Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish make up the mainland Scandinavian languages.

They all belong to the North Germanic language family.

This means they share the same historical roots and have a lot of overlapping vocabulary.

A speaker of one language can often understand speakers of the other two.

However, there are clear differences in how they’re written and pronounced.

Are they mutually intelligible?

Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are highly mutually intelligible.

This means native speakers can usually hold a conversation with each other while speaking their own language.

Norwegians generally have the easiest time understanding both Swedes and Danes.

Swedish speakers easily understand Norwegian, but they often struggle to understand spoken Danish.

Danish pronunciation is much softer and swallows many consonants.

This makes it incredibly hard for Swedes to catch the words.

Danes can read Norwegian easily, but they might find spoken Swedish a bit difficult to follow at normal speeds.

Written similarities between Norwegian and Danish

If you look at written Norwegian and Danish side by side, they look almost identical.

Norway was under Danish rule for about 400 years.

During this time, the written language in Norway became essentially Danish.

Today, the most common written standard in Norway is called Bokmål.

Bokmål is heavily based on written Danish.

They share almost the exact same vocabulary and grammatical structures.

Swedish, on the other hand, developed its own spelling rules over the centuries.

Spoken similarities between Norwegian and Swedish

When it comes to speaking, Norwegian and Swedish sound very much alike.

Both languages have a distinct “sing-song” pitch accent.

This gives spoken Norwegian and Swedish a very melodic rhythm.

Danish completely lacks this melodic pitch accent.

Instead, Danish has a unique vocal feature called a stød, which sounds like a slight catch in the throat.

Because of this, a Norwegian and a Swede can chat easily over coffee.

Meanwhile, a Dane might sound completely foreign to the Swede during that same conversation.

Alphabet and vocabulary comparison

All three languages use the standard Latin alphabet with three extra vowels at the end.

Swedish uses the letters Å, Ä, and Ö.

Norwegian and Danish use the letters Å, Æ, and Ø.

Despite spelling differences, the core vocabulary remains very similar across all three.

Here’s a quick comparison of some basic words.

Notice how the Norwegian and Danish words for “I”, “not”, and “red” are spelled identically.

The Swedish words look a bit different on paper.

However, they sound very similar to Norwegian when spoken aloud.

Comparing basic phrases

To give you a better idea of how they overlap, let’s look at a common greeting.

Here’s how you’d ask “How are you?” in Norwegian.

In Danish, this exact same phrase is spelled “Hvordan går det?” as well.

The difference is that the Danish pronunciation drops the hard consonants and sounds much softer.

In Swedish, the spelling changes slightly to “Hur går det?”.

Despite the Swedish spelling difference, the melodic pronunciation is much closer to Norwegian.

Which Scandinavian language should you learn?

Norwegian is widely considered the best choice if you want to understand all of Scandinavia.

Learning Norwegian gives you a massive advantage because it sits right in the middle.

You get the written similarities of Danish and the spoken similarities of Swedish.

Once you master Norwegian, you essentially get two other languages for a massive discount.

If you’re ready to start learning, Talk In Norwegian is the absolute best place to begin.

Our platform is designed to get you speaking and understanding Norwegian quickly through comprehensive, easy-to-follow lessons.