On Jun 17, 3:17*pm, Christine BA wrote:
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

Similarly I don't speak Japanese, but many written Japanese words are
the same as
Chinese words. As I recall my history, Chinese settled in Japan long
long long time ago.

Winnie