American was shocked by Word Differences in Nordic Languages!! (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark)

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Do you think the Nordic languages are simliar?

Do they use similar words?

Today we compared the words in Nordic languages!

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🇺🇸 Sophia @sophiasidae
🇸🇪 Josefin @josbf
🇳🇴 Steinar @steinarbakkeofficial
🇩🇰 Azemin @azemiiin

[stefan]

Finnish is not related to the other nordic languages, it´s related to Estonian and Hungarian so of course the words are totally different.

[Esgarpen]

Credit to Finland for actually spelling their words how they are pronounced

[alexisramongeronimo]

Norwegian, Danish, English and Swedish are germanic languages.

Finnish is an Uralic language.

That's why finnish has different words...

Just clarifying 😅

[lailana]

Its not surprising that Danish and English has the most similar sounding words since the Danish vikings invaded and took over a large part of England for a couple of hundre years, so a lot of danish words made its way into the english vocabulary, like the word Vindue / Window

[MaskinJunior]

Key to the Scandinavian languages. You start with Swedish, then when you are just a bit tipsy you turn Norweigian, then when you are severly drunk you sound Danish, and when you are almost passed out and dont make sense anymore you speak Finnish.

[hannie]

The American sounds like she's about to fall asleep...😂 And keeps touching her hair...

[jonasfermefors]

When you have isolated words they sound more similar than they do in regular speech. Norwegian and Danish are very similar grammatically but sound completely different in regular speech. As a Swede I almost always understand Norwegian but usually struggle with Danish.

[janus]

As far as the loan words in Finnish goes: As was mentioned there was an extra "ti" added to "robot" (robotti). This done to make it fit better with the way Finnish works and how it uses many cases. For example, "t " is often used to indicate the plural case. Adding another t to robot to make Robott( especially since every letter is pronounced in Finnish) would not work well, but Robotit does. Likewise, to say "in something", Finnish adds "ssa" to the end of the word, so "in the robot" = robotissa. ( the extra t is dropped due to something called consonant gradation)

[oh]

The word "camera" comes from the Latin word "camera, " which means "room" or "chamber." It is derived from the Greek word "kamara, " which also means a chamber or a room. In the context of photography, "camera" is short for "camera obscura, " which means "dark chamber." The camera obscura is an ancient device that led to the development of modern cameras; it is a darkened room or box with a small hole or lens through which light passes, projecting an image of the outside scene onto a surface inside.

In Danish, Norwegian and Sweden we also have the word chamber but written kammer in Danish and Norwegian, and in Swedish it’s written kammare. So the word camera have a natural transformation in the Scandinavian languages as well.

[MS]

Basket is actually spelled korg in Swedish, kori in Finnish.

[oliverfa]

I would love the guy from Norway being the main member once, talking about his languages and the similarities with the others

[anttirytkonen]

In addition to "hiekka", we can actually also use "santa" for the sand in 🇫🇮 Finnish which comes from that 🇸🇪 Swedish "sand" (so santa doesn't mean Santa Claus or saint in Finnish). 😉 The word for a coat, "takki" comes apparently from Old Swedish "stakker" which is still used in 🇮🇸 Icelandic as "stakkur". Of others words that were different, the word for a window "ikkuna, akkuna" is of a Slavic origin, for example 🇺🇦 вікно́ (translit. viknó); others were native words in Finnish.

[kolbrunbjorg]

The words in Icelandic for anyone interested:
• sand = sandur
• camera = myndavél
• pear = pera
• coat = jakki (or frakki/kápa)
• moon = tungl
• basket = karfa
• robot = vélmenni
• salmon = lax

[saerunofarc]

In Iceland:
Window 🪟: Gluggi
Sand ⏳: Sandur
Camera 📷: Myndavél
Pear 🍐: Pera
Coat 🧥: Jakki/Frakki
Moon 🌙: Tungl
Cow 🐄: Kýr
Basket 🧺: Körfu
Robot 🤖: Róbot
Salmon 🍣: Lax

[RobertHeslop]

It doesn’t surprise me for English and Danish to have similar sounds in some words, as we had the Danes invade England and Dane Law period. We also have a few similar words in my city’s dialect to Nordic languages like hyem (hjem), bairn (barn), a’m gannin oot (jeg går ut)

[JUMALATION]

Finnish has many loan words from Swedish (for obvious reasons). My colleagues and I launched a social media campaign about this for the Swedish Embassy in Helsinki, it was a lot of fun. Many people contributed with words that were really similar in both languages, it gained a significant amount of traction in Sweden as well.

[Nubbe]

The English window comes from the Nordic vindu/ vindue that also Sweden used before we started using the German word Fenster and made it to the more Swedish word fönster. Vindu was a hole in your building helping take out the smoke from the fire inside, it's a really old word.

[sandrovlog]

As a German its always interesting to see the similarities with german :) Words are often spellen the same way and sometimes even pronouced the same way.

[NorkelFjols]

As a Scandinavian I'm mostly surprised at how many Danish words sound closer to the English one. I've never thought of that before..

[McSlobo]

Fun fact, camera is not a new word. It comes from Latin's "camera obscura" meaning "dark room" because if you have a dark room with a small hole in the wall you'll get the picture of seen from the hole projected on your wall (rotated 180°). In Finnish room is "huone" but we have another word for it too... "kamari". We also call closet "komero".