Norwegian and Danish, both?

[Delodephius]

If I'm learning Norwegian, should I also try learning Danish a bit, since Bokmål is so similar to Danish. It would be nice to be able to understand both languages, but should I learn Norwegian first, and once I'm decent at it also learn Danish, or as I'm learning Norwegian do a bit of Danish on the side just to see how the two are different and/or similar, or will this cause too much confusion in my head?

[tarvos]

In my experience, learning one of the Scandinavian languages is good enough to read all the others. Speaking it is a different matter. You'll need to adapt to Danish pronunciation, which is special.

I learned Swedish and can communicate with Norwegians and Danes just fine. Danes are somewhat harder, but you manage.

[Marah]

I'm learning Swedish and Danish and I did what you described, dabbling a bit in Norwegian to see how it works, what it looks like, etc. I don't think it was necessary though, I can already read Norwegian reasonably well. But in any case I would try to get exposure to the spoken language. It makes even more sense if the language you want to understand is Danish because of the weird phonology. The only harm dabbling in Danish could do would be messing up your spelling, I guess. So you may prefer waiting a bit until you feel confident about telling Norwegian and Danish apart.

[Delodephius]

I'm learning Swedish and Danish and I did what you described, dabbling a bit in Norwegian to see how it works, what it looks like, etc. I don't think it was necessary though, I can already read Norwegian reasonably well. But in any case I would try to get exposure to the spoken language. It makes even more sense if the language you want to understand is Danish because of the weird phonology. The only harm dabbling in Danish could do would be messing up your spelling, I guess. So you may prefer waiting a bit until you feel confident about telling Norwegian and Danish apart.

Well I've been dabbling with Norwegian for over half a year now, tried some old TY course with audio at first, then didn't touch it for about two months, and now I started it on Duolingo. I've watched a few films and tried to imitate the pronunciation, both during the films and on Duolingo, and I think I've gotten a pretty good hang on it. So when I tried Danish on Duolingo today I could not understand a thing, even though the words were spelled the same as in Norwegian. I think I can tell them apart enough to know which one is which.

But I think I'll do what tarvos said, learn one first, and then just train myself to understand the other two. I've experienced first hand Norwegians and Danes talking to each other in their own respective languages when I visited Norway and there were some Danes with us in the group. I got the feeling the two are more similar than Slovak and Czech, yet we understand one another quite well.

[FyrsteSumarenINoreg]

Danish and Nynorsk are like Slovak and Slovenian, while Bokmaal is Serbian.

[Delodephius]

Danish and Nynorsk are like Slovak and Slovenian, while Bokmaal is Serbian.

Aren't Bokmal and Nynorsk just different orthographies for Norwegian? Because Slovak and Serbian are waaaay different, like Spanish and French. Or English and Norwegian. I don't know how you got Slovenian in there. It's not even in the same group as Slovak.

[Ogrim]

Aren't Bokmal and Nynorsk just different orthographies for Norwegian? Because Slovak and Serbian are waaaay different, like Spanish and French. Or English and Norwegian. I don't know how you got Slovenian in there. It's not even in the same group as Slovak.

Not exactly orthographies, but indeed two different written standards of Norwegian. Very few people speak pure Nynorsk, which is based on dialects mainly from the Western parts of Norway. A few more people speak more or less standard Bokmål, mainly in and around Oslo. Bokmål, having its roots in written Danish, is obviously closer to modern Danish than Nynorsk is. Still an educated Dane or Norwegian should not have any problem reading any of the three. Understanding spoken language is a different story, because both Norwegian and Danish have quite a number of distinctive dialects, so the difference between the dialect of Sogn in Norway and that of Copenhaguen Danish is really significant.

[Montmorency]

I started off with TYS Norwegian for about a year on and off, but not consistently, and at the end had a reasonable command of the written language for simple texts, but very little listening or speaking ability.

For various reasons I switched to Danish, using TYS and some other resources (including L-R), and worked a bit harder, and got slightly better with listening comprehension; still not great speaking.

In the meantime, I had got a bit put off Norwegian, not being able to get my head around the whole dialect situation, not to mention the Nynorsk/Bokmål issue. I had perhaps unjustifiably let it become a sort of monster in my head. I thought I might return to it one day, but not before I had "cracked" (well, at least to some extent) Danish.

Well, fast forward to the recent past and circumstances became unexpectedly favourable to a trip to Norway, which I have just returned from. I must say, this has really reawakened my interest in Norwegian, and made it seem accessible. This trip happened to be a sea cruise with the well-known Hurtigruten line, from Bergen to Kirkenes (near the Russian border), with various excursions along the way. It was interesting because the "tour leader" (and general announcement maker) would make regular announcements in (very clear) Norwegian, English and German, so it was quite useful linguistically. Similarly the menus were multilingual (NO, EN, DE + FR). Of course he was speaking much more clearly than the average person in the street probably would do. I'm not sure if he had a particular accent or dialect, but I thought I heard another crew member joking with him for coming from Bergen (presumably mocking the way they speak there).

For the excursions, we had local tour guides, who of course spoke good English (and usually German and/or French). The guide in Kirkenes spoke very colloquial English, but with an extremely thick accent, and when I heard him speaking Norwegian, it seemed to be with a very different accent (unsurprisingly) from that of the tour leader on the ship.

Anyway, instead of reviving Danish, which had been my plan, I'm going to try to revive Norwegian. I'll be looking for some good alternatives to TYS, hopefully find some L-R material, and add some Norwegian radio to my daily listening (currently Welsh and German). We are already planning to go back to Norway next year. I certainly haven't totally abandoned Danish, but it will remain on the back-burner for the time being.

[PeterMollenburg]

I'm reviving this topic because I have some pertinent questions, ones that have already been asked, but I'm hoping for more detail this time around....

Feel free to provide a link if you feel this has been answered elsewhere, but using the advanced search option, searching the terms Norwegian and Danish as titles only, I only found this thread and AlOlaf's....

How close are these languages? I mean really. It's been briefly discussed in this thread, but I want more clarity. Are Danish and Norwegian Bokmal exactly the same in terms of writing? Are there minor differences or some larger ones? How close is Swedish in writing form to these two?

Could one study two or three of these languages simultaneously, treating each one like a dialect - perhaps like Castillian Spanish, Argentinian Spanish and Mexican Spanish and cope? If NO and DA are extremely close in writing, then in theory, one would just have to learn the pronunciation, right? Is it that simple? or MUCH more complex, and thus one would have to study them sequentially instead (after sufficiently mastering one to perhaps B1/B2)?

I heard once that there is more differences in the dialects of Italian spanning from northern Italy to the south than the differences between Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.

Could you use a Swedish, Norwegian and Danish Assimil course for each language simultaneously and stand to gain from all three, essentially treating them as dialects, just modifying pronunciation and perhaps some vocabularly where Swedish in particular is concerned, or would it end up as one big mess and spell disaster?

[Cenwalh]

I'm reviving this topic because I have some pertinent questions, ones that have already been asked, but I'm hoping for more detail this time around....

Feel free to provide a link if you feel this has been answered elsewhere, but using the advanced search option, searching the terms Norwegian and Danish as titles only, I only found this thread and AlOaf's....

How close are these languages? I mean really. It's been briefly discussed in this thread, but I want more clarity. Are Danish and Norwegian Bokmal exactly the same in terms of writing? Are there minor differences or some larger ones? How close is Swedish in writing form to these two?

Could one study two or three of these languages simultaneously, treating each one like a dialect - perhaps like Castillian Spanish, Argentinian Spanish and Mexican Spanish and cope? If NO and DA are extremely close in writing, then in theory, one would just have to learn the pronunciation, right? Is it that simple? or MUCH more complex, and thus one would have to study them sequentially instead (after sufficiently mastering one to perhaps B1/B2)?

I heard once that there is more differences in the dialects of Italian spanning from northern Italy to the south than the differences between Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.

Could you use a Swedish, Norwegian and Danish Assimil course for each language simultaneously and stand to gain from all three, essentially treating them as dialects, just modifying pronunciation and perhaps some vocabularly where Swedish in particular is concerned, or would it end up as one big mess and spell disaster?

I am far from an expert in this area, but I do remember watching this video which seems to answer many of your questions