Scientific Studies of Intelligibility in

Scandinavian Languages
Robert Lindsay

I've been asked to provide this information from some folks who,
incredibly, are insisting that Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are all
one language. What makes it even more painful is that at least one of
them is a Swedish-language speaker.

I suppose it makes sense that people are outraged by the splitting of

these closely related languages. Many Swedes and Norwegians can
understand the other language pretty well. I think a lot of this is
because they have actually learned the other language, but at any
rate, intelligibility between these languages varies. In order to
communicate well, Swedes and Norwegians often have to speak
slowly. There are all sorts of other variables, but I think that in cases
of 90-100% intelligibility, we are looking at a lot of bilingual learning.

I only had one set of figures for the Scandinavian languages, but these
were attacked because, while detailed, they lacked a reference for who
or what study, if any, came up with those numbers. In looking around,
I quickly discovered that there have been intelligibility studies with the
Scandinavian languages. Unfortunately, they don't look good for the
case that this is all one language. The data is from a study conducted
by the Nordic Cultural Fund from 2002-2005. Subjects were young
people under the age of 25. The results can be seen here:

% Danish Swedish Norwegian Average

Århus 37.4 46.8 42.1

Copenhagen 36 41.3 38.7
Malmö 50.8 49.7 50.2
Stockholm 34.6 55.6 45.1
Bergen 65 61.5 63.2
Oslo 65.7 71.2 68.5
Faeroe Is. 82.8 57.5 70 70.1
Iceland 53.6 33.4 34 41.9

The highest score of all is Faroese-Danish. Faroese understand 82.8%

of spoken Danish. The worst scores of all are for Iceland. Icelandics
understand only 34% of Swedish and 33.4% of Norwegian. I don't
understand the historical processes of North Germanic that would
make Faroese so close to Danish or Icelandic so far from Swedish and
Norwegian. Maybe someone can clue me in.

Based on the notion that >90%+ intelligibility would be the minimum

necessary to say that these lects are all one language, the notion that
these five languages, much less that big three, are all one language is
simply not supported by the available data. In fact, we are not even
able to combine even two out of the five into a single language. Hence,
all five Scandinavian languages are separate languages, not dialects of
one or more macrolanguage.

Are they close? Sure. Are they all one language? Sure doesn't look like
it. Could a speaker of one quickly pick up another one? Quite possibly.

References

Delsing, Lars-Olof and Åkesson, Katarina Lundin. 2005. Håller

Språket Ihop Norden? En Forskningsrapport Om Ungdomars
Förståelse Av Danska, Svenska Och Norska. Data above is from
Figure 4:11: "Grannspråksförståelse bland infödda skandinaver
fördelade på ort", p.65, and Figure 4:6: "Sammanlagt resultat på
grannspråksundersökningen fördelat på område", p.58.

Maurud, Ø. 1976. Nabospråksforståelse I Skandinavia. En

Undersøkelse Om Gjensidig Forståelse Av Tale - Og Skriftspråk I
Danmark, Norge Og Sverige. Nordisk Utredningsserie 13.
Nordiska Rådet, Stockholm.