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From: dick@tjalk.UUCP (Dick Grune)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Horrible Hack to tell Scand. Languages apart
Message-ID: <518@tjalk.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Oct-85 12:37:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: tjalk.518
Posted: Sat Oct 12 12:37:21 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 05:37:18 EDT
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 67

Some days ago (Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 06:42:59 -0100) Rob Bernardo
asked for the identification of the following Scandinavian languages.

>Fodseng			[some Germanic language]

>Fodsa"ng		[some Germanic language]

>Fotseng			[some Germanic language]

Here is a Horrible Hack to tell them apart if you don't speak them.
I feel tempted to send this article anonymously, since its brute
phenomenological approach will surely (and justly) offend the native
speakers of these beautiful languages.  But sheer vanity and the
hope to interest perhaps some people in Scandinavian languages has
prompted me to send this article just the same.  So, asbestos suit
on, here goes.

First between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish:
Hack 1: The one with the double dots on the letters is Swedish. This
	makes Fotsa"ng Swedish, which it is.

Between Danish and Norwegian: the languages are highly related.
Hack 2: If words often contain VOICED consonants (b, d, g, v),
	especially between two vowels or at the end of words, it's
	Danish. This makes Fodseng Danish and Fotseng Norwegian.
	(likewise bog/bok,book;  tage/ta, take;  inn/ind, in; and
	many others)  The word av (of) is a dead give-away: it is
	Danish, the Norwegian form being af.  The letter combination
	ck is another: it occurs only in Danish and is written kk in
	Norwegian (tack/takk, thanks)
Actually there are two Norwegian languages, Riksmaol (with the o
over the a) (= State language) and Landsmaol (= Country language).
It is the riksmaol which you see in print and which is highly
related to Danish.  The Landsmaol is spoken in rural Norway and is
more related to Swedish (time for the double asbestos suit). You
find it on road signs and in the local newspaper.

Now for the other Scandinavian languages:
Hack 3: If it has single apostrophes over a lot of the vowels, it's
	Icelandic. (bo'k: book). Other give-aways are the long th
	(called thorn, looking like a cross between a p and a b, and
	still present in English as in Ye Olde Inn, which by co(s)mic
	misunderstanding is pronounced ye olde inn) and the d-bar.
Icelandic is the most inflected of the Germanic languages and
easily outdoes German (with English and Afrikaans fighting over the
title of the "least inflected one").
Then there is Faer-Oerese, spoken on the Faer-Oer islands, of which
I know next to nothing; judging from names on the map, it is a
simpler form of Icelandic.

And now for a non-Scandinavian language:
Hack 4: If it has many repeated or double vowels (aa, ee, oo, uu, oe, ui)
	it's Dutch (or Danish in old orthography) (boek: book)

And now for another non-Scandinavian language:
Hack 5: If it has many repeated or double vowels (aa, ee, uo, ii, a"a")
	and you can't make head or tail of it, it's Finnish
	(jalkavuode)
I could give you hack 6-10 to distinguish between, Finnish Estonian
Hungarian and Turkish, but I haven't been provoked (yet).

					Dick Grune
					Vrije Universiteit
					de Boelelaan 1081
					1081 HV  Amsterdam
					the Netherlands