Icelandic: can Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic speakers understand it?"
Or may be "Old Icelandic: Can Norwegian, Danish & modern Icelandic speakers understand it?"
@@NikhileshSurve Or maybe "Old Norse: Can Norweigan, Danish, and Modern Norse speakers understand it?"
@@jeremias-serus Yes, that sounds good too.
I just wonder who claimed old Norse and modern Icelandic to be two different languages in the first place... :p
@@germanguywithjumpercables7955 Depends on your definition of language.
Being Norwegian, the Norwegian guy is totally lost. I didn’t understand everything, but I would say any other Norwegian would be about as good as the Dane
Swede here and yes its not that difficult. I understand about half the words without reading.
His dialect is too northern and cut off
@@slickboxingidentityveritas1932 even if he doesn’t speak the “common norwegian” or whatever the fuck, his dialect doesn’t affect his understanding of norwegian. his dialect is literally unrelated to his understanding of old norse lmao
@@noahkirschtein8169 Not true. A Western Norwegian would (usually) understand it better than a Northern Norwegian because our dialects are more similar to old norse / icelandic than in the other regions.
@@Mari-eq8rx what on earth are you on about ‘’closer to old norse and icelandic’’? You might be better at understanding other languages, I don’t know, but don’t tell me western dialect is closer to old Norse and Icelandic 😂 because of ‘nynorsk’? No(r)way José
My grandfather was a Finland-Swede, born in 1888 in Ostrobothnia. He went back to Finland around 1970 with my mother, and she was told his Swedish seemed more like Icelandic than modern Swedish.
I think in that case "Icelandic" would just be a way of saying "hard to understand". Though I will say Modern Icelandic sounds somewhat similar to Finnish (which might have influenced his accent) due to pre-aspiration and stress patterns.
My brother and sisters in iceland should be proud, to take care of their language all the way back from the Viking Age. best regards From a Norwegian. I realy love you and proud to call you brother and sisters.
Takk elsku frændi.
There are a few remnants of Gaelic in the language, 3:40 is where Icelandic diverted from Old Norse and into Gaelic in pronunciation. In the other Nordic languages double L as in fell is pronounced as a soft and long L, whereas in Iceland esp. W-Iceland the double L is pronounced as -tl like you'd do in Gaelic.
i just see Norwegians as my brothers and sisters
As an Icelander, I have always considered Norwegians as our adored older siblings and Icelandic as the oldest and best-preserved Norwegian dialect...
"it's not a competition, nobody wins anything" Jackson... My sweet innocent Jackson... You have spent too long in Old Norse, you have no idea the lengths these three countries will go to, to out-do each other!
Only if Sweden was a part of it as well. Denmark and Sweden fighting over Norway, ah the good old times.
@@Bronzescorpion Sweden didn't get through to the finals.
@@Bronzescorpion C'mon dude, we all know Norway was the senior part back in the Norway-Denmark and Norway-Sweden days. You shouldn't buy all the Danish and Swedish propaganda you hear on the internet! ;)
@@Gilmaris Not surprised as modern swedish is very close to arabic.
@JohanOffline Yeah. Except it's own people when they need refuge from the refugees.
Invandring är inget man skryter med Johan
This is practically Icelandic. Or should we say Icelandic is almost the same as old Norse. Very easy to understand for us Icelanders.
Jackson explained some of the lack of evolution processes that made Icelandic so close to Old Norse. In practice it's kind of "Nynorse".
I'd be curious to see early Old Norse and speakers of old Norse-derived dialects - of whatever language it might be, with Icelandic being an easy choice, being so close to it, however Old Norse itself developed and had variation among different places in Scandinavia. I'm curious how the dialects compare to the Old Norse that was the closest to Proto- Norse.
@@galgrunfeld9954 Interesting ideas.
I'd really like to learn Icelandic language, but Is almost impossible to find a good material on the internet...😞
@@francesco_giangre bro, icelandic people pratically dont speak their language, it's just english, it's sad
Once I ignored the pronunciation & focused on just what I figured the words were meant to be, I understood most of it.
I am Faroese, and my impression is that Icelandic is close to Old Norse, then comes Faroese, Norwegian and Danish in that order.
I hope you enjoy Ólavsøka next week! From an ethnic Caribbean 🇧🇧🇯🇲 living in the UK 🇬🇧 👍🏾
Modern Danish is closest to Danske Tunge spoken by the Danes in England from the 6th to the 11the century, then comes Norwegian, Swedish, and then Faroese, and finally Icelandic which have had the greatest changes due to them translitering the runes as if they were just plain letters rather than morphemic syllables.
~9:50 Completely random, but hearing how the Old Norse word for "bird," "Fuglar," is clearly cognate with the German "vogel" made me start wondering if English had an equivalent, and I realized that we do in "fowl" (looked it up to check, and sure enough, the old English version of "fowl" is "fugol"). I love spotting cognates like that, I've known the word "vogel" for years but never put it together with its English cognate until seeing the Norse version.
Great observation there!
In Italian we have "folaga" which is a species of bird
Fowl is bird. They are the same thing, English just uses bird in modern speech
It goes in all directions...
Vindauga (Old Norse) => Vindu (NO) => Window (EN)
Fenster (DE) => Fönster (SE)
Questioner (Old French) => Question (EN)
Frage (DE) => Fråga (SE)
Wow, an American speaking Old Norse. That's being Mr. worldwide
Not really. He looks like he might have some Scandinavian ancestry, certainly at least broadly European, and then his native English is a Germanic language already.
He's not a native American, so he's simply exploring his ethnic/cultural roots.
@@amjan I'm sorry my dude, but Americans have almost no "real" relationships to their ethnic roots unless they are newly arrived immigrants. A lot of Americans claim to be "Danish", for example but know nothing of the language, or even simple danish geography, and instead, they might perform some lame parody of Danishness by eating æbleskiver with remoulade and walking around in lederhosen during festivities. Americans don't really care about their roots, at least that has never been confirmed by my lived experience, and I come from a family of Danish-Americans (my side of the family simply went back to Denmark in the 20th century, so I guess we're Danish-American Danes if I were to put that in "American terms").
@@EusebiusAT Calm down. You totally missed the point. We are NOT talking about some random Americans, but about Mr. Jackson Crawford and what HE is doing.
@@amjan wiki says he has no Scandinavian heritage and is Scottish. So a Celtic/Scots ancestry
@@broadh2o980 Some parts of Scotland were conquered by Vikings and were ruled by them long time.
I am Italian and fluent in Danish and Norwegian (after almost 40 years in Scandinavia). I simply cannot understand how the Norwegian guy was not able to perform better.
We Norwegians can't either. Hopefully it's a technical sound problem or something, if not this guy has nothing to do being a teacher.
I'm not even Norwegian (or from Scandinavia) and, based on my limited knowledge of German and full knowledge of English, Dutch, and Frisian, I was, AT LEAST, able to *guess* what was being said and written. Even if my accuracy was pretty shit, I still didn't have as much trouble as the Norwegian bloke up there. He must have been experiencing the mother of all hangovers that morning to be *that* bad at deciphering *some* root words...
I'm half italian, half norwegian. I've lived in italy most of my life, but throughout the years I've studied various languages, many of which germanic. I think that being used to learning languages helps in this situation because you need to recognize slightly changed words, see patterns in how words change between languages, etc.
I don't think it's much of a coincidence that the Danish guy was better *and* could also speak swedish properly + understand norwegian; he honed the skills he needed for this thing.
@@lisahogholt9713 I agree. I live now in the Netherlands and I am also fluent in Dutch and German. Germanic languages help.
Yeah, I don't even speak any of the languages in the video (I've studied Swedish for 7 years) but I got much more than he did.
I've never been this enthusiastic about a language class. As a Dane, it's cool to see how the old and the neighboring languages compare. It's incredible how similar it is.
Ótrúlega auðvelt að skilja. Kemur skemmtilega á óvart 🤗
Vegna þess að "Old Norse" ER íslenskt, svo við hverju bjóstu?
Hvaðan heldurðu að þeir hafi það? Svo sannarlega ekki frá skandinavísku víkingunum sem töluðu Danske Tunge í Danelagen. Þorp þeirra í Bretlandi bera dönsk nöfn enn þann dag í dag: Rugby, Baldersby, Arnesby, Hareby, Dalby, Allerby, Stisted, Felsted, Alsager, Overstrand, Riseholme, Birkholme, Marholm, Langholm, Sandtoft, Horning o.s.frv.). Það er engin "fornnorræna" í Danelaw. Það eru engir - Stadur þar, what so ever.
Man, I always wondered if the conservativeness of Icelandic was overstated, but this was a beautiful demonstration!
It's not overstated at all, it's scary how conservative they are... You know the words feminine, neuter, singular, plural and all of those related terms... in Icelandic they have their own words for that.
Einntal(singular) fleirtal(plural), the other languages technically could do the same, as most things are still pretty much slightly different Norse, however since the rest loves loanwords... I'd doubt it ever happen. After all, there's more German and French in Swedish than there is Norse...
German overall is a very conservative language, at least in terms of grammar. It has the noun cases and neuter gender like older Germanic languages, but the vocabulary has definitely been influenced by Latin and Greek. Icelandic feels like a language warded off from any outside influence, allowed to grow in a streamlined fashioned. In general, very archaic.
@@livedandletdie I get what you mean, but that was a bad call. In German you can also say Einzahl and Mehrzahl for singular and plural. These are used interchangeably. The same goes for German names for the grammatical genders (which are even preferred). I just looked it up and apparently, ental and flertal also exist in Swedish. So, in these cases loanwords only increased the vocabulary.
@@livedandletdie In German we also have Einzahl (singular) and Mehrzahl (plural) which are as understandable as Singular and Plural. But those two can be used as well, but they are more technical
@@MWoyde I don't speak German as a mother language in fact I've learned it as an adult, by reading Einntal and fleirtal I thought something like Einteil and Vielteil :D
As a swede, this is incredibly interesting. You should have gotten a Swedish speaker here also. 👍🏻
Agreed! I understood more than both the Norwegian and the Danish :)
Why is he even there? It’s not even a challenge for Icelandic people. A Swede would be more interesting.
@@Gist432 Still interesting to hear the similarities with Icelandic. For a Swedish translation, check out my comment on that, for those that may be interested. But yes a swede would have been nice aswell.
hell no.
there was no space on the screen
I'm fluent in Swedish and Norwegian and I also know quite a bit of Danish. Hearing the words and making sense of it was very hard. When seeing it spelled out I could guess about 50% of it. Once I got the translation it was all quite clear and I felt bad for not getting it right. Similar to my experience with Icelandic, which I guess makes sense.
U should not feel bad for something you had no control over.
I'm Welsh, but I speak Danish and I was astonished at how much I understood. Thanks.
As a norwegian, i'm shocked at how little Torleif understood. So many of those words are similar in Norwegian. Atleast how we speak in western-Norway.
I completely agree. Even with regular bokmål, you should be able to get at least as much as the Danish guy, if not more.
Yeah, from Eastern Norway and I totally agree
I am a northerner, and my dialect defenetly helped me more. But I think his head was kind of locked on bokmål mabey. And I also think age and experience might be a factor here.
Jaja, slapp av. Løken har ødelagt hele omdømmet sitt generelt og kommer aldri noensine til å bli invitert tilbake til en lignende greie, alt er bra.
They speak Bokmål in the west, ye? I thought that Nynorsk would be similar because they use "Eg" to say "I" and so does Iceland.
I feel bad for my fellow Norwegian, he looks like he's suffering from a hangover or something and doing his best to stay focused.
Whether or not norwegians understands icelandic, depends from where in Norway the Norwegian comes from. The oslo norwegian is so close to danish it is almost the same
@@muslimsrememberapostacyday556 im from the same area as the norwegian dude but i understood more than he could.
Think this is more about who you choose to guess these.
lol he was nervous as hell
@@loffagood556 I agree, I think it is one thing to have an advantage on paper, another to use it. Yes, having a discussion in public like this will make a lot of people nervous and might lose that advantage because of that.
@@muslimsrememberapostacyday556 I think it really depends on what dialect you have. I'm from western-Norway and I felt I had a better idea and perhaps syntax to understand rather than the Norwegian representative because we still use a lot of these words.
I love it when it's the Icelandic guy's turn, "Ok, what do you think it said?", and the Icelandic guy just repeats exactly what Jackson said (w/ just some minor pronunciation differences) - while the other two guys were struggling to guess even a single word...
That´s simply because "Old Norse" IS Icelandic. Which is nothing like the "Danske Tunge" language the Scandinavian Vikings spoke in the Danelaw. All their villages still have Danish names to this day: Rugby, Baldersby, Arnesby, Hareby, Dalby, Allerby, Stisted, Felsted, Alsager, Overstrand, Riseholme, Birkholme, Marholm, Langholm, Sandtoft, Horning, etc.). There´s no "Old Norse" in the Danelaw. No -Stadur´s there, what so ever.
@@jesperlykkeberg7438 Not as Danish as you believe. All these names sounds like Norwegian too. That is old Norse!
@@JoanMaddie Nope. There was never such language as Old Norse. When you say "all of these names sounds like Norwegian too" it´s exactly because south-eastern Norwegian was regarded as Danish. This has nothing to do with Old Norse (Norrøn) which is predominantly describing Old Icelandic. According to all primary sources, - even the oldest Icelandic (Norrøn) text "Fyrsta Málfrœðiritgerðin"), - there were several Nordic languages including the "Danske Tunge" spoken in southern Scandinavia. The differences between Danish, Jutish and Norrøn concerns the complete separate understandings of how runic letters were to be interpreted and transcribed.
You can compare this to how the written form "ski-" (as in "skive/skiva") is pronounced completely different in modern Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, thereby establishing the fact that these are three different languages even though the written form "ski-" is the same.
In the Iron age, in eastern Denmark runes were presenting as girls´ and boys´ names and interpreted as double-syllabic morphemes and word-forming elements carrying meanings such as hovedleds-abbreviations ("Inge") reflexive markers ("eske") superlative markers ("ester"), etc.
One famous example is the interpretation of how the "Gebu" and "Ingwaz"-runes were to be transcribed into Latin letters. In Eastern Denmark the "Ingwaz"-rune was understood as the girls´name "Inge" when being part of placenames (ex: Jyllinge). In Jutland simply as "-ing" (ex: Jelling).
But in Iceland the "ingwaz"-rune was radically reduced and simply transcribed into the Latin letter "g", which is one of the important reasons for the notorious N-deletions in Old Icelandic showing how the construction of a word such as "mange" (English "many", both from "mer-an-give") lost the letter N in Icelandic and turned into "margir". The above mentioned Old Icelandic source explains exactly how this unique Icelandic change happened.
This sort of reduction of runes are often seen in modern transcriptions such as the runic inscription HIR being transcribed as the word "here" rather than the older interpretation "hither"(for-H-ITH-ER) more closely revealing it´s original compounding:
til (for-)Hid-hen-ad-hørende sig), or in English: for-H-ITH-adhering to.
Compare with "for-bøde-hen(ad)-hørende sig" = forbuden/forbidden/verboten.
The Icelandic interpretation that runes were merely single letters equivalent and interchangable one-to-one into Latin letters is a perfect example - and one of the main reasons - for the extreme changes that made Icelandic turn so far away from other Scandinavian languages, including far away from the languages the Vikings were speaking centuries earlier.
I'm an Italian that lives in Norway. I'm still learning how to speak the language properly (I'm probably at a B2 level), but I was amazed that I could understand more than the Norwegian guy in the video :)
🇮🇸 : Why am I even here? We speak practically the same language.
🇩🇰 : You got me in the first half, not gonna lie. I thought this was going to be easy, but now I'm trying my best here to understand one single word.
🇳🇴 : What the actual hell are you saying?
The norwegian guy in this video is dumb as hell. I am from Northern-Norway and speak a different dialect. I can understand these sentences a bit better than the danish guy could.
At some point in this video I was expecting something like:
🇳🇴: "no comprendo. no hablo español"
@@Sparess Not really. Danish is too far away from Icelandic (and Old Norse as well) phonetically.
@@Sparess In reality, any Norwegian will easily know old Norse WAY better than most Danes. It's what we used to speak after all. This guy just didn't have a clue.
@@gaborodriguez1346 Well, according to this video, Danish seems to have quite a bit in common with Icelandic. But as many people said, it may just be that the Norwegian guy wasn't really trying that hard.
I've learnt Danish and am currently learning Norwegian but I can't say I know any Icelandic. 'Twas just a jest.
It seems almost unfair to the other two, but it's fascinating to see just how similar Icelandic is to Old Norse. A Viking time traveller would have little trouble communicating!
If you think about it. Iceland is out in the middle of the ocean. Isolated from the rest of Europe. The Danes and Norwegians traded and fought wars with the neighboring Germans and English, their languages changed while Iceland's remained mostly the same.
@@GundamGokuTV Yes, in that way Iceland became a sort of Noah's Ark for the Old Norse language.
@@GundamGokuTV Yes, but still the Icelandic language could easily have changed more than it did. We had very many danish words in the Icelandic language for example in the 19th. century but then a group of Icelanders living in Denmark called Fjölnismenn started to fight for a language cleanup policy. That surely worked and there are stories about teachers expelleing young pupils from class if using Danish slang.
@@harahara1960 that’s really interesting. Where can I read about this, any good sources in particular?😮I’m danish
@@GundamGokuTV I'm Irish and I heard before that there's some very minor influence on modern Iceland from the Irish language from the Irish thralls they took from here!
As somebody who speaks fluent Danish(as a fifth language, speaks and understands some
Norwegian (especially written), Icelandic is so fascinating to me. And this video is both informative and fascinating to watch
As a Finn who unfortunately speaks our second language Swedish very poorly, let alone any of the languages present in this video, I was surprised of the amount I could work out! :)
Perkele
The Icelandic dude is just chilling, incredible how this language is conservative.
Because it evolved alone. Same with Romanian on the other side.
@@gaborodriguez1346 And what with Romanian ?
@@thewhiteknight5018 It is very similar to Latin, it preserved the neutral grammatical gender and all.
@@gaborodriguez1346 Romanian was surrounded by slavic languages as well as hungarian.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone would find traces of an older language that was supersaded by latin way back when.
Icelanders are descendants from the old Norsemen and Scottish/Northenglish women.
So there's no real influence from other languages.
I always assumed that languages isolated would evolve and diverge more, it's strange that it's so conservative.
As a norwegian I was a little disappointed by the norwegian guy in this video. He should have understood more. The Danish guy was better at connecting words I guess.
^tenkte det samme!
Interestingly, one could recognize most of the words used in the Norse sentences from modern Norwegian, but you'd have to pull from many dialects around the country. For instance being from western Norway I was surprised he didn't recognize "snjo" as snow, but I'm guessing there's less familiarity with dialects down south due to geography, being from so far up north.
Yeah, I feel bad for other Norwegians here thinking he was a good representation for Norway. Maybe his brain went derp cause he was nervous or something... Cause some of it was quite easy (to a Swede like myself).
@@Nekotaku_TV He was treating it like a competition when it was not and seems like it got to his nerves. I could sense it through the screen that he went in with the wrong mindset
Its like those people here in Denmark who say they don't understand Swedish or Norwegian on the spot. In my mind it is so easy to connect the words.
I was surprised that as a German (native) and English speaker plus beginner in Swedish I could actually decipher some things. The bird names, for example, egg, of course, their, words for wings and fly. I understood the same as the Norwegian with the "the crow stole their eggs" sentence... so, pretty close to its actual translation. That was a proud moment.
same here
As a native Swedish speaker I understod the first sentence immediately:
1) SW: "Snön föll en dag i skogen"
The second sentence I needed to see in written form, I had problems with "Margir" and "bjuggu", "Thessum" I associated with the Swedish word "dessa" (En: "these") so it was easy to interpret it to "this". "Bjuggu" resembles the Swedish word "bygga" (En: build). "Fuglar in Swedish is "fåglar" So my interpretation was:
2) SW: fåglar byggde (bo) i denna skog.
In the third sentecnce I first had problem with "meisingar but the context made it clear that it was some kind of birds which led me to "mesar" which is a family of birds.
So my interpretation was:
3) SW: I det högsta trädet i skogen, byggde två mesar sitt rede.
In the fourth sentence I only did not understand "en athr en" My Interpretation:
4) SW: stormen kom, stal kråkan deras ägg.
The fifth sentence was the hardest for me, I immediately recognised "flygr" which is "flyger" in Swedish. The "i" in "Vinr" and "ovin" confused me for a while, If it had been an "e"
I would have recognised it immediately as "vän" and "ovän" in Swedish. After a while I interpreted it like:
5) SW: Vän med vingar har då ovän som flyger.
I was surprised that I could understand so much of the written form, since Swedish is further away from Old Norse than the western Scandinavian languages.
jackson looks like a professor taking oral exam of the students 😂
Looks like a teacher that I'd love to watch
Kinda
I mean, that is literally his job lol
makes sense
Icelandish guy be smirking the whole time like 'This only sounds like me afi speaking'
lol
afi?
@@Vingul afi is the Icelandic word for grandfather.
My wife is Swedish. I am amazed how much of this I understood. I don’t even speak Swedish, but I just hear her talking all the time and pick up on stuff. The last sentence was also difficult for me. I only understood “flygr” like “flyga” in Swedish. “Vinr” I thought was maybe “vin” as in “vine” or “wine”, but couldn’t figure anything else out from that. Made sense that it’s like “vän” in Swedish, and then “óvin” was difficult because “enemy” is “fiende” in Swedish like the English word “fiend”. I asked her though and she said that the word “ovän” doesn’t mean “enemy” but just someone you don’t like. Looks like “un-friend” to me now, like how “rätt” means “right, correct” and “orätt” means “wrong, incorrect”
I'm always fascinated by Jackson and his knowledge of the nordic languages. Not only does he know the modern variants, but a bunch of the old ones too.
As a Spanish speaker, without Subtitles, and without speaking English, I understood 0.3% of what they're saying. It seems like Icelandic is the closest language to Old Norse.
The only word I got art 3:23 was SNJOR or something like that, which I assume means "snow".
Por cierto, quihubo, vato, yo también hablo español y apenas una palabra entre un millón entendí.
😂😂😂😂😂
Yeah as a Swede that had to learn Spanish, the overlap between Nordic languages and Spanish is extremely limited.
There are some loan words, but besides that there are only some basic words where you can sort of tell they come from the same root some time long ago.
But yes Icelandic by far is the most similar to old Norse.
More similar than written Spanish and Italian are to each other. Like really really similar.
As a Swede I understood a little more than the Danish guy in the video.
I think that was just due to some of the pronunciation and vocal/consonant sounds of the recreated old Norse sounded more like typical sounds in Swedish/Norwegian/Islandic than Danish.
Danish pronunciation just went it’s own way and is pretty unique.
You're not expected to. Latin isn't even.close.. . You aren't expected to understand Basque either, no? ..only the Nordic grammar can be similar, if you get some vocab you could learn it pretty easily.. As a Norwegian with a little Latin in school and English, I think Spanish is quite available, and similar in construction..
@@HasufelyArod The J threw me wildly off there.
First Simon Roper, now Dr Crawford. Such a treat! Would be interested to hear Faroese too.
Don't forget Luke Ranieri.
Faroese! Definitely would be interesting.
Allright, as far as I can understand it in Faroese:
1. Snjó fall ein dag í skóginum
2. Mangir fuglar búđu í hesum skógi
3. Í tí hægsta trænum í skóginum bygdu tvær títur reiđur sítt
4. Men áđrenn stormurin kom, stjól krákan teirra egg.
5. Vinur viđ veingjum hevur tann óvin, sum flýgur
@@johnegholm5780 Nice! How we just need Gothic to round it out.
@@campodemarte4352 Ranieri was on the Latin episode if you haven't seen that one.
For a couple of years I worked with elder care in a small place in Norway that had been quite isolated until "modern times". Many of the elders spoke a hard to understand dialect consisting of many words and expressions from Old Norse. To my surprise I could connect many of them to their English counterparts. While quite challenging in the beginning, it was very interesting and fun learning as much as I could.
It's interesting as a Swede watching this. I think I'm closest to Mic in the level of confusion. I live in the south of Sweden so I often visit Denmark, and I also have Norwegian friends there, so I can try to understand Old Norse from different lingual perspectives
Woah 😳 I had Jackson Crawford as my Vikings and Norse Mythology professor at the University of Colorado a few years ago! So awesome to see him here on this channel!
... so why do you call something " viking mythology" ???? Viking is a verb - and the newer norse mythology ( Odin / Tor) is only the newest. The real origin is " vaner" - not " æser" - by the way was Freya ( Frøya) and Frey..and so on
@@heidifarstadkvalheim4952 If I may, the University usually requires the professor to title the class in that way in order to draw more students - even if it is less accurate (i.e. more students will recognize the basic overarching idea faster than simply "Norse mythology". Likewise, these professors will usually add that basic clarification during the first lecture.
@@heidifarstadkvalheim4952 Viking in English is used as a noun primarily, maybe as a verb in certain context, though not to my immediate knowledge.
@@heidifarstadkvalheim4952 Viking is never really used as a verb in English. It’s used as a noun (ex. “the Vikings” is used to refer to seafaring Scandinavian people from the late 8th to 11th century). It seems like it’s usually used as an adjective in English (ex. “Viking culture,” “Viking settlement,” “Viking Age,” “Viking trade,” etc.)
Haha, Icelander here... Yeah that was very easy. Not only is old Norse very similar to modern Icelandic but we also study it in school. Super interesting to watch! Props to Norwegian and Danish bros for trying their absolute best!
I’m curious, to you, does the old Norse just sound like he’s speaking with a weird accent or would it be closer to a modern English speaker reading Shakespeare?
@@maxwell9211 not even a weird accent just an accent for me personally, some words are outdated but 99% of it is just like listening to an old person.
@@maxwell9211 When Jackson (the american im assuming) was reading the sentances it just sounded to me like a foreigner trying to speak Icelandic. Im sure old norse men had a particular accent that would be more difficult for us to understand but on paper it just sounds like formal/poetic Icelandic. Sometimes it's like reading modern icelandic without grammar rules. There are also words here and there that we either don't use anymore or the meaning has changed a bit. Hope that helps! :)
@@SadGhost97 yeah definitely helped. I’ve lived in Quebec for a few years so I’d imagine it’s somewhat like a Québécois French speaker, speaking to a French speaker from France
This is probably one of the most fascinating language videos I have ever seen. The comparisons are so interesting. Nice work to everyone.
Oh my, this is completely fascinating! Well done all of you!
As a Swede I understood about half the words in each sentence, and when Jackson explained some of the changes I understood a lot more
Lite orättvist att en svensk inte fått bidra i denna video:(
So I suggested this video a lot and I wish It would have been a Swede instead of an Icelander (no offense to any Icelanders) simply because Icelandic is so much closer to ON.
@@caseyrogers573 But the Danish guy spoke Swedish.
@@amjan sure, I just thought it would be a more even playing field without an Icelander, but as Jackson said, it’s not really a game but more of an experiment
@@amjan There are Norrländska,Gotlandish,Gothenburgish or even Elfadlians in Sweden, all of them have different gravy & spice in their languages/dialects. So it would be more intruiging if a Swede from Gotland or Norrland would take part as well
"The voice of the grandmother echoes in her grandchildren's voices." Absolutely beautiful intro from Jackson.
Yeah, I would like to see this sentence written here in all those languages.
@@voidhunger7514 Norwegian:
Ekkoet av Stemmen til bestemoren kunne høres i hennes barnebarns stemmer.
I had to change the construction of the sentence. So it'll be more like this:
The echo of the grandmother's voice was heard in her grandchildren's voices.
We don't really have any words for "echoes". Echo is only a noun in Norwegian, not a verb. Which is an interesting difference.
You can only observe the echo, but the echo is a reaction to sound. So nothing can create an echo.
Also in Modern Norwegian I would say:
Ekkoet av Bestemorens stemme kunne høres i stemmene til barnebarna.
Which translates into:
The echo of the Grandmother's voice could be heard in the voices of the grandchildren.
However, that's a very modern interpretation.
@@MasterKnutA Tusen takk!
@@voidhunger7514
A litural translation to icelandic:
Rödd ömmunnar bergmálar í röddum barnabarna sinna.
Rödd means voice.
Grandmother means amma, and with "the" it's amman. Amman with the genetive (used mainly to show possession, grandmother's voice) is ömmunnar.
Bergmál means echo. Voted the second most beautiful icelandic word for people born before 1987 (yes we held a competition). Berg means cliff or rock face. Mál means language. Language of the mountains. So when you shout in a valley, the mountains shouts back at you.
Grandchildren means barnabörn. Barnabörn with the genetive is barnabarna. Literally means childrens childrens. So a grandmothers grandchildren are her childrens children.
Sinna shows possession, her grandchildren.
@@hryggleysingi433 Þakka þér
This one was fun seeing the differences was vary interesting! Thank you guys
The icelandic guy is absolutely right, its just the fact that Iceland didnt have outside influence and was very isolated so they kept the old norse way of speaking for at much much longer time, almost up to present day.
Wow, Jackson Crawford on Ecolinguist
Yeah, buddy
The fact that these men are trying to translate a language they don't speak (old norse), and are conversating about it in a language that they have learned (English), while comparing the translations to the language they were raised with in their own countries and discussing the similarities... is just so mindboggling to me! Truly TRULY impressive. I wish we were encouraged to be multilingual in America. It's truly something I find extremely impressive about the rest of the world.
That's Europe. Raise your standards
@@ryandietzjr.5756 doesn’t make it any less impressive
They teach English at quite a young age in northern Europe
@@angycucumber4319 They start teaching kids English in Sweden at the age of 7 in schools
Speaking as a Danish person: English evolved out of Old Norse. We have many words and syntaxes in common. It's easier to understand English for a Nordic speaker than you think it is.
Examples: Window, Vindue
Knife, kniv
To think, at tænke
To speak, at snakke
We were, vi var
Raised, rejst
You see a pattern here? Many of these words aren't borrowed or translated they're just the same word that evolved differently
I'm from rural western Norway and understood a lot more from this due to my dialect. Northern norwegian dialects and western dialects are very different.
It probably also helped that in my region we grew up using Nynorsk as our main written language, compared to the rest of Norway that use Bokmål which is more similar to danish.
You know how hard that makes it for foreigners learning Norwegian? 😂
I've been to Norway about 25 times, near Tysnes, south of Bergen, ever since I was a child. My first language course some years ago was taught by a guy who had lived in Oslo for many years. Now I'm taking another course and the trainer spent most of her time in Stavanger.
Now this.
There's like one distinct dialect for every ten Norwegians!!!
And I love the language and it's rythm!
@@novacolonel5287 It makes me very happy when i hear about foreigners wanting to learn Norwegian!😄
Yes in Norway you don't need to go far for people to be speaking a completely different dialect, and there are lots of subtle differences between small neighbouring towns even though they're in the same region.
This is due to all the mountains and fjords between towns that have made it difficult for people in the past to mingle with neighbouring towns and villages. As it would be difficult to traverse such distances on foot too often. This has resulted in the language evolving slightly different between every fjord, mountain and island.
It is slowly evolving to be more and more unified though because travel is a lot easier nowadays and you're no longer isolated to your local town anymore.
I can clearly hear the difference in my own family since my grandmother on my dad's side, and my grandmother on my mom's side each have differences in their dialects even though they only live 2,5km away from eachother, but on different islands. Nowadays those islands are connected by bridges and everyone in that area go to the same schools, so the current generation of this dialect is the same on both islands.
@@Marcus- Haha, yes, that's what I've been told, too. It makes a lot of sense, although I wonder why people just didn't go by boat to visit their neighbors. Our landlord's cousin told us that she still had to use a rowing boat to get from her home to the bus station of the school bus each morning.
I can read a lot of Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk alike) and write a very little bit, but speaking is still a challenge and it's not beyond basic in any metric other than maybe vocabulary.
This week there was the announcement that the current course will be renewed for a second round, this time A2 instead of A1 (2 was the more advanced form, right?).
You guys are still looking for professional workers, right? 🥹
@@Marcus- Where exactly in rural western Norway are you from, if you don't mind me asking?
@@novacolonel5287 People did go by rowing boats to visit neighbouring villages, but i think it was mainly to buy stuff and for work. But I'm guessing it was mostly done by adults which by then their dialects would have been fully developed and wouldn't have changed much even if they spent a long time in other places.
Glad to hear that your course has been renewed!
If you're looking for work here then i don't know much about the demand on land, but I know there is a big demand for able seamen(Matros) on ships in the Offshore industry here out at sea. If you live in Norway and get the necessary courses for it then you'd easily get a well paying job and would get to sail with people from all over the country as well as people from other nordic countries.
I'm from Sunnmøre. Here the maritime industry is a big part of the local culture and a lot of people here work at sea.
My intuition is that, considering how difficult Old Norse was for the non-Icelanders, that the modern mutual intelligibility between the continental Scandi languages is due to later intercultural influence over the centuries rather than all the languages being mutually intelligible just through their common root in Old Norse.
South Scandinavian language has a common root in Danske Tunge as it was spoken by the vikings in the Danelaw 250 hundred years before Icelandic was a thing. All their villages still have Danish names to this day: Rugby, Baldersby, Arnesby, Hareby, Dalby, Allerby, Stisted, Felsted, Alsager, Overstrand, Riseholme, Birkholme, Marholm, Langholm, Sandtoft, Horning, etc.). There´s no "Old Norse" in the Danelaw. No -Stadur´s there, what so ever.
I am norwegian, and i understood way more that this Norwegian guy.
Jeg også, sjokkert
Den første setningen var jo utrolig enkel! Hvordan er denne fyren en norsk lærer?
@@tjhr6612 lurte på akkurat det samme. "I dont know this Snorbert" Det er serriøst for dårlig.
Same here, I was surprised how easy it was to understand
Han tror man kan snakke nynorsk og bokmål. Enough said 🥴
The icelandic has a clear advantage. He's wearing a real icelandic sweater. That's cheating!
It's very interesting to me as a German who has learned a little Norwegian. There are quite a lot of similarities to German as well, obviously. Like hoch - high, höchste - highest. But for instance I didn't know the Norwegian word for "enemy" and the German word is quite different, but it was an epiphany for me to see that the opposite of a friend - venn, is uvenn, literally "un-friend". That's so interesting! Also, German for the bird titmouse is Meise...
The Norwegian language has through the years been much influenced by modern Danish and German, especially because of the 400 year union with Denmark. People in the south east of Norway, Oslo region, speaking quite close to the offical written Norwegian, Bokmaal, while in the rest of the country the dialects are more or less different than we write in official Norwegian, especially in the west and south) On the westcoast and mountians of southern Norway some dialects can sound something halfway between Old Norse and modern official Norwegian Bokmal. But no big problem understanding eachother, people are used to all the different dialects hearing it from friends, family from other parts of the country and on TV all life. If one would like to hear one of the most beautiful and 'pure' older Norwegian dialects, from the mountain regions of the south, Western Telemark, one can look up the singer Ingebjorg Bratland at TH-cam, song 'Fordi eg elskar deg'
In Swedish, 'Ovän' doesn't really mean "enemy", but it means that you're no longer friends with someone who you used to be friends with for whatever reason. "Enemy" would be fiende, which is quite a lot different from 'ovän'.
@@larsliamvilhelm in Norwegian, uvenn is the opposite of a friend. It's not someone you used to be friends with, but someone who makes life worse for you. It's also not an enemy, fiende, which means someone you're actually fighting.
I have watched several of Jackson's videos.Interested in Old Norse/Old Danish.I find this video very interesting in it's approach,using these three different speakers and the differentating aspects of their languages in relationship to each other and Old Norse.Mange Tak
Next: Can Proto-Germanic, Gaulish, and Latin speakers understand Proto-Indo-European?
Good one!
Hahaha, I suspect Latin is way too modern for this :)
I also think Latin is too modern for that.
I have always been curious about how mutually intelligible proto germanic and Latin were
OK, gentlemen, let's put a proto-IE speaker in charge of a match with a native Lithuanian, native Latvian and native speaker of Hindi.
not gonna lie, the Norwegian guy disappointed me a bit. Maybe his local dialect screwed him over a bit. not sure, but the Icelandic guy basically was there to just make sure the speaker spoke correctly haha :D The Danish guy was more what I expected the Norwegian guy would perform. impressed by how much the Dane got correct tho! And we are missing a swede in this "experiment" also! BUT to their defence, it's much harder to sit there and do it live, vs sitting here in my sofa saying "OFC IT IS the highest tree in the forest" etc.
awesome content
I can't comment for Torleif, but I have allmost identical dialect as to him - just an hour or so from where he is. And I think my dialect helped me alot.
@@ZShalafi then he was just bad? is that what ur saying ? Because I understood a whole lot more than him.
@@haakonhamer9122 Yes, he was just bad.
I'm from Tromsø, with relatives from Senja and Gudbrandsdalen. The local Tromsø dialect, _Tromsøværing,_ shouldn't really screw him over at all, since it's very close to _Nynorsk_ and thus closer to the original West Norse dialects. Also if you have relatives outside of town, you'd know a lot more Norse words already, that are closer to the original Norse than you see in the common city slicker dialects, or even sosiolects.
Agreed, im a little dissapointed in the Norwegian Guy. pretty sure it was his dialect that screwed him over
I'm a Norwegian from Oslo, I immediately heard "snow fell one day in the woods" 😅 I think my countryman simply must have misheard or something.
He pronounced it "Snor" though, which is "cord"
"Thessum" is "This".... I heard "Margir birds built in this/these forest/s", which was 1 word wrong and 1 not guessed.
Meisingar was obviously "Meis" plural or "Meiser" though you can't say that. skóginum is skog, byggdu is bugilt, sitt is sitt, hreidr is rede, I is eg. Apparently it's easier to hear Old Norse for someone from Southern Norway
Edit: Yes "Meis" is the same bird in Norwegian... and you don't have to be "good with birds" they are literally _everywhere,_ kjøttmeis in particular...
I'm on the end of third sentence, and I must say I'm very impressed by @Jackson Crawford. I'm from Norway, and no offence to Torleif Villmones, but for me these sentences (so far) has been fairly easy to understand. Torleif goes crazy (made me laugh a lot) with some of his interpretations, and doesn't even know about "meis", one of the most common type of birds in Norway. Don't know why, maybe nervous, overthinking or based upon the dialect from where he is located. I'm from South Norway, which is more influenced by Danish than northern regions of Norway. Very interesting video =)
I had the same reaction, I would have expected a Norwegian language teacher who is familiar with various dialects to be better at picking up the similarities. Especially that first line, but also surprised that he didn't pick up on wings but thought it was wind.
As a Faroe Islander, these were all really easy, apart from the last one with its bonkers poetic/proverbial syntax :D As for the "áðr en," we've one-upped our Icelandic brothers and sisters, and slammed it into one word: "áðrenn"
Is faroese intelligible with Icelandic?
@@andryuu_2000 Kinda sorta, I guess? Our languages have deviated quite a bit during the centuries. I can't speak for the Icelanders; I don't know how intelligible Faroese is to them, but I do know Icelandic is usually intelligible to Faroe Islanders -if- they make an effort to slow down their speech, and enunciate a bit more clearly than in everyday speech between Icelanders. Reading Icelandic is a piece of cake for most Faroe Islanders, and I'd guess the reverse is true as well.
@@MagnusMoerkoereJohannesen As an Icelander, I love your language. I've had a few roommates through the years that are from the FO and we could speak fairly well to each other in our native languages. There are of course plenty of words that have completely different meanings between the two languages, but nevertheless.
Also, reading Faroese is fairly simple for us, with the thought in mind that the words might mean something different. I'd say that of close languages to Icelandic, Old Norse would be in first place and Faroese would be in second place.
@@axelrafn Yeah, I was fairly sure the situation was the same on both sides of the language divide, I just didn't want to commit to anything I wasn't absolutely certain of; I've made that mistake before, and that embarrassment was enough :D As for words having different meanings, I'll never forget the look on an Icelandic friend of mine's face, when I told him about one of my favourite stories as a child, Pippi Smokkuleggur 🤣 Shocked and disturbed was putting it mildly! :D
@@MagnusMoerkoereJohannesen I could tell almost immediately that Pippi Smokkuleggur is just what we call Lína Langsokkur but it's still really funny to me. Pippi Condomleg lol
it's so simple for the icelandic dude that he's like "pff c'mon, i need something harder, at least gimme these sentences in proto-germanic man"
Or Swiss-German, nobody understands that.
I would like to have Simon Roper give some Old English sentences and see if the Icelandic dude can understand them. I would say maybe 50 percent considering Old English used the th sound with the same letter.
@@waterdrager93 Legit. Swiss German / Can German speakers understand it?
@@Chevymonster203 I mean Simon Roper already collabed with Jackson Crawford in a video. They understood each other using Old Norse and Old English so I'm pretty sure Old English would be a piece of cake to the Icelandic guy.
@@metalheadcomicbookfan797 Well not completely, in old norse around the 1200's they didnt have the w sound. A lot of words in old english use the w sound, old english is more related to East Norse spoken around the 9th to 10th century which I believe Jackson Crawford pointed out in his old norse old english video. I believe the pronunciation changed.
It's so cool that modern Icelandic is so similar to the old languages! Great video.
This was really entertaining to watch. As a Norwegian from the "sunnmøre" region of western Norway, my dialect helped me get 2 of those sentences mostly right (once I saw the written form), and be able to guess at least 2 words right in the others xD Without the text though, it was like listening in on two Icelanders talking to each other... aka unintelligible aside from a rare word here and there xD
Wait... did Sunnmøre have more connections with Iceland?
@@raz0rcarich99 I don't know, but I think it's more the case of dialect isolation until relatively recently (at least if you get outside the towns) =)
@@raz0rcarich99 Well, Sunnmøre has the shortest distance to Iceland of the Scandinavian countries:)
Hey, stop picking on the Norwegian guy, he did his best. Old Norse is hard for all non-Icelanders, even Scandinavians. As an Icelander, I got most of it down, had a bit of trouble with the egg-stealing crow. The way Jackson pronounced kráka, it sounded almost exactly like the Swedish word "krocka" which means collide with something, as in a car collision. Back to the Norwegian guy, that expression on his face, when the Icelander introduced himself --- it was simply priceless! It was so obvious he didn't understand a single word. =D
I’m more shocked over the fact that I as a swede could understand the Dane
Yeah, I thought the same. I think he was enunciating extremely carefully, which makes Danish sound a little less porridge-y I guess.
I heard Swedish and Danish was so close to one another back in the day, that the armies had to force new soldiers to recite nursery rhymes to try to figure out if the new guy was just trying to switch sides when their side was losing. xD
@@kebman Lol that doesn't sound far fetched
Same. Modern Danish usually sounds too German for me as a Norwegian speaker to understand properly.
Hahaha svenske faen. Måtte bare få fram det ordet... Du skjønner meg eller kvad
I think Swedish is the most different of the Nordic languages. I only understood the first sentence in it's written form 😂 And some nouns in the other ones.
1. Snö föll en dag i skogen.
2. Många fåglar bygger i denna skog.
3. I det högsta trädet i skogen, byggde två gråmesar sitt rede.
4. Men innan stormen kom, stal en kråka deras ägg.
5. En vän med vingar har fienden som flyger.
fyrir Islendig er léttast að fatta Sænsku af Norðurlanda tungumálunum.
@@guttormurthorfinnsson8758 Er það ekki færeyska sem þú skilur auðveldast?
This is one of the most interesting clips I’ve seen in a while
The Icelandic guy was cheating all the time by simply repeating the Old Norse sentence and calling it Icelandic.
Well I mean being fluent in Icelandic in a Old Norse hearing contest is already some kind of advantage
The Old Norse had a couple of dialects. This one is influenced by Old English and has the ‘th’ sound, written þ and ð and is only found in Icelandic. So the examples are more Old Icelandic than Old Norse spoken in Scandinavia.
Some people really seem to miss the sarcasm of my posting... *rolleyes*
I really enjoyed this. I speak Icelandic and can read some Norwegian and Danish. It was interesting learning the differences. All the participants were really good sports and seemed to be enjoying themselves. It seemes everyone wound up learning something interesting.
@@helgividar Aren't both the th-sounds derived from Proto-Germanic, just that they have disappeared in most modern Germanic languages?
Disclaimer from a Norwegian here: his internet must have been acting up or smth smth, cuz some of these were very understandable by someone who’s a native Norwegian, ESP the first sentence
Hi, yeah I messed up the first sentence.
Now I realize how similar it was to Norwegian.
It was a good effort tho!! The last sentences I guessed about the same as you as well :)) Just the first few ones that went well for me, but it might just be our dialects as I live much more South than you!
@@ayumehirano1894 And it was just for fun anyways. I don't represent Norway or anything :)
@@norwegianwithtorof course! What was really fun to see was how close Icelandic to Old Norse was. And honestly, how similar Danish and Norwegian were some places!
Yeah. I had no problems understanding it, and i’m not a teacher.
I love this. Thanks, guys!
Loved this video, swedish guy who loves languages. I got a few words of the sentences and i’m missing a swedish representative :)
This was quite a show. As a 73 years old Icelander I must be worried about the future of our language. It's true what Óskar said about our isolation through the centuries, but believe me, I am worried about the future of our language. We have a ''difficult'' grammar and I sense that the young generation is losing its grip on the grammar. So in 30, 40 years my language will be very different from what I learned. I will be dead and gone then. Greetings from Iceland.
That's why it needs to be preserved as it is a treasure and legacy of our common european history. Me, as a Polish living in Germany, would give much to have the real opportunity to learn it :)
@The505Guys True.
Thank you for your input. And not to worry, as a young one I'll put it on my language list as well :)
@The505Guys It's not so surprising, even without speaking English, pretty much every language is "striving" for efficiency. So in the big picture, almost all languages sooner or later remove difficulties or irregularities (given, sometimes new irregularities come up). This doesn't need to come from language contact, but can just be a sort of simplification.
And in that light, it seems only logical that Icelandic would become easier too. But on the other hand, it conserved its complexity for so long, so who knows. I only can say for sure that German is and will be becoming a lot simpler.
I was always taught that evolving the language is a good thing since we will never stop being exposed to new things, ideas, concepts and so on.
Sure conservatism sounds appealing on paper but it’s really not a natural human state of being to begin with.
As a Norwegian with a western Norwegian dialect I could understand close to everything in written form, but quite a bit less just pronounced.
As a swede from the coast of the northern part of Sweden and know the dialect bondska I feel that when I hear it I understand better.
As a Norwegian without a dialect I understood most everything. This Norwegian in this video was a really bad representation of our knowledge haha.
@@tordfuglstad1366 how do you not have a dialect? Even østlending counts as a dialect. Unless you speak bokmål, which isn't really possible since it's a written language
@@lynxplayz8474 Well, my dialect is very close to straight up Bokmål. So to make it easier for foreigners to understand I said "No dialect".
@@lynxplayz8474 oslosk lol
Lovely lesson!
Those trills are superb.
Ecolinguist! You should have totally got a Faroese person in this video! We are in between the Danish and icelantic.
I'm by no means an "linguistics' nut" but I understood 95% without the spelling aid.
we are of course a small nation but it is very interesting to see the mixing of danish and icelantic(old norse) that happens here :)
Yes definitely. That is exactly what I thought. (From shetland)
I would have been very curious to see how much a Faroese speaker is able to understand of these sentences, so thanks for sharing, now I know!:) So I assume you can also understand modern Icelandic?
I'm Danish and I agree, someone from the Faeroes in there would have been really interesting!
You are not a small nation you are a part of the great kingdom of denmark never forget it.
@@zuai946 what utter BS :P
it's like the UK, we are our own sovereign state ;)
I recognized "meisingar" almost immediately because of the French word "mésange" (titmouse in English), which it turns out is of Frankish (and therefore Germanic) origin. Languages are so fascinating!
So did I (because I speak French!). But as an Icelander it was the only word I did not immideately recognize. That is because we don't have any blue-tits or mésanges in Iceland. But we have the word which is (blá)meisa/-meisur.
german speaker here - "meisingar" is called "Meise" in german, so that was one of the words i recognized
Absolutely. When I read that "Meisingar", me being German, I immediately thought of the "Meise".
Also `Mees` (maes) in Dutch. Seems indeed a strong Frankish influence. Even in southern dutch and flamish dialects the words stay the same which could explain a low-franconian origin
Being from Québec, that's the first thing that came to mind! Languages are super fascinating and very fun! It's nice to see the similarities!
Torleif: "I don't know who Snorbert is."
Mic and Oskar: *Trying hard not to laugh*
What an amazing and interesting conclusion. Wonderful video!
Thank you for watching Rita 😀
I'm an Icelander living in Norway and I speak Danish as well.... I understood everything right away, but I new the Norwegian guy would be in trouble with this... In tha 7 years I have lived here, I have seen that they don't understand old names of places or what their own names mean. It was really easy to learn norwegian because it's so close to old Norse wich is basically old Icelandic...but it is not vice versa, they don't have a clue what we say even though Icelanders seem it's nearly the same sentence
I think you may fare a little better in western Norway, and while I understand most of the written Icelandic, I have no idea what they say once they start speaking. Too fast to hang on.
Sounds like France, a complete loss of awareness of one's linguistical rootsk
You are right when it comes to South Eastern Norway, and parts of middle Norway but as many have said. It's much easier for west coast people to read Icelandic than for anyone else in rest of Norway.
I think these shows are so fascinating, this subject is very interesting and the guests are always good, I guess because they are all experienced youtubers already. It’s good to see Jackson Crawford doing this, his channel is very interesting, and he has spectacular mountain backdrops to his videos.
They truly are fascinating
This channel gave me more than I bargained for
I asked for Slavic language comparisons and got different language comparisons too! And some polish lessons as well! I might be able to put my polish friend to "shame" as he doesn't speak polish that well as he's no longer living in Poland but in the same country as me. We'll see!
"Good"? "teachers" ?? ..they don`t understand 50% of wich has been presented.. But I agree with YOU : I like Jackson Crawford!! : ) ..greetings from Norway..
@@ricoeugene2628 YEa I`m Dutch and I understood more, lol.. to be fair, it seems as if Dutch has more of the slightly different words in common with old Norse I guess. Which is why I`d love an Old Norse and/or Icelandic, Old English, modern (West) Frisian (the language, not the Dutch dialect), Dutch and German speaker mix it out.. Going back to their Saxon and Old Frisian root
@@pyruvicac.id_ Wow , You know a lot about languages. I am NOT an expert , but languages has always facinated and interested me. So Thank You! ..I was starting to think I was a bit hard on those three guys..
This series with estinct languages is great! A video with Old Church Slavonic would be great, I think that most of south slavic speakers would be able to understand a lot of it
I speak Norwegian and this guy is no example, I understood most of what he couldn't.