Mutually intelligible is not an exact thing. From my own experience:
A native speaker of Danish, I was able to speak with my Norwegian housemate. It worked OK, but not great, and not for anything technical (like science and finance, where the Germanic words are very different to the English).
With my Swedish friends however, it was harder. Not sure why, since Sweden is visible from Denmark but Norway is a bit further away. Also, I found the TV Series "The Bridge / Broen" quite unlikely. Swedes and Danes don't talk that easily together, and certainly not with slang. The scenario of the cops from opposite sides of the bridge working together could still work, but mostly in writing. Also, the cadence is very different. Swedish is melodic. Danish is grunty.
Of course I have had no instruction in Swedish or Norwegian, but it wouldn't be hard, based on friends who have moved.
German is not mutually intelligible with Danish. But it is. I went to a handful of German classes, and it dawned on me that changing a few things around makes High German pretty much like old Danish, like what you'd hear in old black-and-white movies from around the war. These days Danish has a lot of English in it, and something about the way sentences are put together makes old movies seem very... old. But once you have a simple map in your mind, Danish appears to be German with some substitutions and simplified grammar. I can read the paper in German now, despite having had just those few lessons.
Swiss German, now there's a weird one. The sounds are different. I suppose I'm twice removed from it, but even native Germans I know will produce the WTF face when they hear a Swiss German. Words and grammar are similar, but different enough to be recognisably so by a foreigner like myself. But I suppose it's like Swedish and Danish.
Apropos the article, Singlish I found quite interesting. To me it's just English with sprinkled Chinese, and I think most English speaking people will not have a problem understanding it without instruction. One useful addition: English doesn't make much use of the modal particle, so it makes sense that Cantonese "la" is heard all over the place.
When I learned Norwegian, my teacher used to joke that all of Scandinavia spoke Norwegian. It's just that the Swedes were pronouncing things wrong and the Danish couldn't spell it correctly.
The novel Trainspotting is written like this if you're interested in more:
"Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae's behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah'm gaunnae huv a short life, am ah sound mind, ectetera, ectetera, but still want tae use smack? They won't let ye dae it. They won't let ye dae it, because it's seen as a sign ay thir ain failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whut they huv tae offer. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life. Well, ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts cannae handle that, it's thair fuckin problem. As Harry Launder sais, ah jist intend tae keep right on to the end of the road..."
Eyeballing Google Image Search? What an absolutely absurd way of figuring out what Scandinavia is. First of all, "every image" isn't even close to true, as many of them clearly highlight Finland (and Iceland) in different colors and many of them include non-Scandinavian countries for context (like Poland and the Baltics). If you actually click on any of those links, they don't "say he's wrong". From one of the first result's webpage (Wikipedia):
> The term Scandinavia always includes the mainlands of the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Norwegian dependencies, including Svalbard and Jan Mayen, are usually not seen as a part of Scandinavia, nor is Danish Greenland. However, the Danish Faroe Islands are sometimes included, as sometimes are Iceland and Finland
Finnish isn't even remotely related to the Scandinavian languages. If you're going to be needlessly pedantic and contrarian, at least put a little more effort in it than glancing at Google Images.
blah blah blah.
Finnish is related to Scandinavian languages because it is a Scandinavian language. There are even similar words like appelsiini vs apelsin for Orange, in Finnish/Swedish respectively.
That's... not how languages are grouped together. Russian has the word "apelsin", meaning the same thing - is it a Scandinavian language also?
Finland is associated with Scandinavia by virtue of being dominated by actual Scandinavian countries (notably, Sweden) for so long, which influenced the culture. But it's not Scandinavian per se, any more so than, say, Georgia is Eastern Slavic. Ditto the language - influenced, yes; belonging to the same group, not at all.
> A native speaker of Danish, I was able to speak with my Norwegian housemate. With my Swedish friends however, it was harder. Not sure why, since Sweden is visible from Denmark but Norway is a bit further away.
Between 1500ish and 1800ish Danish was extremely influential on Norwegian, by virtue of being... well... the formal language of the country.
Yeah but Denmark was also in possession of the southern bit of Sweden for a good long while.
Meanwhile you can read Holberg without too much trouble, even though he was born in Norway.
It's possible politics is the explanation. The newly independent/recovered lands need to be integrated, and one way to do that is language. So the Swedes made sure people spoke like them.
Regarding the understanding of dialects, I wouldn't give much on the first impression of a German who only speak standard German.
They usually don't have to understand dialects unless it's within the family context. So they have almost no practice in understanding German that is different from the standard and even slight accents can already throw them off.
Compare that to Swiss or Austrian German where the dialects are used on every level of society and usually don't have a mark of being used by lower class citizens. It's not remotely strange to discuss quantum physics in Swiss German where Germans would most likely switch to standard German.
In such a case, you can also look on how long it takes a native to understand the language without any formal education. In the case of Swiss German, I'd say it takes at most 6 months to understand everything (as usual YMMV as there are some peculiar dialects out there).
But as you noticed with Danish<->German, even though there are some sight difference in grammar, there are some obvious transformations like "Haus" becomes "Huus" or "Zeit" becomes "Ziit" that can be generalized.
To add to this, dialect uses outside family context seem to be focused on adverting or special occasions like Carnival, radio competitions (describe your day in dialect), cabaret shows and similar.
There's also different grammatical rules with Singlish. In particular, they tend to omit the verb to be and tend to use the present instead of the past tense.
A native speaker of Danish, I was able to speak with my Norwegian housemate. It worked OK, but not great, and not for anything technical (like science and finance, where the Germanic words are very different to the English).
With my Swedish friends however, it was harder. Not sure why, since Sweden is visible from Denmark but Norway is a bit further away. Also, I found the TV Series "The Bridge / Broen" quite unlikely. Swedes and Danes don't talk that easily together, and certainly not with slang. The scenario of the cops from opposite sides of the bridge working together could still work, but mostly in writing. Also, the cadence is very different. Swedish is melodic. Danish is grunty.
Of course I have had no instruction in Swedish or Norwegian, but it wouldn't be hard, based on friends who have moved.
German is not mutually intelligible with Danish. But it is. I went to a handful of German classes, and it dawned on me that changing a few things around makes High German pretty much like old Danish, like what you'd hear in old black-and-white movies from around the war. These days Danish has a lot of English in it, and something about the way sentences are put together makes old movies seem very... old. But once you have a simple map in your mind, Danish appears to be German with some substitutions and simplified grammar. I can read the paper in German now, despite having had just those few lessons.
Swiss German, now there's a weird one. The sounds are different. I suppose I'm twice removed from it, but even native Germans I know will produce the WTF face when they hear a Swiss German. Words and grammar are similar, but different enough to be recognisably so by a foreigner like myself. But I suppose it's like Swedish and Danish.
Apropos the article, Singlish I found quite interesting. To me it's just English with sprinkled Chinese, and I think most English speaking people will not have a problem understanding it without instruction. One useful addition: English doesn't make much use of the modal particle, so it makes sense that Cantonese "la" is heard all over the place.