Has anyone learnt Swedish and Finnish as second or third languages? Finnish seems daunting with its difficult grammer and whole new vocab whilst Swedish seems to have more common words with other European languages. How difficult is Swedish grammer?
2007-04-02 00:01:56 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Given your fluent English, you should find Swedish a great deal easier. It is a fellow Germanic language; of a different branch, but then English also had a strong Scandinavian influence in the Middle Ages. Most Europeans speak languages in the Indoeuropean family, whether Germanic, Romance, Slavic or Baltic.
On the other hand, Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric family, with a close connection only to Esthonian, and a very distant one to Hungarian.
Swedish grammar has a gender system and a somewhat inconsistent pattern of forming plurals and past tenses. Otherwise, the only obstacle is the tonal intonation.
2007-04-02 00:43:38 · answer #1 · answered by obelix 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Finnish is indeed difficult to learn, as it has no connections with other Indo-European languages, except maybe with Hungarian.
When I went to an international peace conference in Helsinki in 1984, I tried to learn Finnish, but didn't advance much further then a few phrases and counting to three : "yksi, kaksi, kolme". For somebody like me who speaks fluent four languages, it was *very* frustrating. Fortunately, Swedish is the second official language in Finland and I could use some of the Swedish I learned as a kid watching the "Saltkrakan" TV series, and many young Finns speak good English.
2007-04-02 07:43:01 · answer #2 · answered by Erik Van Thienen 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I know finnish as my third language, it´s really hard when you go deeper on the language, I don´t know swedish, but sometimes it´s easier for people because they say that it´s related with the european languages like German or even French! O_O
But I do love Finnish, it´s a reallly unique language.
But if you´re looking for something easier try with swedidh, but it´s difficult, too.
2007-04-02 07:49:39 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Swedish grammer is very similar to Gaelic. Finnish outside of a few words I haven't figured it all out yet.
2007-04-02 07:10:17 · answer #4 · answered by lhiarose 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Swedish and english do share some similarities due to them being germanic languages (e.g. du är = you are)Besides,Swedish literature has slightly more influence on us than does finnish and not all of their books are translated.
2007-04-02 11:56:43 · answer #5 · answered by Sniper of Goth 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i can both languages fluent.
2007-04-03 05:40:36 · answer #6 · answered by Joni 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋