Hvad forstår unge svenskere og nordmænd bedst – engelsk eller dansk?

Abstract

The Scandinavian languages are so alike that their speakers often communicate, each using their own language, which Haugen (1966) dubbed 'semicommunication'. This kind of communication is, however, sometimes problematic, especially when it involves Danish. For this reason some Scandinavians prefer to communicate in English. This tendency has been claimed to have become stronger during the last decades and some people see this as a threat to the use of the Scandinavian languages in a Scandinavian context. It is, however, unknown how well Scandinavians understand English in comparison to the neighboring languages. In the present investigation it was investigated how well young Swedes and Norwegians understand English in comparison to Danish by means of written and spoken language tests. The results are explained by means of linguistic and extralinguistic factors.