Tag: Danish

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.

 

 

Danish on Virgin Islands

During the summer vacations we visited Denmark. At one store I bought a book about Danish colonies around the world!Danish West Islands

One of the colonies was in the West Indies, on the today’s U.S. Virgin Islands. This former Danish colony was sold to the U.S. under one hundred years ago.

The Danish West Indies islands are marked in green in this map from the school atlas of my grand grand father.

Today Danish is not spoken on the islands, except if you happen to encounter a tourist from Denmark.

Links: