Nordic Languages

My son yesterday brought a leaflet about Nordic languages, “Nordens språk”.

When reading this paper I just recalled how close to each other the Nordic languages are. We have been travelling in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. And in all those countries I have had no problem in making myself understood in Swedish variant that is spoken in Finland.

Old map with the Nordic countries
Old map with the Nordic countries

Norwegian, Danish, Swedish (in Sweden) — no problem in communicating with the people in Swedish there.

In the leaflet, I checked the verb ‘to forget’:

  • Swedish: glömma
  • Danish: glemme
  • Faroese: gloyma
  • Norwegian: glemme
  • Icelandic: gleyma
  • Finnish: unohtaa
  • Greenlandic: puigorpaa

Yes, the Finnish and Greenlandic differ from the other Nordic languages. They don’t belong to the Germanic language family.