Similarities Between German and Swedish

German and Swedish have a lot in common stemming from the same Germanic roots, but to what extent can German and Swedish speakers understand each other?

In this video, Nobi (German speaker) and Giles (Swedish speaker) will start by reading a few words that share the same root but have changed slightly. They will then move on to the more challenging part by reading sentences.

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The German language (Deutsch) is a West Germanic language with official status in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. In Luxembourg, Belgium and parts of Poland, German is a co-official language, and one of several national languages of Namibia. German has many similarities with West Germanic languages such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, and Yiddish. The German-speaking countries are ranked among the top in the world in terms of annual publication of new books, and a great amount of German literature, from medieval works to modern times, has been produced. Among many others, there are the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a literary genius who is considered to be like the German Shakespeare. Goethe is best known for his novel, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers), which was published when he was only 25. Other classics include Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Hyperion by Friedrich Holderlin, The Devil’s Elixirs by ETA Hoffman, Debt and Credit by Gustav Freytag, Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke, and many others.

In more recent times, several German language authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. They are Theodor Mommsen, Rudolf Christoph Eucken, Paul Heyse, Gerhart Hauptmann, Carl Spitteler, Thomas Mann who is perhaps best known for Buddenbrooks and Death in Venice, Hermann Hesse, Nelly Sachs, Heinrich Böll, Elias Canetti, Günter Grass, Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Müller, and Peter Handke.

Swedish (svenska) is a North Germanic language, mainly spoken in Sweden and in parts of Finland. The ancestor of Swedish is Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples that lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. The modern Swedish alphabet is a modified form of the 26-letter basic Latin alphabet, consisting of three extra letters, Å, Ä, and Ö, while historically Old Swedish (fornsvenska), spoken in the Middle Ages, was written in the runic alphabet, which was also used to write many different Germanic languages prior to switching to the Latin alphabet during the process of European nations adopting Christianity.

Swedish has a long literary tradition, with the first known literary text dating back to the Viking Age, the Rök runestone. As the Swedish language was standardized in the 16th century, the literature flourished with it. In the ensuring centuries numerous Swedish authors emerged, such as Georg Stiernhielm, Johan Henric Kellgren, Carl Boberg, Viktor Rydberg, Gustaf Fröding, Carl Michael Bellman, and August Strindberg. In the 20th century Sweden continued to produce many more great authors, such as Hjalmar Söderberg, and Nobel laureates such as Selma Lagerlöf, Verner von Heidenstam, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Pär Lagerkvist, Nelly Sachs, Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson, and Tomas Tranströmer.

All Germanic languages share a common ancestor, known as Proto-Germanic, which was a single language spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. As one of the main branches of the Indo-European language family, Germanic languages are further split into 3 subdivisions:

- West Germanic languages: English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Scots, Luxembourgish, Limburgish varieties, and the Frisian languages.

- North Germanic languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese.

- East Germanic languages: Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, all of which are now extinct.

Despite the differences, these languages still share a lot in common, and have a large number of cognates with the same roots.

Видео Similarities Between German and Swedish канала Bahador Alast