Few people realize this, but Norwegians actually speak a language that is far closer to old Danish than Norwegian, while people on Iceland actually speak something close to old Norwegian.
Little FennoSwede is holding on to his uncle Finland because FennoSwedes are Finns who speak Swedish.
Though, you could really just say Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and to some extend Icelandic (But not Finnish) are nothing more than different dialects, seeing as we understand each other if we talk reeeeaaaaly slow and clear.
And it will of course never not be funny how some Americans treat British like a completely different language.
Sure, some words are different and it’s a different accent, but try coming to Europe. We’ll show you what “different language” means. ;)
I often find it amusing that my Icelander speaks Icelandic, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian (and English) but the languages are very similar. My best friend is from Norway so the two of them often joke:
Norway: We kicked your Vikings out of the country
Iceland: But we kept your language!
I'm starting to think of my best friend and my boyfriend as these characters now. Oh boy...
@Spexon Having lived in Sweden for a year, that's not completely true. Norwegians understand Swedes a lot more than Swedes understand us. I often found myself having to repeat myself when I lived there. Think it might be because my generation grew up with Pipi and Emil in original Swedish, so we were a bit acclimatized to it.
None of us understand the Danes tho o3o
Try Arabic... Like each Arab country has its own dialect, and they're all different from each other. Actually, some are so different from each other that we can't even understand each other, and have to rely of classic Arabic; for example, I'm Lebanese, and apparently the dialect spoken in Morocco isn't understandable to us. However, we can understand the Syrian dialect, although it's slightly different. And every single one is different from classic Arabic anyway, which we only use in writing and in case of a dialect problem as I said.
@Rayati And the writing system seems to vary so much, like in the Farsi alphabet. It's very similar to Arabic, but with a few extra letters. Also, how does it work using the same letter for u o and v?
@33554432 Yeah, the letters change depending on their place in the word and the letters before and after them. When I was a kid, we learned at school the form of each letter one by one (beginning of the word, middle of, end of). Arab is probably also difficult because some letters require the use of the throat, and yet some letters found in the English alphabet don't even exist (the p, v and the "guh" sound, for example)
@Rayati Well, actually languages behave a lot like living things, when 2 parts of the world that speak the same language are appart (culturally I mean, it can be because of distance or lack of frequent contact...) for too long they start to modify words, grammar structures etc... And at some point become so much different that they can't even understand each other. So you kinda can represent languages on phylogenetic trees where you group languages from their relatedness. Languages evolve much faster than species though (if you except the "simple" lifeforms like bacteria or virus)
Actually, I believe the different nations that speak Arabic will probably develop their own language at some point. Much like the Romance languages are now different languages though they all evolved from classical Latin.
@Isdaril It's true, I know and understand that. I heard that apparently, one of the reasons Moroccan Arabic isn't understandable to us Levantine speakers is because it has some elements from the Berber language.
Of course, really by the logic of this strip, England's speech bubble shouldn't have his own flag, but France's... ;) (And yeah, I realize that would hurt the joke. I'm just being pedantic. xD )
@Shenwang Nah. Modern English hasn't a lot in common with Anglo-Norman French. The history of English is actually quite complicated but it's definitely a germanic language (just like Danish, German or Dutch), not a romance one (like French, Spanish or Italian). Sure there are a lot of French words in there, but most of the usual words are of germanic descent and the grammar derives from germanic roots too.
UK is getting mad that US english "Americanisms" are leaking into their vernacular. I kinda doubt US "english" and Current UK "english" are anything like what they were when they started to diverge.
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I often find it amusing that my Icelander speaks Icelandic, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian (and English) but the languages are very similar. My best friend is from Norway so the two of them often joke:
Norway: We kicked your Vikings out of the country
Iceland: But we kept your language!
I'm starting to think of my best friend and my boyfriend as these characters now. Oh boy...