Scientific Studies of Intelligibility in Scandinavian Languages

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 Århus Copenhagen Malmö 50.8 Stockholm 34.6 Bergen 65 Oslo 65.7 Faeroe Is. 82.8 Iceland 53.6 Swedish 37.4 36 61.5 71.2 57.5 33.4 Norwegian Average 46.8 41.3 49.7 55.6 70 34 42.1 38.7 50.2 45.1 63.2 68.5 70.1 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.