kirjoitti:
Christine BA wrote:

Swedish is not related to Finnish.

Except for loan words, right? Doesn't Finnish have a lot of Swedish
words? I realize that's not the same thing as the languages being
related, ancestor-wise.

Yes, there are quite a few words originating from Swedish, but they're
not the same word as in Swedish. This is particularly noticeable in
Western-Finnish dialects, such as the area around me now. For example,
in "normal" Finnish a glass is "lasi", in Swedish it's "glas" and here
in SW-Finland it's "klasi". There are words with Russian origins in
Finnish too, and nowadays lots of loans from English...

And yes, one does understand Norwegian if one speaks Swedish.

That's interesting. I guess that's kind like how speakers of Spanish
and Portuguese can understand each other? At least, that's what my
boss at work, who's from Peru, says - he can read Portuguese although
he hasn't studied it.)


I don't speak neither Spanish nor Portuguese, but I would imagine
they're at least as close as Swedish and Danish, maybe even as close as
Swedish and Norwegian.

--
Christine in Finland
christal63 (at) gmail (dot) com