Timeline for Is it rude to speak Swedish in Norway?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Aug 28, 2023 at 15:04 | comment | added | Lundin | As a counter-argument to this, I would say that the average Swede or Norwegian tends to over-estimate their own English skills - most are not nearly as good at it as they think they are. Plus understanding spoken English is always easier than speaking it yourself. The vocabulary in particular tends to be limited. Whereas if you speak Swedish/Nowegian, then at least some 90% of the nouns mean the same thing. Either way, you can make yourself understood with a few minor bumps along the way. | |
| May 20, 2019 at 18:52 | comment | added | mortb | @Taenemyr: well, you're right of course. Maybe the OP is just trying to be polite? I guess it is the same in Norway as in Sweden, that most people will not be offended by being spoken to in English. In some countries, say France(?), this might be a problem. | |
| May 16, 2019 at 9:42 | comment | added | Taemyr | @mortb Yes. And I as a Norwegian would speak Norwegian to a swede and expect him to respond in Swedish. But I would switch to English if understanding became difficult. For someone that has English as a native tongue and has learned Swedish communication is almost certainly going to be easier in English. | |
| May 16, 2019 at 9:17 | comment | added | mortb | I'm Swedish. Most of the time when I've spoken to a Norwegian we've both stuck to our respective languages. My estimate is that I understand some 80% of what's said, the rest I solve by throwing in English or extra explanations. However, I haven't traveled a lot in Norway so most my experiences have been when I've met Norwegians in Sweden or in some third country so the situation may not be the same as in Norway. Dialects in Norway differ and I would probably not understand them all. Danish, that's another story, I try for a while, then I switch to English... | |
| Sep 14, 2018 at 11:50 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 14, 2018 at 13:04 | |||||
| Sep 14, 2018 at 11:46 | history | answered | Taemyr | CC BY-SA 4.0 |