As mentioned multiple times in the comments, Luke is not a native Norwegian speaker. When he contacted me to participate, I was fully aware that Norwegian is not his first language. However, not being a native speaker does not mean a person is not suited to represent a language. On this channel, one of the objectives is to promote learning new languages. Luke contacted me a long time ago to participate in a video, he put forward his qualifications and credentials to adequately represent the Norwegian language. Though it was never possible for me to judge his fluently in a language that I do not speak, I did put my trust in him and the official documents that certify the completion of his training. He has worked very hard to get to this point and I applaud his dedication. So please, keep that in mind as you comment! Hope you enjoy the video! Please follow and contact us on Instagram if you have any suggestions or if you would like to participate in a future video: instagram.com/BahadorAlast For those who may be interested, Luke will be turning his Instagram page into a learn Norwegian/Celtic language page, and will be giving history and information regarding each of the languages. Here is the link: instagram.com/amluee/
Btw people from other parts of sweden thinks people from scania sounds danish Do you think it's easier to understand the scanian dialect of swedish than other swedish dialects? ^^
We have Danish friends. They tought us some danish words like sommerfugl, pinsvin, ruskumsnusk, flauermus(?). We tried them to pronounce some Dutch words liked 'negenennegentig' which means ninetynine. Especially that typical 'g' was very difficult for them. But when we told them that we visited Tivoli in Kopenhagen they laughed at us. They pronounced it as 'Tsjuli'.
It is really nice to hear and see this. I have not heard Frisian before and Frisian sounds like a blend between the Scandinavian languages with some Dutch and German for colour to my ears. A beautiful language. I'm looking forward to hearing more.
I am Afrikaans speaking I can understand most of the Frisian words Dutch is much nearer to Afrikaans than Frisian I find German also a little nearer to Afrikaans than frisian
A funny anecdote, my grandmother was from Frisia, she only spoke Dutch and Frisian, however, she never used the Frisian language, as in the early part of the 20th century it wasn't considered 'done' to speak Frisian. One christmas, she stayed with my uncle and aunt, who also had guests from Denmark. To everyone's suprise she could converse quite well with these guests, she in Frisian and the guests in Danish.
Mooie dierbare herinneringen aan je grootmoeder. En ja de Scandinavische taal komt heel dicht in de buurt van het Fries. Ik denk dat juist het Deens ( als verschilt dat niet veel van Noors en Zweeds ) het dichtste bij het Fries komt. Misschien ook doordat een deel van Denemarken ooit toch het Koninkrijk Friesland behoorde. :)
This was really interesting to see as a Dutch person learning norwegian. Last summer I was in Friesland and tried to read a piece of text in frysian and certain points I could understand only because they were similar to norwegian.
@@lucamara6424 My brother has a coffee cup at home where the text is written in frisian from a trip he did through northern Germany and Netherlands. I could read and understand all of it (I am norwegian). But that was a simple text. Some kind of verse. I can only understand 40 percent maybe of the spoken I have heard on the web. But more than in dutch, where the spoken is difficult (the written dutch and german is not so difficult).
First of all I want to say Luke you have done well. For everyone pointing out that he is not a native speaker, that is correct, he is not a native Norwegian speaker but then again there are many people in Norway who are not native speakers. Luke has actually done a very good job learning the language because having been to Oslo, I can tell you that many people have lived there for many years and didn't even learn Norwegian properly, realizing that they can manage with English. Same is the case here in Stockholm with Swedish. So good on you Luke! Cheers!
It’s not about him not doing a good job. You missed the whole point of the criticism. And you’re not even Norwegian, so butt out jævla Svenske faen😝 But about having someone who is an actual native speaker representing the language in question. Not talking about ethnic appearance or some other racist bs. There are many reasons why people has lived somewhere for a long time and not been able to learn it properly! Especially if moving to a totally different country, culture and society from your own when old. Even many ethnic white Norwegians suck at their own language!
@@avidavidzada4721 Yes. I don't think you will find many Sami in Norway that don't speak Norwegian. Actually many Sami loose their language, because Norwegian is so dominant and common, and there's few schools that have the Sami as the primary language.
Its funny how these languages are so similar. I feel like she would have had an even easier time with the Western Dialect of Norway. I was astounded at how many things she pronounced the same way as I do!
It’s so much easier when you can read the sentence as well. When you only hear it, the pronunciation can mask the lexical similarities. I found words in both languages that are similar in German, but mainly with the help of the text. The words when spoken actually tend to throw me off the trail. Nice video!
Yes, no one says it down south though. I don't think they say it in the Midlands, or even Lancashire/Yorkshire either right? It's only the very north of England that people still use it, like Cumbria, Tyne & Wear etc.
@@Jojikiba i have a few cumbrian/Lancashire friends and I've never personally heard them say bairn before. pretty sure it's just a north east/Scottish thing but i could be wrong
@@alexeiabrikosov360 yeah. Another thing I believe Geordie has retained is that we pronounce -er at the end of words exactly like Germans. By that i mean, i don't say bett-uh, butt-uh, weath-uh, but instead bett-a, weath-ah and so on. Believe it's the only English accent to have that
@@ciaranhenderson9464 Oh right. I just found this on Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbrian_dialect According to that, it seems they say "bairn" in Cumbria, but I personally have no idea (I'm from Wiltshire 😃). Cheers!
This "test" is unrealistic. The two languages are in reality much closer than it might seem. If he actually was Norwegian, he would understand much more Frisian. As a Norwegian from the south coast, I more or less understood everything, especially when it was written in Frisian as well. With a richer vocabulary, the guy would have understood much more. There are often synonyms or oldfashioned words that are more similar with Frisian, Dutch or Low German. If you dont know the language well enough, like this guy, you will not be able to spot the similarities that easy.
I do appreciate your work, Bahador. Wonderful material! The guys also did it well. The English guy seemed to be a little bit confused but I find it quite cute :) His Norwegian is epic, he's done a great work to get to the point where he is now.
Love this comparison! Frisian is intriguing to a native English speaker like myself, and I found myself making, in my mind, educated guesses as to what the words meant. What I love most however, is to see a fellow Englishman do so well with a Scandinavian language. I'm self taught in Swedish and have been learning for more than ten years. Sadly I don't have a certificate like Luke has, but it's still nice to see. I checked the link to his Instagram, and he's also from Birmingham, same as me!
A certificate can be useful but it doesn't take anything away from you and your knowledge that you don't have one. I'm Swedish and I think that it is great that you chose to learn our language. If you travel here you will probably have to tell people that you want to speak Swedish though since most Swedes will want to practice their English with you.
I guessed Skuld was guilt because a lot of times German has sch for Nordic/Frisian sk and the word in German is Schuld. It helps when you know about Older Germanic Languages and their sound shifts.
This norwegian dude should up his game a little bit. I'm aware that you probably are a bit nervous when being filmed, but the way he pronunces dog and guilt in norwegian is actually wrong (if he is talking "Bokmal"), as the d's at the end of those words aren't actually pronounced. So "She" and "Dog" sounds exactly the same. In danish you can just about hear the "d", and in german, it is pronunced with a T. So Dog in norwegian, danish and german respectively would be like this: hun (just as she), hon(d) (danish) and then "hont" (german) (not spelled, the way it's pronunced). Edit: if Luke isn't a native Norwegian speaker, forget everything I said; I think he's doing quite well :)
Could he be speaking a dialect? It seems weird to invite a non-native speaker for one of these videos. EDIT: I've seen several comments now saying he's not a native speaker, and the linked instagram account kind of seems like he's probably English. I have to say, I find it disappointing to invite a non-native speaker to represent a language.
@@michaelrasmussen6405 I'm not a native speaker but my father was Danish so I'm fluent in Danish. Well in a way you're right, the "d" morphs into the "n". But a foreigner learning Danish would probably just say "hunn".
"sv: Och jag talar svenska. Det är intressant att försöka förstå Afrikaans. En: "And I speak swedish. It's interresting to try to understand Afrikaans." A try without google translate: En: "I speak Afrikaans in South Africa most of the words is used in my language but I took a small part of the other (norweigan?) - It's is so interresting". tog = en: "took" bietjie= ge: "bisschen", a bit, anders = "en: "others" Sv: "Jag pratar Afrikaans i Sydafrika och de flesta orden används i mitt språk men förstod lite av det andra (norskan) - det är så intressant :-)" Sv. "Jag pratar Afrikaans i Sydafrika och de mesta orden brukas i mitt tal men tog lite av det andra (norskan) - det är så intressant." Fully understandable but a bit formal and old fashion swedish. With a slight grammatical error in using mesta istället för flesta. In swedish we say "prata" informally for speaking, formally "tala" while danes and norwegians snakker which we retain as slang in swedish as "snacka". I think that prata came into swedish from low german. We both have mesta och flesta. "Tal" in swedish is speach not language but close enough "brukas" is cognate with gebruik
Yes afrikaans here and its the same basically Voël bird Skruiwe write Blom flower Hond dog Swart black Tyd time Alot is pronoumced the same as either the norwegian or the frisian. Very interesting
So many words we also have in Afrikaans from both sides. Vugel - Voel / Guilty - Skuld / Blom is flower / Skruiwe is to write / Tyd is time / pragtig is beautiful or wonderful all very similar!
Afrikaans: Bern - kind, svart- swart, roppe - tou, blad - blaar, skuld - skuld (skuldig), hund - hond, fûgel - voël, blomst- blom, skriuwe - skryf, tid - tyd. Afrikaans is the second word for either the Fries or Norwegian.
Swedish: Bern - barn, svart- svart, roppe - ropa, blad - blad, skuld - skuld (skuldig), hund - hund, fûgel - fågel, blomst- blommor, skriuwe - skriva, tid - tid. Swedish is the second word for either the Fries or Norwegian.
@@mikaelrundqvist2338 That’s awesome. There’s a lot of similarities in the root of the words, across all the language’s. I spent about two weeks in all of the Scandinavian countries, but it seems that the pronunciation is very different, so I could necessarily understand. But the written text always gave clues as to what was written. Goeie naand van Suid Afrika. ( Good evening from South Africa)
Emotial to hear these two. I am half ostfriesich via Texas and half Norman. Emden and Stavanger. Sea captains, stea & sail and cowboy rancher army officer. Dad spoke Old Friesian at home but hochdeutsch in school in Texas. Later English and Spanish. He passed long ago. Mother, aunt, uncle, grandpa, nane and gr grandpa all spoke riksmal and nynorsk. We belonged to Sons of Norway. All gone. I am 78, but it was like being a boy and hearing their voices. Tesekur ederim Bahador beg. Dostum. Allaha ismarladik. Karl/Kadri. Radio wa2kbz at y
What's that you wrote at the end? Looks like Turkish or something, or were you attempting to write something in Frisian or Norwegian? By the way, Riksmål (which I guess technically now is Bokmål) and Nynorsk are written languages, you can't speak them.
English and Frisian are both Ingvaeonic Germanic languages and they are the transitional Germanic dialects that stand between West Germanic dialects of Dutch, Flemish, Swiss German, Low German and high German dialects and the Scandinavian North Germanic dialects of Swedish. Danish, Norwegian Bokmal and Nynorsk dialects and the Insular north Germanic dialects of Icelandic and Faeroese. versions of Faroese were spoken in northern Scotland. Orkney and Shetland Islands and the outer Hebrides and was known as Norn. as well as In parts of North West England and the lake District. many place names in North west England are of Norwegian origin. majority of place names in the East Midlands and many Yorkshire place names are of Danish origin, signifying that a considerable number of Danes settled in England over a 300 year period and this significantly changed the English language to what it is today. their medieval Anglo-Danish dialect replaced old English as the standard language from which middle English and modern English are derived. that is why our grammar is identical to Scandinavian rather than West Germanic as is the syntax and structure if English and its basic vocabulary which combines both west Germanic and north Germanic words, sometimes with many doublets meaning the same thing. Eg. to and till or until. already, alone, also, shirt, skirt, are, they them, their, under, so, seek, see, saw, seen,seem, scream, shift, dream,drown,draw, drag, door,room,lie, lie, law, egg, sky,,stare,stark,bairn,. boy,queen, king. many Anglo Saxon words ended up being Norsed up with their Danish's equivalents, so that Kenning (old English for King or Konnig in Dutch and German)became King in middle and modern English replacing Kenning with the Anglo-Danish pronunciation of the Danish word 'Köng' for king
Dude Luke did so good in guessing those words that sounds similar. He must have an ear for language. Norwegians learn to decipher language because we had to constantly do it when we grew up with dialects, Swedish and Danish, so for someone who learned it later it's impressive. Does he have an Irish or Scottish background, where he is used to interpreting different dialects? The one cognate he missed was prachtich, which is prektig in Norwegian. While pracht is prakt in Norwegian. But that word is not used so often now a days, a lot of Norwegians would not get that either. Ferbyndt really sounds like the Norwegian word forbinder, but forbinder means associate. So I thought she said "eleven cities that is associated with ice skating", but that turned out to be wrong. The one thing though, most Norwegians will know the Dutch by ice skating seeing how they have been beating us in that sport the last 30 years or more, so that's the one thing most Norwegians would have gotten but that's not due to the cognates or language, but due to cultural reference. So yeah, I think he did better than most Norwegians would have done honestly. The weird thing is the one little mistake that was made in the text. Which he corrected. The text said "mange dyr [...] på jord" which means "many animals on earth", while he said "mange dyr [...] på landet", which means "many animals [...] in the countryside". You could also say "mange dyr [...] på land", which means "a lot of animals on land". But yeah, the text did not make sense, because it says there's a lot of animals on earth in Norway. The earth is not in Norway, so that doesn't make sense. So he actually corrected that. If he found that sentence somewhere else, he basically corrected a native Norwegian on the fly.
Interesting! I’m half Swedish, we have distant German from the Frisian islands and I also have Norwegian. So very interesting, thanks for making the challenge!
If they had been able to read the sentences they would most likely have been more accurate as both languages have some striking similarities in their written form.
The first example was very interesting to me, as in the regional Scottish dialect of English, "bairn" is one way to say child (plural would be "bairns")
@@happyspanners Ironically in Norway we usually use "unger" and "ungar" (oungerr, oungarr). (Children). "Barn" is mostly used in a sort of formal language or/and in the west Oslo and Drammen areas. But even they occasionally say unger. The NG in norwegian is more like one sound. We call that a "diftong".
So cool to see such similarities in these languages! I'm an American, but know some Icelandic and a little German. So surprised I was able to understand so much of both!
A trick is to learn førøyskt. (Torshavn/Faroe islands, in danish Færøerne) If you learn it pretty well you will understand pretty much of norwegian, swedish afterwards and probably a good deal of frisian.
@@BrazilResearcher 1 in 5 Americans speak another language. Only 20% are learning a new foreign language. Knowing that we are not in Europe, seems pretty good. Don't hate!
@@conan4632 Over here in The Netherlands 'Friese Vlag' is cream. Is it this same cream that gets exported to Indonesia? Another famous Frisian company is Douwe Egberts; I see their coffee abroad as well.
Yes, that makes sense, because the term sommerfugl is actually from north German(Hanseatic) influence on Scandinavian. It comes from low German(plattdütch). Before German influence we called butterflies "fivrelde".
It’s interesting how all these Frisian words could also be used in English, but would sound very archaic. Bern: Born, as in Firstborn, literally first child. Svart: Swarthy Blad: Blade of grass Skuld: guilt Hund: Hound Vogel: Fowl
I'm German and a bit familiar with low German ( platt ) and have picked up a few words of Frisian in my life, some of them by living in Scotland thirty years ago. Now I'm learning Dutch. There are so many ways to approach.
To be fair, "skuld" would be the correct spelling of "skyld" in Nynorsk (New Norwegian), so if Luke had been using that, he'd nail that right out of the park first try I think!
"Ny-Norsk" how ironical. Nynorsk goes far back, at least to the time of the Viking. Nothing new about it. Nynorsk Faroese and Icelandic are extremely similar. Norwegian people do not really understand their own language anymore, and more tragically. They are ashamed of it for some strange reason. They literally makes fun of them who speaks strong Nynorsk dialect such as Sogndal and Setesdalen Just to mention a few
@@Leon-jp7ch It's an uphill battle to use it as your main written form, but we who use it seem to be a tightly knit group. You sort of have to take a stance in language politics if you decide to use it. I wouldn't say we are made fun of as much, but sometimes urbanites try their utmost to not meet us half way, that's for sure. I speak a very broad and old Telemark dialect, and we have almost no representation in the cultural mainstay. Too few of us to make a dent in the majority.
I think it's due to the Norse rule of Northern Britain for a while. There are some words in the local English accents/dialects in North of England and Scotland that have Nordic roots.
@@rohitchaoji - True. Since Hjaltland (the Shetland islands) are actually Norwegian, no wonder a lot of Norwegian has affected the language in the area. That's also where the name "scouse" (short for lap-skaus, lapskaus is a mixed dish of various) comes from.
Haven't read all the comments so may be repeating what others have said. But I would point out that several english dialects have some words that are obviously connected. For example in northern england and scotland mountains are "fells", valleys are "dales", streams are "becks" children are "bairns" and they "laik" (play) the weather can be murky and there are probably many other examples.
That sounds really swedish. We have both Fjäll / Berg for mountain. We have Dal for Valley, Bäck / Ström for Stream, Barn for Children, Lek for Play, Väder for Weather..
Hint: Dutch was also influenced a lot by Frisian and has a Frisian substrate. The North Frisian in Germany is surely also influenced by Low Saxon, Standard German and maybe Danish.
10 minutes in. "Lyden av fugler i luften er praktfull." Not that dissimilar, I feel. Granted, it is easier to read Frisian than to understand all of it by the sound of it. For me, I should say.
We only have written accounts from the norse, since it is very old. But I guess it's accent was somewhere inbetween rural scandinavian and modern-day icelandic. I am pretty sure that the norse must have had a strong emphasis on all the syllables of the words and an equal sound pressure on all the words of the sentences, since this is still done among elders in rural parts of Norway and Sweden. But in icelandic, english and more modernized norwegian dialects it has become more customary to fade out the sound in the end of a word or sentence. One exception is Oslo where one instead moves up in the end of all sentences even when not asking about something.
Swedish is closer to Norwegian than Danish is. And Germans and Dutch people would probably understand Danish more easily yes. But depends. We have X hundreds of dialects here Norway, if not more, so depends on the speaker. Eastern and Southern are closer to Danish, being under Danish rule for 400+ years, while the dialects are more true to old Norwegian, and “easier” for Iceland people to understand if spoken slowly. People forget that English is a Germanic language.
For the participants it is more challenging then for us. They don't see the written sentence, right? I shall try to just listen and not watch the video next time.
Very interesting! I'd like to propose a test between Norwegian and Low Saxon, another language of the Netherlands and Germany. Norwegian borrowed like half of their words from Low Saxon in the Middle Ages and it would be nice to see how much we would still be able to understand each other.
"Like half of their words". Interesting. Can you link a source to this claim? I know the Hanseatic League brought some mutual influence, but "half their words"? Damn. Maybe my historic sources are wrong. Edit: Also interesting how you refer to it as a "language of the Netherlands and Germany" considering I believed it was non-extant. I need to check this up.
Indeed. There are much more similarities between lower saxon dialects and scandinavian languages, than there are between frisian and scandinavian languages
@@SebHaarfagre the influence of medieval low german on scandinavian was extensive, yeah. "like half" is obviously hyperbole, but low german was helped by the fact that the languages were already incredibly similar, so that incorporating low german terms into your speech took little effort and was often understandable even to people unfamiliar with low german; it's the same reason old norse influence on English was so extensive. An example from swedish, because that's my language, is the word for human. "människa" is a loan from medieval low german, but the native word also persists, which is "männska", which is often percieved as a rural pronounciation of människa but is actually the native cognate. Important to note is that medieval low german was a much different language than modern standard german, or even modern low german.
I remember an anacdote about my father. When he was vacationing in Pompei in Italy with our family. He met another tourist from southern Sweden, and they could converse pretty well, him in Frisian and the other man in his dialect.
In Lithuanian "berniukas" means boy. The root sounds quite similar to "barn" in Scandinavian languages. Suffix "iuk" is gently small form and "as" is masculine nominative. "Antra" - second. Interestingly, in Russian "другой" means (an)other, in Polish, "drugi" is second, but in Swedish "andra" means both.
During the medievals Latvia and coastal Lithuania had a gothic language, which was a kind of ancient eastern nordic also used in parts of Poland, Denmark and Germany. Many human names and area names in the Baltics, Scandinavia still have a gothic touch to it pretty clearly. The last of the gothic languages was spoken as late as the 1600s in Crimean Peninsula (by a group of Ostrogoths).
barn/Bern is still used in Scots as bairn for child and in Northern English dialects too. it is Anglian and Scandinavian in origin. Child/children is West Germanic and related to Dutch and German words for child Kinder/ kinderen.
I remember seeing the scottish town name Stenhousemuir, which sounded more like norwegian than english to me :) In norwegian it would have been Steinhusmyr. The bog with stone houses.
Frisian coins (sceatta) from 1000-1300 years ago were found on the British Isles, Scandinavia, along the rivers into Europe, along the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts and into modern day Russia.
Ok this just proves it. My dads side of the family is frisian and I swear my dad could have been a viking. Tall, reddish complexion..good man with an ax. There is definitely Norman blood in me:):)
Forskjellige is one of those rare words that’s actually easier to understand when you hear it rather than when you read it because it looks different but sounds quite similar to our word: verschillende.
My grand parents were freesian, what is the term for using a long pole to cross the canals? we did that as kids around the canals draining the corn fields in the USA i can no longer speak it but could understand 90% of what she was saying? brings back fond memories of life on my grandparents farms
@Prof. Spudd yeah, we (including myself) have that notorious "sh" [ɧ] sound. It's roughly like trying to blend "h" and "sh" together, as the IPA symbol hints. Northern Swedes (Norrlänningar), people from Värmland (Värmlänningar) as well as (some) "posh" speakers (e.g. the Crown Princess Victoria) have a more international "sh" [ʃ] sound though and Finland Swedes have a very fronted and thin "sh", like the German "ich" [ç] sound. The Scanian "sh" sound is the same as German "ach" [χ] sound. All in all, the pronunciation of "sh/sj/sch/sk/stj" etc vary a lot in different Swedish accents.
I was lucky enough to grow up bilingual; Dutch and English with my Dutch family all being Frisian. My degree was in German and Spanish and I chose to study Norwegian in Germany. To date, Norwegian is the easiest language I’ve learned because I had the knowledge of a few “cousins” to lean on. Beautiful video!
@@ReneAltena I didn’t say Frisian was the only one did I, I said “a few”? To me it was more so a case of “if it doesn’t mean X in Y, then X might be similar to Z”.
@@laurensvisser6476 Yes, it's because modern-day written norwegian since around the 1600s have been very influenced by latin, german and danish. With a simplified grammatical system. The really old norwegian would be more of a monster to learn :) The old swedish even worse.
Just realized Luke is probably British due to his accent. And the problem then besides mispronunciation, is that he thinks in English, not Norwegian, which affects this challenge a bit, as to how he will manage to recognize and understand words. It’s easier as a Norwegian as we have the cross cultural references as the majority of us are familiar with German. Most of us learning it in school at one point. That or French, besides English. I was fluent. But now lost it all as I never used it. Also in Norwegian, except with certain dialects, we don’t pronounce the last letter/sound when it comes to certain words: Dog: “hund” pronounces “hun”. The letter -d is silent. So you will only know the difference depending on the context. In some dialects (west coast/western Norway) they say hund as “hond/honda/honden”, if not mistaken. Sundmørsk - Sundmøre… Even for many Norwegians it’s difficult that the written form isn’t the same as the verbal form. Remember my brother while growing up, would always be corrected on this by my mom who used to be a Norwegian language teacher for those learning Norwegian as immigrants, before being put in their respective classes after their language level, and age. When I went to school we weren’t allowed to write how we’d speak it. This was in the 90’s and 2000’s, being a real Millennial hahaha. But now days I believe they aren’t as strict. Also because kids now days speaks way more English in their everyday life, and mixes that in with Norwegian, like a fusion due to being exposed to more English through social media, games and movies/music etc. They are basically bilingual at an early age… then again English is our 2nd language😝🤷🏾♀️👀
I also realised, that at least in some cases, it would’ve been easier for us Swedish speakers with the Frisian, especially us Finland Swedish speakers as we kind of pronounce all vowels and consonants of the words …
Interesting (I'm Swedish) I always should the "d" in Norwegian "hund" should be spelled out and not silent. But then it's just like Danish where the "d", just like in hund, often is silent.
@Prof. Spudd That was in the old days. Now the kids learn mostly american english. From mass media, but the teachers are also now affected by that. The more UK english teachers in Norway are retired now...
Dutch is actually mostly based on Hollandic and even more Brabantian Dialects ( mostly from Antwerp ) ..... Frisian is more related to English and North Germanic Languages while Dutch is between English and German ...
In Swedish the word "präktig" ('grand', 'fine' most likely from the German "prächtig") is probably cognate to the Frisian "prachtich", and perhaps also to the English "pretty".
But Swedish vocabulary is much more often from Low Saxon (Low German). That’s the language people in Germany wanted to wipe out (ausrotten) after the fall of the Hanseatic League and in many parts of Northern Germany they successfully did so. Actually it’s estimated that about 50% of Swedish vocabulary was borrowed from Middle Low Saxon.
As a (west) Frisian with quite a bit of understanding of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, i think that Swedish sounds most like Frisian of those three, although Danish probably is most closely related (due to the geographical location probably).
@@TheMichaelK I almost suspect that since old rural swedish in the north and in Gotland 100 years ago was quite different than today's swedish. In a way it resembled to some degree frisian and rural central and Vefsn norwegian (including the classic Jemtlandish, which was norwegian until it became a part of Sweden)
Frisian CAN sound oddly like the early Modern English of Shakespeare - words like "forsooth" , and "dost" leap out at you. But here it sounded only slightly less foreign than Norwejian.
Yes, there you hit the nail. If you read Dutch and Frisian like Old or Middle English you'd be amazed about the closeness. There are a few rules. Th becomes d and y becomes ig for example. You also need to filter the Latin words from English.
I've been learning Norwegian for a while now and I have really noticed some remarkable similarities between Norwegian and West-Flemish, my dialect. Seeing how it is that part of Belgium that is connected to the North Sea and maybe is the shortest distance to Great Britain, it wouldn't surprise me that there were interactions which spilled over some language. It might be nice to do such a comparison video, to see the few parts where it is more Norwegian than it is Dutch.
I worked in Norway with some belgians who spoke what we call "flamsk" with each other. This is somewhat easier to understand than dutch and german. Something to do with the accent. I didn't hear so many sounds from the throat :) :) Unlike the dutch
@@KibyNykraft Indeed, Flemish mostly has a softer 'w' and 'g' compared to Dutch. Flemish can, however, change quite a lot in just a few kilometers. Not every Flemish person understands every other Flemisch person, so it's even hard for us :D We do have this kind-of-official Flemish, but it's only for media purposes or talking to people from other regions.
That’s a problem in a wider sense: we don’t have any only Frisian, only Norwegian, only Low Saxon, only Dutch ... speakers left, usually. And that makes a clean measurement impossible.
I was very surprised and became interested in Frisian/Dutch when I watched the Belgian Netflix TV-series called "Undercover", as a Norwegian. Frisian/Dutch are one of the languages I haven't really been exposed to, and I love learning so I thought I'd give the series a try - exactly since I knew next to nothing about the Dutch-speaking world. I was almost at a loss of words, for how many similar/shared words there are, and especially how similar the pronounciations were! I never had a clue... Even this one phrase/saying they said a lot was "You know what?" which sounded almost identical to "Vet du hva?". When I heard it I believed it was written almost the same way, but it's something along the lines of "Wet jij wa?" And the way Frisians pronounce "Paid" which is "Betalt". It almost felt like I was watching a Norwegian show at times, I love finding these lingual and historical connections!
As a (west) Frisian, i would like to see a video like this with a real Norwegian guy (or girl). I learned some Norwegian myself and years ago i went to Norway and met with a Norwegian guy i knew online. He couldn't understand my Frisian and thought it sounded mostly like German and i only could understand him speaking Norwegian because i learned Norwegian. The two languages (and also Swedish and Danish) obviously are quite related, as you can see in this video. But it's not like they are mutually intelligible.
I could actually understand quite a bit of this one! 😁 I've heard that Frisian is related to my family's Mennonite Low German. I'd love to volunteer for one of these videos if I was better at speaking it. (Also, still hoping for a video featuring Finnish at some point. 😅)
@@hemmper I think there are some smaller languages in Russia that are in the same language family, but Finnish and Estonian would be the most likely comparison for a video like the ones Bahador makes. (I don't speak Estonian but I can speak some Finnish, and the little bit of Estonian I've heard/read is really close.)
My mother's maiden name is Swarthout. And yes, my ancestors were from Groningen. I'm becoming very proud of that. They helped establish New Netherland before it was New York. My ancestor that came here Tomys Swartwoud, was Frisian, his wife was Norwegian.
The funny thing is all the words, except possible skrive, are still in English, but some have changed meaning slightly. Hound, tide being two that are more specific.
@@anonymoususer1224 which I think comes from Latin, the English native is shrive/shrove, as in shrove Tuesday. Svart has the dialectal swart, but more commonly swarthy.
@Prof. Spudd Dutch and Frisian are closer nowadays, but linguistically, English and Frisian share more similarities, especially when it comes to sound changes
@@oliveranderson7264 yeah that first sentence in frisian could be translated word for word into English and once she explained them it was stupidly obvious.
As mentioned multiple times in the comments, Luke is not a native Norwegian speaker. When he contacted me to participate, I was fully aware that Norwegian is not his first language. However, not being a native speaker does not mean a person is not suited to represent a language. On this channel, one of the objectives is to promote learning new languages. Luke contacted me a long time ago to participate in a video, he put forward his qualifications and credentials to adequately represent the Norwegian language. Though it was never possible for me to judge his fluently in a language that I do not speak, I did put my trust in him and the official documents that certify the completion of his training. He has worked very hard to get to this point and I applaud his dedication. So please, keep that in mind as you comment!
Hope you enjoy the video! Please follow and contact us on Instagram if you have any suggestions or if you would like to participate in a future video: instagram.com/BahadorAlast
For those who may be interested, Luke will be turning his Instagram page into a learn Norwegian/Celtic language page, and will be giving history and information regarding each of the languages. Here is the link: instagram.com/amluee/
Yes.We enjoyed very much ❤️
It's nice to expand into the Nordic region. Would be interesting to have Icelandic.
Do a Croatian video with Russian again but just using sentences
Do Scots, Frisian and Low Saxon comparison.
@@michaelmcalinden5902 I thought Scots is Celtic because Scottish people are Celtic
As a Dane I feel like the natural middle man between these languages.
scandinavian languages are all from the same language group aswell so makes sense
I do too, as a swede from scania 😂
Btw people from other parts of sweden thinks people from scania sounds danish
Do you think it's easier to understand the scanian dialect of swedish than other swedish dialects? ^^
I'm not a Dane ok f u
We have Danish friends. They tought us some danish words like sommerfugl, pinsvin, ruskumsnusk, flauermus(?). We tried them to pronounce some Dutch words liked 'negenennegentig' which means ninetynine. Especially that typical 'g' was very difficult for them. But when we told them that we visited Tivoli in Kopenhagen they laughed at us. They pronounced it as 'Tsjuli'.
It is really nice to hear and see this. I have not heard Frisian before and Frisian sounds like a blend between the Scandinavian languages with some Dutch and German for colour to my ears. A beautiful language. I'm looking forward to hearing more.
I am Afrikaans speaking I can understand most of the Frisian words Dutch is much nearer to Afrikaans than Frisian I find German also a little nearer to Afrikaans than frisian
Frisian has almost no loan words from skandinavian languages. All the words that sound skandinavian, are from the Dutch language.
@@ReneAltena I do not agree but I will keep exploring Frisian further.
@moi2833 Yes I agree. I am looking though as many versions of the roots as possible to combine the different clues.
@@ReneAltena There could be some borrowed words from danish though in the north frisian (west part of border areas of Denmark and Germany)
A funny anecdote, my grandmother was from Frisia, she only spoke Dutch and Frisian, however, she never used the Frisian language, as in the early part of the 20th century it wasn't considered 'done' to speak Frisian. One christmas, she stayed with my uncle and aunt, who also had guests from Denmark. To everyone's suprise she could converse quite well with these guests, she in Frisian and the guests in Danish.
Thank you for calling it Frisia 😊
Mooie dierbare herinneringen aan je grootmoeder. En ja de Scandinavische taal komt heel dicht in de buurt van het Fries. Ik denk dat juist het Deens ( als verschilt dat niet veel van Noors en Zweeds ) het dichtste bij het Fries komt. Misschien ook doordat een deel van Denemarken ooit toch het Koninkrijk Friesland behoorde. :)
This was really interesting to see as a Dutch person learning norwegian. Last summer I was in Friesland and tried to read a piece of text in frysian and certain points I could understand only because they were similar to norwegian.
I’m also a Dutch person learning Norwegian😁
@@lucamara6424 My brother has a coffee cup at home where the text is written in frisian from a trip he did through northern Germany and Netherlands. I could read and understand all of it (I am norwegian). But that was a simple text. Some kind of verse. I can only understand 40 percent maybe of the spoken I have heard on the web. But more than in dutch, where the spoken is difficult (the written dutch and german is not so difficult).
First of all I want to say Luke you have done well. For everyone pointing out that he is not a native speaker, that is correct, he is not a native Norwegian speaker but then again there are many people in Norway who are not native speakers. Luke has actually done a very good job learning the language because having been to Oslo, I can tell you that many people have lived there for many years and didn't even learn Norwegian properly, realizing that they can manage with English. Same is the case here in Stockholm with Swedish. So good on you Luke! Cheers!
It’s not about him not doing a good job. You missed the whole point of the criticism. And you’re not even Norwegian, so butt out jævla Svenske faen😝 But about having someone who is an actual native speaker representing the language in question. Not talking about ethnic appearance or some other racist bs. There are many reasons why people has lived somewhere for a long time and not been able to learn it properly! Especially if moving to a totally different country, culture and society from your own when old. Even many ethnic white Norwegians suck at their own language!
@@kilipaki87oritahiti Do the Sami people speak Norwegian well?
Why didn't they chose a native speaker for this task?
@@manfredneilmann4305 Cause this is not the Olympics
@@avidavidzada4721 Yes. I don't think you will find many Sami in Norway that don't speak Norwegian. Actually many Sami loose their language, because Norwegian is so dominant and common, and there's few schools that have the Sami as the primary language.
Its funny how these languages are so similar. I feel like she would have had an even easier time with the Western Dialect of Norway. I was astounded at how many things she pronounced the same way as I do!
The first word in Frisian was interesting since in Scotland some would say "bairn" for a child.
"Bairn" came from the Viking influence. It's barn in Norwegian and Danish.
@@jiros00 and swedish as well
@@johnnorthtribe Sure. I didn't mention Swedish because Swedes didn't invade or settle in Britain.
@@jiros00 Björn Borg conquered Wimbledon... 😛
@@dutchman7623 Yes. Won it five times I think. There were actual Swedish vikings of course but they went East.
It’s so much easier when you can read the sentence as well. When you only hear it, the pronunciation can mask the lexical similarities. I found words in both languages that are similar in German, but mainly with the help of the text. The words when spoken actually tend to throw me off the trail. Nice video!
In my north east england where im from (aswell as scottish) we also say "bairn" for kid (pronounced like 'bear-n').
Is that retained from old English?
Yes, no one says it down south though. I don't think they say it in the Midlands, or even Lancashire/Yorkshire either right? It's only the very north of England that people still use it, like Cumbria, Tyne & Wear etc.
@@Jojikiba i have a few cumbrian/Lancashire friends and I've never personally heard them say bairn before. pretty sure it's just a north east/Scottish thing but i could be wrong
@@alexeiabrikosov360 yeah. Another thing I believe Geordie has retained is that we pronounce -er at the end of words exactly like Germans. By that i mean, i don't say bett-uh, butt-uh, weath-uh, but instead bett-a, weath-ah and so on. Believe it's the only English accent to have that
@@ciaranhenderson9464 Oh right. I just found this on Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbrian_dialect According to that, it seems they say "bairn" in Cumbria, but I personally have no idea (I'm from Wiltshire 😃). Cheers!
As a Dutch guy, I understood most of the Frisian and half of the Norwegian.
That is because all Frisian words that resemble the Norwegian words, were actually Dutch words (exception was 'bern' / barn for child)
As a Frisian I thought I knew some Swedish but Norwegian is a bit easier except for some words.
Great video!
If they had of seen the sentences written down, I’m sure Luke would have gotten more.
This "test" is unrealistic. The two languages are in reality much closer than it might seem. If he actually was Norwegian, he would understand much more Frisian. As a Norwegian from the south coast, I more or less understood everything, especially when it was written in Frisian as well. With a richer vocabulary, the guy would have understood much more. There are often synonyms or oldfashioned words that are more similar with Frisian, Dutch or Low German. If you dont know the language well enough, like this guy, you will not be able to spot the similarities that easy.
I do appreciate your work, Bahador. Wonderful material! The guys also did it well. The English guy seemed to be a little bit confused but I find it quite cute :) His Norwegian is epic, he's done a great work to get to the point where he is now.
Lukeeeee my friend well done. Your Norsk was on point. Such an inspiration for all native English speakers who want to learn another language🎉🎉🎉
He’s English? His Norwegian is pretty good being from there I could barely tell!
Love this comparison! Frisian is intriguing to a native English speaker like myself, and I found myself making, in my mind, educated guesses as to what the words meant. What I love most however, is to see a fellow Englishman do so well with a Scandinavian language. I'm self taught in Swedish and have been learning for more than ten years. Sadly I don't have a certificate like Luke has, but it's still nice to see. I checked the link to his Instagram, and he's also from Birmingham, same as me!
A certificate can be useful but it doesn't take anything away from you and your knowledge that you don't have one.
I'm Swedish and I think that it is great that you chose to learn our language. If you travel here you will probably have to tell people that you want to speak Swedish though since most Swedes will want to practice their English with you.
So, he’s from England
That’s great that he worked towards fluency in a foreign language.
I guessed Skuld was guilt because a lot of times German has sch for Nordic/Frisian sk and the word in German is Schuld. It helps when you know about Older Germanic Languages and their sound shifts.
Yes. In Norway now it is pronounced shyll. In some dialects they will say "skülld"/"skoolld"
This norwegian dude should up his game a little bit. I'm aware that you probably are a bit nervous when being filmed, but the way he pronunces dog and guilt in norwegian is actually wrong (if he is talking "Bokmal"), as the d's at the end of those words aren't actually pronounced. So "She" and "Dog" sounds exactly the same. In danish you can just about hear the "d", and in german, it is pronunced with a T. So Dog in norwegian, danish and german respectively would be like this: hun (just as she), hon(d) (danish) and then "hont" (german) (not spelled, the way it's pronunced).
Edit: if Luke isn't a native Norwegian speaker, forget everything I said; I think he's doing quite well :)
Could he be speaking a dialect? It seems weird to invite a non-native speaker for one of these videos.
EDIT: I've seen several comments now saying he's not a native speaker, and the linked instagram account kind of seems like he's probably English. I have to say, I find it disappointing to invite a non-native speaker to represent a language.
Great video Mr Bahador all the best guys! The two languages are great! And concerning the guys they did such a great job.
I like It.
Also noticing Friesland's closeness to Denmark, the Danish word for dog is written "hund" but pronounced "hunn" just like in Frisian.
I would pronounce it hunn in Norwegian as well. I honestly don’t think many Norwegians pronounce the d in hund.
In Danish you can hear the “d” in hund. Otherwise it’s hun = she. The two words sounds differently, but hard for non native speakers to hear
"Hound" is a word in English which means dog. More specifically hunting dogs I think.
@@michaelrasmussen6405 I'm not a native speaker but my father was Danish so I'm fluent in Danish. Well in a way you're right, the "d" morphs into the "n". But a foreigner learning Danish would probably just say "hunn".
Here in the innland Norway central Norway we pronounce the word hund. An example would be: e går på tur med hunden (hundn) min 🙂
Ek praat Afrikaans in Suid Afrika en meeste woorde word ook gebruik in my taal maar tog bietjie anders - dit is so interresant 😊
"sv: Och jag talar svenska. Det är intressant att försöka förstå Afrikaans.
En: "And I speak swedish. It's interresting to try to understand Afrikaans."
A try without google translate:
En: "I speak Afrikaans in South Africa most of the words is used in my language but I took a small part of the other (norweigan?) - It's is so interresting".
tog = en: "took" bietjie= ge: "bisschen", a bit, anders = "en: "others"
Sv: "Jag pratar Afrikaans i Sydafrika och de flesta orden används i mitt språk men förstod lite av det andra (norskan) - det är så intressant :-)"
Sv. "Jag pratar Afrikaans i Sydafrika och de mesta orden brukas i mitt tal men tog lite av det andra (norskan) - det är så intressant." Fully understandable but a bit formal and old fashion swedish. With a slight grammatical error in using mesta istället för flesta.
In swedish we say "prata" informally for speaking, formally "tala" while danes and norwegians snakker which we retain as slang in swedish as "snacka". I think that prata came into swedish from low german. We both have mesta och flesta. "Tal" in swedish is speach not language but close enough "brukas" is cognate with gebruik
@J Heat Jag förstod exakt vad du skrev
Yes afrikaans here and its the same basically
Voël bird
Skruiwe write
Blom flower
Hond dog
Swart black
Tyd time
Alot is pronoumced the same as either the norwegian or the frisian. Very interesting
I'm swedish and understood what you wrote
Afrikaans is een dialect van het Nederlands met een eigen spelling. Groet uit Vlaanderen.
It was interesting hearing Frisian. I have been learning Norwegian and I understood a lot of it.
So many words we also have in Afrikaans from both sides.
Vugel - Voel / Guilty - Skuld / Blom is flower / Skruiwe is to write / Tyd is time / pragtig is beautiful or wonderful all very similar!
Afrikaans: Bern - kind, svart- swart, roppe - tou, blad - blaar, skuld - skuld (skuldig), hund - hond, fûgel - voël, blomst- blom, skriuwe - skryf, tid - tyd. Afrikaans is the second word for either the Fries or Norwegian.
Swedish: Bern - barn, svart- svart, roppe - ropa, blad - blad, skuld - skuld (skuldig), hund - hund, fûgel - fågel, blomst- blommor, skriuwe - skriva, tid - tid. Swedish is the second word for either the Fries or Norwegian.
@@mikaelrundqvist2338 That’s awesome. There’s a lot of similarities in the root of the words, across all the language’s. I spent about two weeks in all of the Scandinavian countries, but it seems that the pronunciation is very different, so I could necessarily understand. But the written text always gave clues as to what was written.
Goeie naand van Suid Afrika. ( Good evening from South Africa)
@@HolisticHealthEducation God kväll från Sverige (Good evening from Sweden)
Unfortunately I have been depressed for several years but I love seeing people who are so happy. They are cute 😊 (and he's nice 😏😄)
I hope you feel happier through this process as well.
@@BahadorAlast
It's ok, thanks 😉😊
You are doing amazing work through these videos! I've been watching for a while and really enjoy them.
Emotial to hear these two. I am half ostfriesich via Texas and half Norman. Emden and Stavanger. Sea captains, stea & sail and cowboy rancher army officer. Dad spoke Old Friesian at home but hochdeutsch in school in Texas. Later English and Spanish. He passed long ago. Mother, aunt, uncle, grandpa, nane and gr grandpa all spoke riksmal and nynorsk. We belonged to Sons of Norway. All gone. I am 78, but it was like being a boy and hearing their voices. Tesekur ederim Bahador beg. Dostum. Allaha ismarladik. Karl/Kadri. Radio wa2kbz at y
What's that you wrote at the end? Looks like Turkish or something, or were you attempting to write something in Frisian or Norwegian?
By the way, Riksmål (which I guess technically now is Bokmål) and Nynorsk are written languages, you can't speak them.
Norwegians pick up Dutch fast, and vice versa. Luke speaks perfectly Norwegian
English and Frisian are both Ingvaeonic Germanic languages and they are the transitional Germanic dialects that stand between West Germanic dialects of Dutch, Flemish, Swiss German, Low German and high German dialects and the Scandinavian North Germanic dialects of Swedish. Danish, Norwegian Bokmal and Nynorsk dialects and the Insular north Germanic dialects of Icelandic and Faeroese. versions of Faroese were spoken in northern Scotland. Orkney and Shetland Islands and the outer Hebrides and was known as Norn. as well as In parts of North West England and the lake District. many place names in North west England are of Norwegian origin. majority of place names in the East Midlands and many Yorkshire place names are of Danish origin, signifying that a considerable number of Danes settled in England over a 300 year period and this significantly changed the English language to what it is today. their medieval Anglo-Danish dialect replaced old English as the standard language from which middle English and modern English are derived. that is why our grammar is identical to Scandinavian rather than West Germanic as is the syntax and structure if English and its basic vocabulary which combines both west Germanic and north Germanic words, sometimes with many doublets meaning the same thing. Eg. to and till or until. already, alone, also, shirt, skirt, are, they them, their, under, so, seek, see, saw, seen,seem, scream, shift, dream,drown,draw, drag, door,room,lie, lie, law, egg, sky,,stare,stark,bairn,. boy,queen, king. many Anglo Saxon words ended up being Norsed up with their Danish's equivalents, so that Kenning (old English for King or Konnig in Dutch and German)became King in middle and modern English replacing Kenning with the Anglo-Danish pronunciation of the Danish word 'Köng' for king
Dude Luke did so good in guessing those words that sounds similar. He must have an ear for language. Norwegians learn to decipher language because we had to constantly do it when we grew up with dialects, Swedish and Danish, so for someone who learned it later it's impressive. Does he have an Irish or Scottish background, where he is used to interpreting different dialects?
The one cognate he missed was prachtich, which is prektig in Norwegian. While pracht is prakt in Norwegian. But that word is not used so often now a days, a lot of Norwegians would not get that either. Ferbyndt really sounds like the Norwegian word forbinder, but forbinder means associate. So I thought she said "eleven cities that is associated with ice skating", but that turned out to be wrong. The one thing though, most Norwegians will know the Dutch by ice skating seeing how they have been beating us in that sport the last 30 years or more, so that's the one thing most Norwegians would have gotten but that's not due to the cognates or language, but due to cultural reference. So yeah, I think he did better than most Norwegians would have done honestly.
The weird thing is the one little mistake that was made in the text. Which he corrected. The text said "mange dyr [...] på jord" which means "many animals on earth", while he said "mange dyr [...] på landet", which means "many animals [...] in the countryside". You could also say "mange dyr [...] på land", which means "a lot of animals on land". But yeah, the text did not make sense, because it says there's a lot of animals on earth in Norway. The earth is not in Norway, so that doesn't make sense. So he actually corrected that. If he found that sentence somewhere else, he basically corrected a native Norwegian on the fly.
Interesting! I’m half Swedish, we have distant German from the Frisian islands and I also have Norwegian.
So very interesting, thanks for making the challenge!
If they had been able to read the sentences they would most likely have been more accurate as both languages have some striking similarities in their written form.
The first example was very interesting to me, as in the regional Scottish dialect of English, "bairn" is one way to say child (plural would be "bairns")
It’s the same in North Eastern English dialects. Pronounced pretty much exactly as the Frisians do.
@@happyspanners Ironically in Norway we usually use "unger" and "ungar" (oungerr, oungarr). (Children). "Barn" is mostly used in a sort of formal language or/and in the west Oslo and Drammen areas. But even they occasionally say unger. The NG in norwegian is more like one sound. We call that a "diftong".
Think of things left over by Viking conquests. The history of the dialects is actually fascinating imo 😅
So cool to see such similarities in these languages! I'm an American, but know some Icelandic and a little German. So surprised I was able to understand so much of both!
A trick is to learn førøyskt. (Torshavn/Faroe islands, in danish Færøerne) If you learn it pretty well you will understand pretty much of norwegian, swedish afterwards and probably a good deal of frisian.
You are unique, because most people in the United States don’t know a second language.
@@BrazilResearcher 1 in 5 Americans speak another language. Only 20% are learning a new foreign language. Knowing that we are not in Europe, seems pretty good. Don't hate!
The Frisian flag is so cute with all these hearts in it lol
They're not hearts, but are called pompeblêden, that is water-lily leaves
almost looked edited but it's cool
frisian flag is one of indonesian milk brand, lol, yeah, since frisian flag is from netherlands, which colonised indonesia.
@@conan4632 Over here in The Netherlands 'Friese Vlag' is cream. Is it this same cream that gets exported to Indonesia? Another famous Frisian company is Douwe Egberts; I see their coffee abroad as well.
In Swiss German they say "Summervogel" (Summer bird) for butterfly 😃
Yes, that makes sense, because the term sommerfugl is actually from north German(Hanseatic) influence on Scandinavian. It comes from low German(plattdütch).
Before German influence we called butterflies "fivrelde".
@martinbruce5979 thank you for your addition.
I often see similiarities between the Netherlands and Switzerland (North and Swissgerman)
It’s interesting how all these Frisian words could also be used in English, but would sound very archaic.
Bern: Born, as in Firstborn, literally first child.
Svart: Swarthy
Blad: Blade of grass
Skuld: guilt
Hund: Hound
Vogel: Fowl
The second he said he's speaking "bokmål", you know he's actually a foreigner
What would a norwegian say
@@chuckitaway466 Vestkantsmål maybe.
@@jiros00 it means western edge target?
@@chuckitaway466 Lol. No. It means West side standard. It is an unofficial term for how people on the West side of Oslo speak.
@@jiros00 thank you
I'm German and a bit familiar with low German ( platt ) and have picked up a few words of Frisian in my life, some of them by living in Scotland thirty years ago. Now I'm learning Dutch. There are so many ways to approach.
It is just amazing to see how languages develope!!!!!
Very nice, Bahador.Appreciate your work ❤️🇧🇩
To be fair, "skuld" would be the correct spelling of "skyld" in Nynorsk (New Norwegian), so if Luke had been using that, he'd nail that right out of the park first try I think!
"Skyld" er òg tillate på nynorsk, men det er frå dansk.
"Ny-Norsk" how ironical. Nynorsk goes far back, at least to the time of the Viking. Nothing new about it.
Nynorsk Faroese and Icelandic are extremely similar.
Norwegian people do not really understand their own language anymore, and more tragically. They are ashamed of it for some strange reason. They literally makes fun of them who speaks strong Nynorsk dialect such as Sogndal and Setesdalen Just to mention a few
@@Leon-jp7ch It's an uphill battle to use it as your main written form, but we who use it seem to be a tightly knit group. You sort of have to take a stance in language politics if you decide to use it. I wouldn't say we are made fun of as much, but sometimes urbanites try their utmost to not meet us half way, that's for sure. I speak a very broad and old Telemark dialect, and we have almost no representation in the cultural mainstay. Too few of us to make a dent in the majority.
@@joansmith69 Broad Old Telemark dialect is Beautiful. Be proud of it.
Would have been easier with a Swede: skuld
As a half dutch I feel like Frisian is In the middle of Scandinavian and continental Germanic languages.
in Scottish Bairns are children as well, as well as in old English.
And Geordie
I think it's due to the Norse rule of Northern Britain for a while. There are some words in the local English accents/dialects in North of England and Scotland that have Nordic roots.
@@rohitchaoji - True. Since Hjaltland (the Shetland islands) are actually Norwegian, no wonder a lot of Norwegian has affected the language in the area. That's also where the name "scouse" (short for lap-skaus, lapskaus is a mixed dish of various) comes from.
@ I don't know why I never made the connection between "barn" and "born". That makes a lot more sense now.
No problem at all for a German who learnt both Danish and Dutch at least in the written form
Haven't read all the comments so may be repeating what others have said. But I would point out that several english dialects have some words that are obviously connected. For example in northern england and scotland mountains are "fells", valleys are "dales", streams are "becks" children are "bairns" and they "laik" (play) the weather can be murky and there are probably many other examples.
The words you mentioned definitely resemble (low) German and Dutch cognates...
That sounds really swedish. We have both Fjäll / Berg for mountain. We have Dal for Valley, Bäck / Ström for Stream, Barn for Children, Lek for Play, Väder for Weather..
As a German, frisian was quite easy to understand. But of course I could read everything... 😂
The frisian in my area Schleswig-Holstein seems to have a very different pronounciation. The frisian in the netherlands sounds very dutch influencerd
Even within Friesland there are a lot of differences in pronunciation.
Hint: Dutch was also influenced a lot by Frisian and has a Frisian substrate.
The North Frisian in Germany is surely also influenced by Low Saxon, Standard German and maybe Danish.
10 minutes in. "Lyden av fugler i luften er praktfull." Not that dissimilar, I feel. Granted, it is easier to read Frisian than to understand all of it by the sound of it. For me, I should say.
Norwegian (bokmål), reading Frisian is like reading a old remote dialect, where I fell like I kind of am almost there if I just get a few hints ....
Can you try to arrange someone in West-Flemish and Norse? They look similar as well.
We only have written accounts from the norse, since it is very old. But I guess it's accent was somewhere inbetween rural scandinavian and modern-day icelandic. I am pretty sure that the norse must have had a strong emphasis on all the syllables of the words and an equal sound pressure on all the words of the sentences, since this is still done among elders in rural parts of Norway and Sweden. But in icelandic, english and more modernized norwegian dialects it has become more customary to fade out the sound in the end of a word or sentence. One exception is Oslo where one instead moves up in the end of all sentences even when not asking about something.
as a dutch i could understand most of the words that both of them said!
I get the feeling Norwegian is much harder to understand for German, dutch and Frisian speakers than it would be to understand Danish or Swedish.
Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are mutually intelligible
Yup, Norwegian has a lot of silent letters which throws foreigners off
@@oliveranderson7264 A lot of that is from Danish tho
Swedish is closer to Norwegian than Danish is. And Germans and Dutch people would probably understand Danish more easily yes. But depends. We have X hundreds of dialects here Norway, if not more, so depends on the speaker. Eastern and Southern are closer to Danish, being under Danish rule for 400+ years, while the dialects are more true to old Norwegian, and “easier” for Iceland people to understand if spoken slowly. People forget that English is a Germanic language.
@@kilipaki87oritahiti there are a lot of words in Norwegian where I am amazed how similar they are to English, where Swedish uses a different word.
For the participants it is more challenging then for us. They don't see the written sentence, right? I shall try to just listen and not watch the video next time.
Exactly. Why it’s easier for us who watches.
@@kilipaki87oritahiti... for us who *watch
Very interesting! I'd like to propose a test between Norwegian and Low Saxon, another language of the Netherlands and Germany. Norwegian borrowed like half of their words from Low Saxon in the Middle Ages and it would be nice to see how much we would still be able to understand each other.
Specifically someone from Bergen
"Like half of their words".
Interesting. Can you link a source to this claim?
I know the Hanseatic League brought some mutual influence, but "half their words"? Damn. Maybe my historic sources are wrong.
Edit: Also interesting how you refer to it as a "language of the Netherlands and Germany" considering I believed it was non-extant. I need to check this up.
Indeed. There are much more similarities between lower saxon dialects and scandinavian languages, than there are between frisian and scandinavian languages
@@SebHaarfagre the influence of medieval low german on scandinavian was extensive, yeah. "like half" is obviously hyperbole, but low german was helped by the fact that the languages were already incredibly similar, so that incorporating low german terms into your speech took little effort and was often understandable even to people unfamiliar with low german; it's the same reason old norse influence on English was so extensive. An example from swedish, because that's my language, is the word for human. "människa" is a loan from medieval low german, but the native word also persists, which is "männska", which is often percieved as a rural pronounciation of människa but is actually the native cognate.
Important to note is that medieval low german was a much different language than modern standard german, or even modern low german.
I propose a test between low Saxon, and Frisian and old english (with Simon roper).
Finally a Scandinavian language
This is funny and interesting! Nice video!
As a South African i could understand 80% of the Frisian and like 30%-40% of the Norwegian lol
Afrikaans is 95% Nederlands 👍🏻
9:18 Lúd means goose in Hungarian...and the gooses are very loud... :-)
In Bulgarian (written as лют) means something hot/spicy. 😂
I remember an anacdote about my father. When he was vacationing in Pompei in Italy with our family. He met another tourist from southern Sweden, and they could converse pretty well, him in Frisian and the other man in his dialect.
In northern england and southern Scotland children are referred to as bairn. Nice connection to bern
Might be from Old Norse.
In swedish we have a older word rarely used more than maybe in nice sounding essays / texts i know of similar to prachtich : "praktfull"
Or simply "präktig".
Of pragtig in Afrikaans.
@@Helgardt6189 or pretty in English.
In Lithuanian "berniukas" means boy. The root sounds quite similar to "barn" in Scandinavian languages. Suffix "iuk" is gently small form and "as" is masculine nominative. "Antra" - second. Interestingly, in Russian "другой" means (an)other, in Polish, "drugi" is second, but in Swedish "andra" means both.
And in danish it’s ‘Andre’ with a strong french ‘r’. Which means an(other)/others too
During the medievals Latvia and coastal Lithuania had a gothic language, which was a kind of ancient eastern nordic also used in parts of Poland, Denmark and Germany. Many human names and area names in the Baltics, Scandinavia still have a gothic touch to it pretty clearly. The last of the gothic languages was spoken as late as the 1600s in Crimean Peninsula (by a group of Ostrogoths).
barn/Bern is still used in Scots as bairn for child and in Northern English dialects too. it is Anglian and Scandinavian in origin. Child/children is West Germanic and related to Dutch and German words for child Kinder/ kinderen.
I remember seeing the scottish town name Stenhousemuir, which sounded more like norwegian than english to me :) In norwegian it would have been Steinhusmyr. The bog with stone houses.
@@KibyNykraft Stenhusmur, -stone house wall
Frisian and Norse Viking often came together. For trade but also because one Viking king ruled Frisia for awhile.
Frisian coins (sceatta) from 1000-1300 years ago were found on the British Isles, Scandinavia, along the rivers into Europe, along the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts and into modern day Russia.
Correction:
There is only one frisian language, but there are more dialects of frisian.
Should probably tried that with a native Norwegian, I got it all..
Ok this just proves it. My dads side of the family is frisian and I swear my dad could have been a viking. Tall, reddish complexion..good man with an ax. There is definitely Norman blood in me:):)
Forskjellige is one of those rare words that’s actually easier to understand when you hear it rather than when you read it because it looks different but sounds quite similar to our word: verschillende.
I thought of: verscheidene.
German: verschiedene.
Interesting, in swedish "different = olik (unlike)" while "skillnad = difference".
My grand parents were freesian, what is the term for using a long pole to cross the canals? we did that as kids around the canals draining the corn fields in the USA i can no longer speak it but could understand 90% of what she was saying? brings back fond memories of life on my grandparents farms
It's called firljeppen
4:00 in Swedish it's "skuld", pronounced as in Frisian. "Guilty" is "skyldig" though, with a more Norwegian like pronunciation.
@Prof. Spudd yeah, we (including myself) have that notorious "sh" [ɧ] sound. It's roughly like trying to blend "h" and "sh" together, as the IPA symbol hints. Northern Swedes (Norrlänningar), people from Värmland (Värmlänningar) as well as (some) "posh" speakers (e.g. the Crown Princess Victoria) have a more international "sh" [ʃ] sound though and Finland Swedes have a very fronted and thin "sh", like the German "ich" [ç] sound. The Scanian "sh" sound is the same as German "ach" [χ] sound. All in all, the pronunciation of "sh/sj/sch/sk/stj" etc vary a lot in different Swedish accents.
It's actually "skuld" in Norwegian as well.
@@dan74695 is it like "skuld" = debt, "skyld" = guilt? (In Swedish it's "skuld" in both cases)
@@joniskahavet They're both "skuld" in Norwegian as well.
@@dan74695 In Dutch guilt and debt are: schuld. Guilty is: schuldig.
I really can't wait to learn Frisian. Just need more time
De tiid hâldt gjin skoft
Amazing job!! 👍👏👏
As a Friesian (horse) owner I would love to learn/know the Frisian language. 🥹
I was lucky enough to grow up bilingual; Dutch and English with my Dutch family all being Frisian. My degree was in German and Spanish and I chose to study Norwegian in Germany. To date, Norwegian is the easiest language I’ve learned because I had the knowledge of a few “cousins” to lean on. Beautiful video!
Norwegian is in my opinion the easiest language
The cousin to lean on learning Norwegian is Dutch, not Frisian... Dutch is way more like Norwegian than Frisian is.
@@ReneAltena I didn’t say Frisian was the only one did I, I said “a few”? To me it was more so a case of “if it doesn’t mean X in Y, then X might be similar to Z”.
@@laurensvisser6476 Yes, it's because modern-day written norwegian since around the 1600s have been very influenced by latin, german and danish. With a simplified grammatical system. The really old norwegian would be more of a monster to learn :) The old swedish even worse.
@@KibyNykraft you mean Sami?
My father's Dutch and mostly Frisian my DNA results were Scandinavian and England
Just realized Luke is probably British due to his accent. And the problem then besides mispronunciation, is that he thinks in English, not Norwegian, which affects this challenge a bit, as to how he will manage to recognize and understand words. It’s easier as a Norwegian as we have the cross cultural references as the majority of us are familiar with German. Most of us learning it in school at one point. That or French, besides English. I was fluent. But now lost it all as I never used it.
Also in Norwegian, except with certain dialects, we don’t pronounce the last letter/sound when it comes to certain words:
Dog: “hund” pronounces “hun”. The letter -d is silent. So you will only know the difference depending on the context. In some dialects (west coast/western Norway) they say hund as “hond/honda/honden”, if not mistaken. Sundmørsk - Sundmøre…
Even for many Norwegians it’s difficult that the written form isn’t the same as the verbal form. Remember my brother while growing up, would always be corrected on this by my mom who used to be a Norwegian language teacher for those learning Norwegian as immigrants, before being put in their respective classes after their language level, and age. When I went to school we weren’t allowed to write how we’d speak it. This was in the 90’s and 2000’s, being a real Millennial hahaha. But now days I believe they aren’t as strict. Also because kids now days speaks way more English in their everyday life, and mixes that in with Norwegian, like a fusion due to being exposed to more English through social media, games and movies/music etc. They are basically bilingual at an early age… then again English is our 2nd language😝🤷🏾♀️👀
I agree 👍🏼
I also realised, that at least in some cases, it would’ve been easier for us Swedish speakers with the Frisian, especially us Finland Swedish speakers as we kind of pronounce all vowels and consonants of the words …
Interesting (I'm Swedish) I always should the "d" in Norwegian "hund" should be spelled out and not silent. But then it's just like Danish where the "d", just like in hund, often is silent.
@Prof. Spudd That was in the old days. Now the kids learn mostly american english. From mass media, but the teachers are also now affected by that. The more UK english teachers in Norway are retired now...
@@Prof_SpuddAt school yeah, but school isn't where most kids learn English anymore.
Dutch is actually mostly based on Hollandic and even more Brabantian Dialects ( mostly from Antwerp ) .....
Frisian is more related to English and North Germanic Languages while Dutch is between English and German ...
Im German who lives next to the Netherlands. I taught myself Norwegian (also quite good nynorsk). And i instantly understood the Frisian words :D
Do had wul meist ouk eynfak platdüütsk vöär langt
In Swedish the word "präktig" ('grand', 'fine' most likely from the German "prächtig") is probably cognate to the Frisian "prachtich", and perhaps also to the English "pretty".
But Swedish vocabulary is much more often from Low Saxon (Low German). That’s the language people in Germany wanted to wipe out (ausrotten) after the fall of the Hanseatic League and in many parts of Northern Germany they successfully did so.
Actually it’s estimated that about 50% of Swedish vocabulary was borrowed from Middle Low Saxon.
As a (west) Frisian with quite a bit of understanding of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, i think that Swedish sounds most like Frisian of those three, although Danish probably is most closely related (due to the geographical location probably).
@@TheMichaelK I almost suspect that since old rural swedish in the north and in Gotland 100 years ago was quite different than today's swedish. In a way it resembled to some degree frisian and rural central and Vefsn norwegian (including the classic Jemtlandish, which was norwegian until it became a part of Sweden)
Prachtig means beautiful.
Frisian CAN sound oddly like the early Modern English of Shakespeare - words like "forsooth" , and "dost" leap out at you. But here it sounded only slightly less foreign than Norwejian.
Yes, there you hit the nail. If you read Dutch and Frisian like Old or Middle English you'd be amazed about the closeness. There are a few rules. Th becomes d and y becomes ig for example. You also need to filter the Latin words from English.
I've been learning Norwegian for a while now and I have really noticed some remarkable similarities between Norwegian and West-Flemish, my dialect. Seeing how it is that part of Belgium that is connected to the North Sea and maybe is the shortest distance to Great Britain, it wouldn't surprise me that there were interactions which spilled over some language. It might be nice to do such a comparison video, to see the few parts where it is more Norwegian than it is Dutch.
I worked in Norway with some belgians who spoke what we call "flamsk" with each other. This is somewhat easier to understand than dutch and german. Something to do with the accent. I didn't hear so many sounds from the throat :) :) Unlike the dutch
@@KibyNykraft Indeed, Flemish mostly has a softer 'w' and 'g' compared to Dutch. Flemish can, however, change quite a lot in just a few kilometers. Not every Flemish person understands every other Flemisch person, so it's even hard for us :D We do have this kind-of-official Flemish, but it's only for media purposes or talking to people from other regions.
Luke speaks very good norwegian.. :-)
Tusen hjertelig takk Frode. 🥰
@@IsMiseLucas Hiii Luke it's meeee. Well done broo🎉👏🏻
Except for "blad", where he added a -t sound. Blah is how we say it.
@@perberger809 And some say blad, eg on the west coast.
@@frodehagen8690 My one grandmother said (in Norway) "sitter & bler" (looking/skimming though the newspaper)
It would be interesting to see how intelligible West Frisian (Netherlands) is with North Frisian (Germany/Denmark).
It misses the point when he's not a native speaker. We can't tell I English is a bigger help to him than Norwegian.
As we Scandinavians all speak English, I doubt it makes any difference.
Almost all Norwegians speak English fluently so wouldn't matter.
That’s a problem in a wider sense: we don’t have any only Frisian, only Norwegian, only Low Saxon, only Dutch ... speakers left, usually. And that makes a clean measurement impossible.
As a raised frisian person I am actually mindblown on how much is the same/similar
Enjoyed the video,its funny that Children in Norwegian is Barn,in Sweden it is also Barn,and Iceland is almost the same,there it is called Barna
In Scots we call children bairn. 😊
@@hathi444 nice,almost the same
I was very surprised and became interested in Frisian/Dutch when I watched the Belgian Netflix TV-series called "Undercover", as a Norwegian.
Frisian/Dutch are one of the languages I haven't really been exposed to, and I love learning so I thought I'd give the series a try - exactly since I knew next to nothing about the Dutch-speaking world.
I was almost at a loss of words, for how many similar/shared words there are, and especially how similar the pronounciations were! I never had a clue...
Even this one phrase/saying they said a lot was "You know what?" which sounded almost identical to "Vet du hva?". When I heard it I believed it was written almost the same way, but it's something along the lines of "Wet jij wa?"
And the way Frisians pronounce "Paid" which is "Betalt". It almost felt like I was watching a Norwegian show at times, I love finding these lingual and historical connections!
As a (west) Frisian, i would like to see a video like this with a real Norwegian guy (or girl).
I learned some Norwegian myself and years ago i went to Norway and met with a Norwegian guy i knew online. He couldn't understand my Frisian and thought it sounded mostly like German and i only could understand him speaking Norwegian because i learned Norwegian.
The two languages (and also Swedish and Danish) obviously are quite related, as you can see in this video. But it's not like they are mutually intelligible.
I just already guessed skrive cause it's like scrivere in Italian which means to write as well 😄😃 so that's cool.. Good video 👏
We got "skrive" from Latin.
Just like in English script and scribe 👍
Modern norwegian for example "informere" / italian "informare"
I could actually understand quite a bit of this one! 😁 I've heard that Frisian is related to my family's Mennonite Low German. I'd love to volunteer for one of these videos if I was better at speaking it.
(Also, still hoping for a video featuring Finnish at some point. 😅)
That's true, the Mennonites are actually called after a Frisian named Menno Simons (Minne Simens in Frisian).
@@Weda01 I know about Menno Simons but I didn't know he was Frisian. 😅
@@corinna007 He first was a Roman Catholic Pastor in the Frisian town of Witmarsum where he was also born.
(Finnish is almost a linguistic island a.f.a.i.k., except maybe Estonian and a bit Hungarian)
@@hemmper I think there are some smaller languages in Russia that are in the same language family, but Finnish and Estonian would be the most likely comparison for a video like the ones Bahador makes. (I don't speak Estonian but I can speak some Finnish, and the little bit of Estonian I've heard/read is really close.)
Language is varied and evolving. In Norway 'kids(a)' instead of 'barn' (meaning child) is getting more common. 'Unge' is also widely used.
i hope will come the "similarities between mongolian and turkic" video
How?
@@avidavidzada4721 Turkish and Mongolian have many similar words
Bairn is also children north England and Scotland, again an archaic use of the word.
Swart= English swarthy which is dark skinned. In German schwartz.
I speak Dutch English Norwegian and German ( at least of the Germanic languages ) so I understood it all
My mother's maiden name is Swarthout. And yes, my ancestors were from Groningen. I'm becoming very proud of that. They helped establish New Netherland before it was New York. My ancestor that came here Tomys Swartwoud, was Frisian, his wife was Norwegian.
The funny thing is all the words, except possible skrive, are still in English, but some have changed meaning slightly. Hound, tide being two that are more specific.
"Skrive" has cognate in English as "scribe".
@@anonymoususer1224 which I think comes from Latin, the English native is shrive/shrove, as in shrove Tuesday. Svart has the dialectal swart, but more commonly swarthy.
@@memsom Norwegian "skrive" is cognate with German "schreiben", which probably has same origins as the English "scribe".
@@memsom It is from Latin. Norwegian alsp has "rite"/"rita".
Nothing is English
Frisian is much more similar with Dutch and German!
And English !
Well isn't that natural due to their proximity?
@Prof. Spudd Dutch and Frisian are closer nowadays, but linguistically, English and Frisian share more similarities, especially when it comes to sound changes
@@oliveranderson7264 yeah that first sentence in frisian could be translated word for word into English and once she explained them it was stupidly obvious.