How mutually intelligible is Icelandic towards native speakers of Swedish despite it also being a scandinavian language? [How much of the text written below do they understand?]

by Old_North8419

36 comments

  1. it’s not possible to understand really, single words here and there. Guessing this has something to do with military as lot of words looks close to military terms/equipment but it’s not really possible to understand any context.

  3. For me, literally zero.

    More interestingly though, do Icelandic speakers understand Swedish? As is the case with Danish and Swedish. Swedes generally have a hard time with Danish, but Danes doesn’t have nearly as much problem with Swedish

  6. Not alot, in speech we would snap up more words but its still very much a different language and most swedes could not understand if someone was asking for directions or our wallet without body language.

  7. I’m gonna give it a try:

    Flott, du kom undan (E&E) er aggro herrmansen sen hen skiljs vid bande männen sina svinvägar och sen flyr efter varje teknik som stridsfånga.

    Pekar herrman ett handtecken och beordrar en stridsfånga åt svinvägen vart hann flyr en flott audi till er svinböjor. Hit lanserar o bjuder överens hemlands sin. Erföjldande ger han ett handtecken beordrar han att flyga ur hans överens fina Audi. Erföljande han skickar er i strids fångaböjer som han sen frigör ytterligare er till städar och dryga mögel strängt beordrad flotta erfarenhet.

    Det första sen han har å göra är att safta hem upplysningen sen han fann till att flyga. Upplysningar en och stabsuppsättning och följde var och Manns och var och lunda, stabsuppsättning vart behövs, uppbyggning en skitupplag avloppsbrunnar och åstadkommande och åstånds i Dio kring järnsprängsvägen vettu vid vi i glidtunna och värnarstövlarna ser du särskilda militärvägar. Tryfflarna väger vi när storskrutet o loftrasarna get överlägsna och takfria till att flyga.

    Jag ger upp…

  8. I can guess it has something to do with refugees, war and someone’s home country (heimaland). When I read, I feel that I should be understanding much more than that, since the structure of the languages are similar, but the words are too different.

    The Icelandic word “strax” which means “immediately” actually has approximately the same meaning in Swedish.

  9. I can only make out a few words here and there, and those are just guesses.
    Prisoners of war, homeland, city, run away, after.

  11. I can understand that it’s something about a fleet commander and something about PoWs. I think there’s something about amphibious vehicles at the end?

  12. Very little, and the little we do i think we missunderstand because it sounds similar. But it probably isn’t :p

  13. I can understand occassional words from this, but then again, so can I when reading German aswell.

    With Norwegian, I can read and understand 95% with a bit of thinking. With Danish, perhaps 85% with a lot of thinking (understanding words thanks to context, comparing words with old Swedish or even English).

    With Icelandic, I could probably understand the message of a very simple text if I really studied it.

  14. If you gave me a couple of hours I might get the gist of it by having to think about each word and try to make a connection to a Swedish word.

    German is easier to understand than Icelandic (also Faroese because their words are like Icelandic but more close to Norway.

    Here’s an example of Faroese from Wikipedia which is very easy to understand

    “Svøríki (svenskt: Sverige) er kongaríki í Norðurevropa. Í norðri hevur Svøríki mark við Finnland, og í vesturi við Noreg. Høvuðsstaður er Stokkhólmur.”)

  15. I can pick up some words here and there but overall, it’s not intelligible at all.

    I would guess the text is about some military stuff based on words like stríðsfangi (Prisoner of War?)… But honestly I have pretty much no clue what it says or what it is about even…

  16. The only icelandic swedes know is
    ”Þungur hnífur” (tungur knivur).

  17. For me, it’s like 5-10% intelligible, which means I don’t understand what’s being said.

  18. For most people? More or less unintelligible, if you can read Old Swedish it gets a bit easier and if you can read Norse it becomes very easy.

    The split happened to long ago and unlike the other Scandinavian countries Iceland has been very insular, so their language has taken a rather different trajectory.

  19. Icelandic is NOT a Scandinavian language.

    Scandinavia = Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

    Icelandic is a Nordic language, as is Faroese, Finnish and the Sami languages. It is true that Icelandic once originated from Old West Norse (spoken in Norway), but that does not make it a Scandinavian language today.

  20. I would need some context to truly understand, but it’s something about prisoners of war from the navy?

  21. You’ll understand less than 1/100 of the words if you’re used to it. Most people would understand words like “fyrsta”.

    “Ekki” is one of those words that you’d understand when you’re used to it, with the Swedish translation being “Inte”, but it’s easy to remember by thinking about “Icke”.

  23. I understood literally not a single word in the first sentence.

    “Sina” is a word in Swedish as well, but I doubt it’s the same word as the Icelandic “sina”.

    Edit: I assume “og” is “och”, meaning “and”.

  24. Jag förstår 100%, kan bero på att jag kan isländska eller så pratar jag så pass gammeldags svenska att jag kan läsa det här

  27. Many words are nearly identical and if you use the odd symbols in those words to fill in the other words with the equivalent letters you get a few more words. The more you read the more context you get and can start guessing. At a first glance however, it makes very little sense, something about fleeing, prisoners of war.

  28. It is a chore. Reading the text several times and re-evaluating after having hints from further down I can sorta piece together a general meaning. Sounding the words out also help (which require some knowledge of some Icelandic characters like their “th” sound, which I have from having worked with Icelandic colleagues, so knowledge not inherent to knowing Swedish).

    I can suss out that this is describing escape from captivity in a war scenario, so a prisoner of war escaping and making it back home. Kinda describing the process broadly. Lots of gaps in details though.

  29. It’s probably easier to understand more of it if it was spoken. They use different letters and unless one knows how they pronounced it makes it harder to decipher what’s being said.

    However, Icelandic people used to (or are still) learning Danish in school. So when they speak Danish, it’s very easy for us to understand them. Basically, it’s easier to understand a person from Icelandic speaking Danish with an Icelandic accent than a Danish native speaker.

  30. As a swede living in Iceland for 10 years, all of it. 😉

    Before moving here, ehm… a few words here and there.
    Lots of archaic words and some pronunciation we don’t have or use in swedish anymore.
    Two L’s are said as TL, au becomes Öy, Hv is Kv and so on.
    They also reuse lots of old words instead of inventing new ones or borrowing them so guessing is sometimes a bit strange.

  31. As a Swede originating from Gotland with some Gutnic / Gutnish i can read some words but not the context of the text.

  32. I think the main challenge are the old letters we no longer use, if those letters were converted I think it would be much easier. 5% understanding as is, maybe 20% if we listened to it instead. Feels slightly more understandable but slow to read with this next to it [https://austur.org/fritid/tips.html](https://austur.org/fritid/tips.html) I think I understood 30% but missing a lot of important context reading it with help.

  34. I have never read any Icelandic lyrics until now while I have heard very few Icelandic singers, mostly they are Icelanders who worked on the Viking / Viking Valhalla tv series and similar stuffs, so I have no idea what this means which is in the picture more than a few words which similar to Swedish or the two other Scandinavian languages.

  35. My brain tells me that I understand this structurally and phonetically. Then mid-way decides the payload is end-to-end encrypted 😉

  36. It’s quite difficult. If I gave it an hour of work I think I can get it. After one read it’s a bit nonsense and I don’t really find the context.

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