swedish and german have a significantly overlapping vocab and can be pretty fun to compare, one of my favourite examples showcasing the relationship between the languages are the respective words for iron: originally derived from proto-germanic īsarną, proto-norse took the ending turning it into járn, which became the modern järn in swedish, meanwhile old high german went the other way transforming it into īsarn, middle high german īsen, then the contemporary Eisen

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 9 points 7 months ago

It’s a bit like British and American English taking “N-acetyl-para-aminophenol” and turning it into “paracetamol” and “acetaminophen” respectively.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

North Germanic, descended from Old Norse; there are varying and debatable degrees of mutual intelligibility between it, Danish and Norwegian, to the point that instructions on product packages sold in the three countries are sometimes written as one phrase for all three, with differing words written with slashes, and linguists occasionally lump all three together as “Scandinavian”.

Out of interest, what did you think it was if not Germanic?

[–] celeste@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 7 months ago

I rhought it was Scandinavian/Norse but never thought deeper than that.

[–] ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 5 points 7 months ago

Nordic languages branched off from Germanic languages, so they're related yea

[–] KrokanteBamischijf@feddit.nl 1 points 7 months ago

Fun fact: The Frisian language (and Dutch by extension) has overlapping origin with both Danish and Swedish.

We can usually grasp a lot of conversational Danish and Swedish because a lot of the words are similar.