Re: OT: Russian and Ukrainian was Re: semi-OT: bilingual communication

BP Jonsson wrote:
>At 13:24 26.1.2003 +0200, Isaac A. Penzev wrote:
>
>><<or because of their
>>similarity? You said below that "Russians who live in Russia, don't
>>understand Ukrainian at all," which makes me think that Ukrainians
>>understand
>>Russian more from long exposure to it, likewise with Russians in
>>Ukraine.>>
>>
>>It seems true.
>
>This seems, sad to say, to be the case with Swedish/Norwegian/Danish too.
>I used to think that I understood Norwegian because standard Bokmål
>Norwegian is essentially Danish with a Swedish pronunciation[*] and because
>my native dialect is from an area bordering on South-East Norway, but
>seeing how my kids persistently claim Norwegian to be unitelligible I'm
>leaning towards long exposure as the explanation why I find so little
>difficulty with Norwegian.  Likewise most Norwegians have had long exposure
>to Swedish television, and that's why they undertstand Swedish.
While I did live in Stenungsund (where there are more Norwegians per square
kilometre than in most bits of Sweden) for some five years, I can't quite
convince myself that exposture is the reason that I find Norwegian, at least
when carefully spoken, largely (tho' not easily) understandable. Same goes
for Danish spoken by Icelanders, while Danish spoken by Danes is hopeless.

                                              Andreas

_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail