University of Uppsala

INTERSCANDINAVIAN COMPREHENSION

REAL OR IDEAL ?

In Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) there are nowadays hundreds of languages being spoken, but most people have Danish, Norwegian or Swedish as their mother tongue. This also applies for a small part of the population in Finland.

As Danish, Norwegian or Swedish are closely related Germanic languages they make up a classical dialect continuum where the country borders rather have been interfaces for Scandinavian contact than barriers between people from different countries. Because of the linguistic similarities between the languages in question they are also generally believed to be mutually comprehensible. Therefore we are accustomed to use our own native language when conversing with other Scandinavians. This type of receptive bilingualism is often referred to as semicom­munication in accordance with Haugen [1966] (1972). It is also common to speak of at Scandinavian language community, with intercomprehension as the crucial qualification. For the layman this may seem unproblematic, but as linguists we know that intercomprehension is a problematic concept. When languages are in contact, the situation chiefly concerns persons in contact and they do not always behave in a predictable way. Often attitudes and motivation come to determine the outcome.

Sometimes people argue that the Scandinavian language community is unique. As linguists, though, we also know that the situation as such is not outstanding, and one can easily find several linguistic parallels at different places in the world, for example among the Romance or Slavic language families. What is unique though - as far as I can see - is that mutual comprehensibility in Scandinavia has been subject to official language planning and has become a fundamental part of Internordic identity and cooperation. There is a for example a special board dealing with Interscandinavian language planning, now situated in Copenhagen. Its name is Nordisk Språkråd[1]. Each fifth year they publish an action plan in order to promote intercomprehension in Scandinavia.

All sorts of language planning have been conducted, both corpus planning and status planning. Corpus planning has had the purpose of reducing the differences between the languages, or at least some of the differences concerning orthography and lexicon. The results, though, have been sparse. In spite of this there have regularly been individual spokesmen (for example the Dane N.M. Petersen 1844-45) for creating a Pan Scandinavian language. This idea is nowadays not on the official agenda, and no one believes that it is a realistic thought. Nevertheless it is common belief that when Scandinavians meet each other a sort of mixed language arise, a spoken hybrid language that goes under different labels like Scandinavian, Polarswahili, Svanska, Sasperanto or Reseledar­skandinaviska.

As corpus planning, for many reasons, has proved to be so difficult, attempts have also been made to promote semicom­munication as such, that is to assure people the right to use there own language in neighboring countries. As example of status planning we have the Nordic language convention from 1987, which states that every Nordic citizen has the right to use his/her own mother tongue if in contact with the authorities in another Scandinavian country.

Also acquisition planning is crucial. Every Scandinavian child is supposed to get an introduction to the other Scandinavian languages already in compulsory school. The languages are not taught as foreign languages but as an integrated part of the study of your own mother tongue. The pupils are supposed to get used to listening to the neighboring languages and learn to avoid certain lexical items that could be problematic, among them certain false friends[2]. This subject has been taught for about 150 years (!), but for some reason it is not popular and it does not always get through to the actual curriculum.

Also in Iceland and Finland acquisition planning is being made to promote Interscandinavian comprehension. Either Swedish or Danish is being taught as a foreign language. One of the reasons for this is to enable people from these countries to use a Scandinavian language as lingua franca when talking to other Scandinavians. Recently English has become the first foreign language to be taught and often this language comes to replace the Scandinavian languages as the preferred lingua franca. People from the Faeroes, Greenland, as well as the Sami, are often bilingual since they live in areas that are still more or less integrated to other Scandinavian countries. Because of this acquisition planning, and because of our common cultural and historical heritage we (after Dahlstedt 1980) talk of these inhabitants and areas as the secondary part of the Scandinavian language community. Consequently people with Danish, Norwegian or Swedish as their mother tongue form the primary part of the Scandinavian language community. Further in this article I will chiefly deal with the primary part.

To summarize, this leaves us with a Scandinavian language community in an region where about 24 million people live, and according to the official picture Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are the languages preferred. Intercomprehension between these languages is the crucial point of whether we can talk of a language community or not, but as I initially has been trying to stress this intercomprehension is not always spontaneous, but has also been fostered “ from above ” as a result of acquisition planning – and accordingly to norms. This acquisition planning has not always been a success but what is important is that we indeed have all been fostered with the idea of a Scandinavian language community and the norms involved : we are supposed to understand each other and we are supposed to use Scandinavian languages (mother tongues or not) – and not English.

1. Inter-Scandinavian solidarity and contact

Inhabitants in the Scandinavian countries do not only share the potential of a language community but also cultural patterns. No doubt these dimensions are just as important criteria for inter-Scandinavian communication as the linguistic background. A special feeling of identification was the basis of the nineteenth-century ideology of Scandinavian solidarity, the so-called Scandinavism. In 1952 the Nordic Council was created as a cooperative organization between parliaments and governments. Shortly after (1954) Scandinavia became a passport-free zone for Scandinavian citizens as well as a common Nordic employment market — the latter being a factor that has played a significant role in Scandinavian mobility. Companies often work from a Nordic base, and trade between the countries is extensive. Many organizations work within a network of established Nordic contacts.

Another important factor is that television and radio broadcasts are being received also from other Scandinavian countries. This has played an important role for the mutual comprehensibility, especially for the understanding of Swedish in Denmark and in Norway (cf. Maurud’s test results below) as Swedish broadcasts reaches their capital cities. Probably the situation is now changing, as there are nowadays so many more channels to choose between.

We feel that we are related, but as in all families there are also conflicts and even from early times there has been a possibility — depending on one's intentions — to emphasize either the similarities or the differences among languages and countries. Throughout previous conflicts in the Nordic countries, linguistic independence was emphasized, and some features in one language have been considered correct by virtue of their opposition to one another. When the New Testament was translated into Swedish in 1526, translators emphasized Swedish characteristics while avoiding some of the linguistic features that corresponded to linguistic similarities among the Scandinavian languages (Svensson 1981:5). In the same time, interesting enough, in the preface to the Danish translation of the New Testament (1529) one reads : “ Grace and peace be to all Danes, Swedes and Norwegians, and to all others who understand our tongue ” (Karker 1978:11). Representatives for a super power to which Norway at that time belonged wrote the Danish text. By and large the connection among Scandinavian languages involves a question of people’s attitudes and relations, something which subsequent researchers have also paid attention to and which I have also already mentioned above.

2. Research on mutual comprehension among neighboring languages

Empirical investigation of Scandinavian language comprehension was introduced in the 1950s when Einar Haugen published his findings from an opinion poll in “ Nordiske språkproblemer — en opinionsundersökelse ” (1953). The surveys were sent by letter and unfortunately, the number of persons who completed and returned their surveys was low. In spite of this the information, which was derived from this survey, is nonetheless valuable as Haugen's collected data represent the earliest systematic study of this kind.

Other researchers have followed up on Haugen's early attempt. Particularly two Norwegian scholars, Øivind Maurud (1976b) with “Nabospråksforståelse i Skandinavia” (Compre­hension of neighbor languages in Scandinavia) and Inge Bø (1978) in “Ungdom og naboland” (Youth and neighbor countries).Both of these researchers based their investigations on systematic tests of mutual comprehension and did not limit their data to the self-reports that respondents gave in written questionnaires. Maurud's investigation was carried out in 1972[3], and he studied neighboring language communication and comprehension in text and conversation among 504 Danish, Norwegian and Swedish recruits.

Despite the criticism that has been leveled against earlier studies, one needs to point out that the studies — with their different methods and varying groups of respondents — nonetheless indicated a largely similar pattern with respect to comprehension. They all show that the Danish language often present a problem for both Norwegians and especially for Swedes. Communication between Norwegians and Swedes, on the other hand, appears relative problem-free — though it must be pointed out that the investigation only concerns one of the two Norwegian standard languages, the one derived from Danish (Bokmål). The other standard language is Nynorsk, derived from Norwegian dialects. A regional linguistic variation exists in all the Scandinavian countries but is most pronounced in Norway. I will refer to the findings, using Maurud's investigation as a particular reference point. After that, I will point out some circumstances, which deserve special mention.

2.1. Neighbouring language comprehension in speech accor­ding to Maurud 1976

Norwegians are, without doubt, the most adept at understanding their neighbors. They understand Swedish best of all, and the median value for the Norwegian respondents in Maurud's investigation was 88% correct when they were tested on their understanding of spoken Swedish. Though their comprehension of Danish was not quite as high as their understanding of Swedish, it was nonetheless good (73%).The usual explanation given for Norwegians' ability to understand their neighbors is that they are accustomed to regional variation. As I just mentioned dialects in Norway have an unusually strong status.

According to the results of previous research, Danes understand both neighboring languages reasonably well, even if they do not reach the same high levels of comprehension as the Norwegians. They understand Norwegians best of all : In Maurud's study, the Danish respondents had a median score of 69% when they were tested on their understanding of Norwegian. Their comprehension of Swedish was markedly worse, and the average score was 43%. 

Swedes are the least skillful in understanding their neighbors, and their listening comprehension of Danish is downright poor. The Swedish participants in the study barely scored 23% correct when Maurud tested their listening comprehension of Danish. The Swedes' understanding of Norwegian was much better, and Maurud's results showed that the median average was 48%. 

2.2. The difference between comprehending speech and writing

As one can see from the results for intercomprehension in spoken form, the investigation gives quite a mixed perspective, with strikingly positive as well as strikingly negative features. The range, however, narrows when one looks at results for reading comprehension, still according to Maurud 1976.

Norwegians scored the highest results also with respect to reading comprehension, even if the difference from their neighbors was not as great as for spoken comprehension. They understand written Danish best of all, and the median score for the Norwegian informants in Maurud's investigation was 93% accuracy. Reading comprehension of Swedish proved almost as high, as Norwegian participants scored as high as 89% correct. Danes who participated in Maurud's study scored 89% for reading comprehension of Norwegian, and 69% for comprehension of written Swedish. Finally, the Swedes tested by Maurud comprehended 86% of the Norwegian texts they read, and understood 69% of the Danish texts.

With respect to results above, one gets the perception that Scandinavians' reading comprehension is much better than listening comprehension. Why is that so ? One important factor is that writing, compared to speech, is more conservative. Furthermore people are able to read at their own speed using certain analytical cues in the reading process, strategies they might not have time to apply when they are listening to a tape. In my view this also gives a clue about how Scandinavians do when they understand other Scandinavian languages. All evidence points to a process whereby we more or less consciously look for systematic correspondences with our own mother tongue, that is a form of contrastive analysis. Bannert (1981:40) speaks of this correspondence strategy as reconstruction and believes that this strategy is characteristic of a Scandinavian who has not had much experience in communicating in inter-Nordic situations. One illustration is how the Danish word gade (‘street’) is reconstructed to the Swedish word gata by systematically “ translating ” each phoneme. When doing this Scandinavians can take advantage of the meta-linguistic analytical tools they have acquired as a part of the ability to read. Written language provides not only prestige but also meta-linguistic contours to a language.

For the Scandinavian who is experienced in communicating in inter-Nordic situations, however, Bannert applies the term lexical identification, justified on the basis that this particular speaker has already reconstructed the word or had previously learned it. In principle, one can imagine that comprehension and acquisition of related languages occur to a great extent via reconstruction. In other words, it requires analysis while understanding a foreign language (as well as unknown words in a neighboring language) involves lexical identification e.g. being able to use synthetic skills.

2.3. Asymmetrical comprehension

According to the test results, also confirmed by numerous experiences, comprehension is often asymmetrical. A Dane who meets a Swede would understand barely half of what the other says, while the Swede would comprehend hardly a fourth of what the Dane says, even though comprehension cannot be measured (or predicted) as exactly as this.

Asymmetrical comprehension is usually connected with asymmetrical relations and researchers (Teleman 1987:70, Maurud 1976b : 154) have sought explanations from extra-linguistic factors. When it comes to the Nordic countries, it has been pointed out that in the middle of the Twentieth Century, Swedes came to adopt a Big Brother attitude and were not prepared to make special efforts to understand their neighbors. Whether this attitude has changed or not remains to be seen. Yet one should not exclude the possibility that it might be easier to understand from one vantage point than from another, something that Teleman has suggested. According to him (Teleman 1987:76), changes in the Danish pronunciation might have made it more difficult for a Swede to find the letters behind the sounds than vice versa. This assumption is based on the fact that reading comprehension is not asymmetrical while oral comprehension is.

2.4. The difference between objective and subjective data

Fortunately we have not only results from “ laboratory ” testing. Further information on inter-Nordic comprehension was obtained in an interview investigation launched at the request of the Nordic Council (Den nordiska allmänheten och det nordiska samarbetet 1973). The study was based on interview contacts with over 5,000 people in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Here people themselves were given the chance to judge their own listening comprehension and a much more positive picture emerged. In this case, 95% of the Swedes responded that they understand spoken Norwegian ; 47% of them said that they understand spoken Danish. According to such subjective estimates, Swedes would then be able to understand their neighbor’s languages at twice the level that emerged from other tests ! 97% of the Norwegian participants responded that they understand spoken Swedish, and 79% of the Norwegian respondents answered that they understand spoken Danish.

This same discrepancy emerged in my own investigation of language experiences at Nordic meetings (Börestam Uhlmann 1991). The findings are more similar to other investigations based on self-reports than on the results that were obtained by testing. The difference is most striking on the part of the Swedes. The results point to a gap between subjective and objective data, and the question is which type of investigation gives the most accurate picture. By its very nature understanding is a quality that cannot easily lend itself to quantitative measurement. Probably you can achieve certain pragmatic communicative goals even with a low degree of understanding. Comprehension depends on interactive cooperation, something that does not emerge in artificial testing situations. The motivation to understand would also be greater in authentic communication rather than in a task in which one is asked to listen to a taped voice. In reality, listeners also feel a social pressure to grasp what others are saying, a factor which could of course lead to overestimation. Further more, it is assumed that comprehension normally is better in its natural context than in an artificial one because a specific setting reduces the number of possible interpretations. Trudgill (1982:184ff.) points to findings, which show that in the absence of a specific context, passive understanding of other dialects is greatly reduced.

3. Strategies in inter-Scandinaviancommunication

Studies have suggested that comprehension is sometimes poor, which raises such questions as : How do Scandinavians manage to understand each other ? Do they resort to makeshift solutions such as “ Scandinavian ” or do the speak English ? Do we continue to misunderstand each other ?

Some years ago I (Börestam Uhlmann 1994) taped some thirty Interscandinavian conversations between Danes, Norwegians and Swedes aged 18-25. The conversations were recorded in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, and most of the participants were unaccustomed to the others' languages. The study showed that when these fairly young people generally used their own mother tongue, it was relatively rare that the speakers adjusted their language or used a hybrid language. Neither did they resort to English. Occasionally they inserted words from their interlocutors' language, most frequently when the language was in some way focused — when statements had to be rephrased and clarified further, for example.

As a consequence of that language ceased to be the “ invisible ”, effortless process that it often is among fellow countrymen. Intercomprehension evolved, but not automatically but as the result of cooperative effort and intensified concentration. Explanations became more elaborate, and the speaker often attempted to establish a common point of departure by asking whether the other person knew what something was. The conversations were characterized by frequent interruptions, either to clarify something or to make certain that the message had been correctly understood. Compared to conversations within one and the same language, the participants had to work harder to understand each other, something which calls for both cooperation and motivation.

It should be stressed that this picture is only valid for short-term communication. When the contact intensifies, language use is further affected, and the strategies might be entirely different. Immigrants from other Scandinavian countries often shift languages, but not all of the immigrants, and not all of the time. The picture of a Scandinavian language community is thus manifold — and certainly complex.

4. Summary

There are considerable similarities between the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages, which facilitates communication over the national linguistic boundaries. Both Scandinavia and even the entire Nordic area can be seen as a language community, and this is also the officially held view for example by institutions like the Nordic Council and the Nordic language board (“ Nordisk språkråd ”).

The basic conditions for communication have been studied using comprehension tests. These studies show that comprehension in some cases might be fairly good, other times far from perfect. I have in this article pointed out the following factors as especially important :

·Scandinavian intercomprehension in speech causes hardly any problems for Norwegians, certain problems for Danes and severe problems for Swedes ; the latter two especially in conversation with each other.

·As a consequence of this picture of Scandinavian intercomprehension mutual intelligibility is asymmetrical, a Dane listening to a Swede would understand twice as much as a Swede listening to a Dane, and so on.

·Scandinavian intercomprehension in writing is quite good, and written representation would sometimes be the preferred channel for communication.

·The “ subjective ” picture of intercomprehension is much brighter then the “ objective ” picture of spoken intercom­prehension as sketched out above, and it could be discussed which picture come closer to reality.

In fact, it must also be stressed that a language community is never a static construct but a social construction manifested in interaction between people, not between languages per se. People find different communicative solutions to different needs. A common view is that people sometimes talk Scandinavian, a hybrid language, sometimes prefer English. Others enthuse about how well mutual comprehension works. These rumors imply alternative attitudes and varying solutions, in a reality that is certainly complex. If we are to talk about a Scandinavian language community, it is not initially characterized by effortless fluent communication. In face-to-face communication the situation is managed by interactional cooperation – in reading, though, the individual is left on his own trying to figure the message out by analytical work. The result of these analytical efforts might even be better compared to oral comprehension. In spite of this the threshold appears to be higher as people seldom voluntarily read books or magazines from the neighboring countries, at least not in Sweden. One reason could be that reading does not provide the social motivation that face-to-face communication does. You cannot postpone talking to a person in front of you, but you can postpone reading a book.

Norwegian speakers, because of their good comprehension of neighbor languages and their familiarity with communication across dialect boundaries, can help bridge the gap between Danish and Swedish speakers. It is said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link, in this case the Swedes. In my recorded conversations (Börestam Uhlmann 1994) we can see that the opposite may also be true. In relations between human beings a chain may be as strong as its strongest link, in this case the Norwegians (cf. “ foreigner talk ” which means that the person with the higher language skills take responsibility for the outcome of conversation). In reality asymmetry in language skills might be an important resource.

5. Selected reading in English and German

Braunmüller, Kurt, 1990 : Sprachkonflikte als Sprachnormen­konflikte (am Beispiel der interskandinavischen Semikommuni­kation.) In : Plurilingua 9 : 29–39.

Braunmüller, Kurt, 1995 : Semikommunikation und semiotische Strategien. In : Niederdeutsch und die skandinavischen Sprachen II. Heidelberg : 35-75.

Braunmüller, Kurt, 2001 : Semicommunikation and Accomo­dation : Observations from the Linguistic Situation in Scandinavia. In : Working Papers in Multilingualism. Series B B : 17/2001. Sonderforschungsbereich 538. University of Hamburg. (www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/SFB538).

Braunmüller, Kurt, Zeevaert, Ludger, 2001: Semikommunikation, rezeptive Mehrsprachigkeit und verwandte Phänomene. Eine bibliographische Bestandsaufnahmne. In : Working Papers in Mu­ltilingualism.Series B : 19/2001. Sonderforschungsbereich 538. University of Hamburg. (www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/SFB538).

Börestam Uhlmann Ulla, 1999: Interscandinavian communication. In : Wege zur Mehrsprachigkeit im Fernstudium. Doku­mentation des Hagener Workshop 13. bis 14. November 1998. Hagen : 89-98.

Börestam Uhlmann Ulla, (being published) : Interscandinavian language contacts. Internal communication and comprehensibility problems. I : The Nordic languages. An international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages. Article NR. 214.

Haugen, Einar, 1972 [1966] : Semicommunication : The language gap in Scandinavia. In : The ecology of language. Essays by Einar Haugen. Selected and introduced by Anwar S. Dil. Stanford, Ca. : 215–236.

Maurud, Øivind, 1976a : Reciprocal comprehension of neighbour languages in Scandinavia. In : Scandinavian Journal of Edu­cational Research 20:49-72.

Vikør, Lars, 1993 (or later) : The Nordic languages. Their Status and Interrelations, NOVUS. Oslo.

Bibliographie

Bannert, R. (1981) : Referat av diskussionen i sektionen Talperceptionsforskning och nordisk hörförståelse. In : Inter­nordisk språkförståelse. Ed. by C.-C. Elert. (Acta Universitatis Umensis. Umeå Studies in the Humanities 33.) Umeå : 37–45.

Bø, I. (1978) : Ungdom og naboland. En undersøkelse av skolens og fjernsynets betydning for nabospråkforståelsen. (Rogalandsforskning 4.) Stavanger.

Börestam, Uhlmann, U. (1991) : Språkmöten och mötesspråk i Norden. (Nordisk språksekretariats rapporter 16.) Oslo.

Börestam Uhlmann U. (1994) : Skandinaver samtalar. Språkliga och interaktionella strategier i samtal mellan danskar, norrmän och svenskar. (Skrifter utgivna av Institutionen för nordiska språk vid Uppsala universitet 38.) Uppsala.

Dahlstedt, K.-H. (1980) : Den språkliga situationen i Norden. In : Språken i vårt språk. Språkstudier samlade av Inge Jonsson och utgivna av Svenska Akademien 1980. Stockholm : 102–118.

Den nordiska allmänheten och det nordiska samarbetet, 1973 : Attitydundersökning. (Nordisk utredningsserie 1973:4.) Nordiska rådet. Stockholm.

Haugen, E. (1953) : Nordiske språkproblemer – en opinion­sundersökelse. In : Nordisk tidskrift 29: 225–249.

Haugen, E. (1972) [1966] : Semicommunication : The language gap in Scandinavia. In : The ecology of language. Essays by Einar Haugen. Selected and introduced by Anwar S. Dil. Stanford, Ca. : 215–236.

Karker, A. (1978) : Det nordiske sprogfaellesskab – historisk set. In: Språk i Norden 1978. Lund: 5-16.

Maurud, Ø. (1976b) : Nabospråksforståelse i Skandinavia. En undersøkelse om gjensidig forståelse av tale- og skriftspråk i Danmark, Norge og Sverige. (Nordisk utredningsserie 13.) Nordiska rådet. Stockholm.

Petersen, N.M., (1844-45) : Den nordiske oldtids betydning for nutiden. Annaler for nordisk oldkyndighed. København.

Svensson, L. (1981) : Ett fall av språkvård under 1600-talet. (Lundastudier i nordisk språkvetenskap A:33). Lund.

Teleman, U. (1987) : Om grannspråksförståelse. Hinder och möjligheter. In: Språk i Norden 1987. (Nordisk språksekre­tariats skrifter 8.). Oslo m.fl.: 70–82.

Trudgill, P. (1982) : On the limits of passive `competence': Sociolinguistics and the polylectal grammar controversy. In : Crystal, D. (ed.), Linguistic controversies. Essays in linguistic theory and practice in honour of F.R. Palmer. London : 172-191.