Are Swedish and Finnish mutually intelligible?

Question

I love watching Swedish films subtitled (in English) and I also have relatives who live in Helsinki...I was wondering that if I studied one of these languages, would I develop a good comprehension of the other?

Answer 1

I've heard they can talk to each other, yeah. They're definitely related though - if you studied one, you'd pick up the other very quickly (much like what happens when you study Italian and then start learning Spanish).

Answer 2

No, absolutely not. Swedish is for the most part mutually intelligible with Danish and Norwegian, and Finnish is mostly mutually intelligible with Estonian, but Finnish and Swedish are not even in the same language family. Finnish is part of the Uralic language family, while Swedish is, along with most other European languages including English, in the Indo-European family.

Answer 3

Finnish (Suiomen) and Swedish (Svenska) have several words in common ("firma" -- firm or company; "herra" -- sir, gentleman, Mr.), but only because the speakers of both languages have lived in close proximity to one another for generations.

The Finnish language is very different from Swedish. It is an inflectional language, which means it has endings and cases added to the words.  Because the vocabulary bears no resemblance to other major world languages, it is very difficult to learn for the non-native speaker. (It's hard to coast on a knowledge of English, Swedish, German, or Russian in Finland -- signs, for instance, are almost impossible to understand!    If you're a New Zealand Maori, you might feel a twinge of nostalgia, because much

n of Finnish looks like Maori, but the languages are not related at all. Hospitals in Finnish = Sairaalat;  "I feel sick" = Minulla on paha olla; a pediatrician  = lastenlaakari; a sign you see in stores -- "Emme myy tupakkatuotteitta alle 16-vuotaille: = We don't sell tobacco to people younger than 16 years old. And the home of Nokia calls cell phones taskupuhelin (pocket telephones)  Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland with about 4.9 million speakers. The other is Swedish which is spoken by about 5 per cent of Finns as their first language.  There are about 250,000 Finns in Sweden, many of whom speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Estonian and Hungarian are the nearest major linguistic relatives. There are also remote resemblances to Turkish and several languages of Central Asia.

Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugrian Language group. There are also several Finnic languages spoken in the western parts of Russia. (Swedish belongs to the Indo-European language group -- it is related, of course, to Danish and Norwegian, but also to English, German, Italian, Sanskrit and Farsi, the language of Iran!).

Most important phrase you can learn

ANTEEKSI, EN YMMARRA

(Sorry, I don't understand)

PS Left out all the a's with double dots on top, but here's one, so's you get familiar with it. Ä

Answer 4

no finnish is not related to swedish. tho swedish is spoken in finland because the invasion of the swedes there. danish, norwegian are mutually intelligble to swedish.  

Answer 5

No Swedish and Finnish belong to 2 entirely separate language groups. Finnish actually has more in common with Hungarian. However Swedes, Norwegians and Danes can sometimes understand each other.

Answer 6

There is no resemblance between Finnish and Swedish. Finnish is a language on its own and its origins are veiled in mystery. Although in theory Finns are supposed to be bilingual, the only ones who are in practice seem to be the native Swedish speakers from the south west part of the country. You might be better off studying Swedish, which is easier and which would give you a good start with Norwegian and Danish if you wanted to extend your linguistic range.

Edit: Since answering your question, I have remembered an evening I spent in Helsinki once with a Norwegian girl who had come to Finland full of hopes of making herself understood in her own language. It simply didn't work and so she gave up and, like me, used English.