The "my language is the hardest" syndrome

[tarvos]

I think Gallisisk is Welsh, but I am not sure. Edit: a search reveals it to be indeed Galician. Welsh is walesisk, apparently, like in Swedish.

[Pekoral]

This is very interesting. I find it very hard to read the chart, though. What is the top language? The broken blue line with an empty circle?

Looks like Kroatisk (which I'm guessing is Croatian) to me. I have to agree though - a translation of the axes at least would be nice. (Judging by what I found on Wiktionary Y is something like "number of words" while X is "age in months" but I can't be sure.) Is Gallisisk Galician?

Interesting that there is a boost for most of the languages after 11 and/or 12 months. But what is the difference between Danish and Swedish than? I don't think that cultural differences can explain the strong divergence between both languages after 12 months (assuming that the chart doesn't contain any methodical faults). The vocabulary of both languages should be pretty similiar.

Could it be that memorising and pronouncing Danish words is so much harder than Swedish words? Is it maybe harder to understand and reproduce the Danish words correctly, because of the more mumbling sound of the language (no offense)?

Thought I guess this theory wouldn't explain the differences between AE and BE...

The difference is what makes Danish so hard for people to learn. Swedish and Norwegian are not nearly as hard to actually understand. If we take the word for stomach, it is mage in Swedish, and mage in Danish. In Swedish it is pronounced /mah-geh/ in Danish is is pronounced something like /may'uh/. The word for physician and the word for teacher are two different words læker and lærer but both are pronounced the same /læ'æ'/. The tendency to reduce and slur consonants makes it very hard to understad what words are being said. Swedes and Norwegian usually make fun of Danish, saying it sounds like someone has a potato in their mouth or are very, very drunk, or both.

[Marah]

But is it really true for Danes? Do they really struggle more than other speakers of other languages?

[jeff_lindqvist]

I think I heard this some ten years ago (and couldn't believe it, it sounded like a typical language myth). Searching for something like danish children learns their language slower gives a few links, e.g.:
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comment ... ower_than/
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/200 ... -to-learn/
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/201 ... -language/

But I haven't seen the actual study.

[andrepleite]

The difference is what makes Danish so hard for people to learn. Swedish and Norwegian are not nearly as hard to actually understand. If we take the word for stomach, it is mage in Swedish, and mage in Danish. In Swedish it is pronounced /mah-geh/ in Danish is is pronounced something like /may'uh/. The word for physician and the word for teacher are two different words læker and lærer but both are pronounced the same /læ'æ'/. The tendency to reduce and slur consonants makes it very hard to understad what words are being said. Swedes and Norwegian usually make fun of Danish, saying it sounds like someone has a potato in their mouth or are very, very drunk, or both.

Yes, just what I thought. However, you have to keep in mind that one year old children can't read and differences in writing and pronounciation have therefore no influence to their language aquisition.
Furthermore I still think that there is not such a big difference in pronounciation between AE and BE like between Danish and Swedish. Though it would be interesting how "slurred" dialects influence the speed of language aquisition in early years.

[Pekoral]

The difference is what makes Danish so hard for people to learn. Swedish and Norwegian are not nearly as hard to actually understand. If we take the word for stomach, it is mage in Swedish, and mage in Danish. In Swedish it is pronounced /mah-geh/ in Danish is is pronounced something like /may'uh/. The word for physician and the word for teacher are two different words læker and lærer but both are pronounced the same /læ'æ'/. The tendency to reduce and slur consonants makes it very hard to understad what words are being said. Swedes and Norwegian usually make fun of Danish, saying it sounds like someone has a potato in their mouth or are very, very drunk, or both.

Yes, just what I thought. However, you have to keep in mind that one year old children can't read and differences in writing and pronounciation have therefore no influence to their language aquisition.
Furthermore I still think that there is not such a big difference in pronounciation between AE and BE like between Danish and Swedish. Though it would be interesting how "slurred" dialects influence the speed of language aquisition in early years.

My guess is, that it's the lack of contrasts that can make it hard to understand what is being said. Danish might require more context, and thus a bigger internal corpus, than languages that have more clear pronunciation? My examples were to point out that Danish has removed many elements that Swe and Nor has kept, thus making many words similar. Say stomach, mage, would probably sound alike to me "meg", to with, "med", and other words beginning with m.

[Serpent]

I think all parents try to speak clearly to their kids (although many have a curious idea of what 'clearly' means). But of course the kids get a lot of exposure to slurred speech too.
This proves nothing but I'm a big fan of learning through listening, and I've indeed found Danish surprisingly difficult

[Marah]

I can relate.. but watching Borgen really improved my listening skills though.

[tarvos]

The biggest reason people struggle is because orthography doesn't mirror actual pronunciation, like in English, French, or even Dutch.

[Iversen]

I don't find it impossible that Danish children take longer to understand their parents than children from cultures with more clearly pronounced languages, but it would take more than one single report to convince me that this state of affairs continues up through their childhood. How do you actually calculate the vocabulary of a baby? Do you tape everything they say, or do you just believe their parents? And how much nudging is allowed to fathom the murky depths of the most arcane formulations of the kids under scrutiny? So I'll just leave the discussion at that, awaiting more documentation.

One detail should however be mentioned, namely that Danish can be pronounced more or less clearly, and if it is pronounced with all its nooks and crannies then you will find that the orthography isn't too far from the pronunciation. But to say 1½ times as much as the Swedes in a given time interval we have to sacrifice something - and that's comprehensibility for foreigners.

And now I get the heretical thought: maybe the person entrusted with the evalation of the lexical savvy of those Danish kids simply couldn't follow them because they spoke too fast?