Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 May 3

= May 3 =

Sports team names in American v. British English
As a native speaker of American English, I was appalled to see the current ITN entry "In Spanish football, FC Barcelona win La Liga." I immediately posted a Main Page error report, and an admin explained to me the variation between American and British English where collective nouns, in this case FC Barcelona, are often treated as plural, while in American English they are almost always singular. So I'm curious; to a native speaker of British English, would the following statement sound incorrect? "In Spanish football, FC Barcelona win s La Liga." I know that in the US, the issue is often circumvented entirely by the fact that most American sports teams have plural names (e.g. the Atlanta Braves). TheMrP (talk) 00:40, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This is called notional agreement vs. formal agreement, and the article titled American and British English grammatical differences notes the distinction quite well; in general British English tends to favor notional agreement and American English tends to favor formal agreement. Thus The Who are an English rock band that formed in 1964 but ZZ Top is an American rock band formed in 1969.  Both would treat plural constructions like "The New York Yankees" or "The Bolton Wanderers" the same way, as both are plural in sense and formally.  -- Jayron 32 01:16, 3 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Even when the team nickname is singular. For example, "The Minnesota Wild are a professional ice hockey team based in Saint Paul, Minnesota." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:06, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, that usage is seems less-than-correct, despite it being in Wikipedia presently. Consider here and here and here where the phrasing "Minnesota Wild is..." abounds.  As a native American English speaker, I find the ...are... construction there suboptimal, and actual usage in the field bears that out.  -- Jayron 32 02:20, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You're right, they've changed it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:08, 3 May 2018 (UTC)


 * To answer the original question: "In Spanish football, FC Barcelona win s La Liga." sounds a bit strange to me (an English English speaker), but obviously not nearly as strange as the plural form seems to sound to American English speakers. I don't know many people who'd flag it as incorrect. It would be interesting to hear the opinions of speakers of other English variants. Bazza (talk) 17:10, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Barcelona wins La Liga title... but either way sounds fine to me (another English English user). Alansplodge (talk) 19:08, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * D'oh! Just noticed that last link was from CBS News. Perhaps I'm just used to hearing Americans. Alansplodge (talk) 19:16, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Danes talking in Danish to Swedes answering in Swedish?
Watching The Square (2017 film) I got the impression that in every interaction between Claes Bang (who is Dane) with other actors (Swedes), the former was talking in Danish, but the others in Swedish. It gets portrayed as something quite natural, as if a Briton would talk to an American audience without bothering too much in adapting his expressions. Is this the normal situation around there? The languages sound distinct enough, so that people without training would not get them. --Doroletho (talk) 03:41, 3 May 2018 (UTC)


 * See North_Germanic_languages. Broadly, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are considered "generally mutually intelligible." Friends from these countries have told me the same -- a speaker of one can at least get the gist of speech in the other two languages. (Yes, I know that's not WP:RS.) Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:11, 3 May 2018 (UTC)


 * See also this recent thread on the same subject. Two pertinent references from that are:
 * On Danish's odd relationship to Swedish and Norwegian.
 * "All the other Nordic countries joke that Danish sounds like Swedes talking with a potato or porridge in their mouths, while Danes joke that Swedes sound like drunk Danes, and Norwegians sound like drunk Danes singing".
 * Alansplodge (talk) 12:50, 3 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The question was not only about possibilities, but about how Scandinavian actually behave.
 * I know I could speak in Polish to Ukrainian, Belorussian or Russian speakers, and some communication would be possible. Colloquial language would be though tough. Some people seem more talented to understand the other Slavic languages too. So, you would not just open your mouth and blabber away without first testing the water to see if it's OK. Specially in a professional environment, or speaking in public. In the movie tough, the Dane just approach people in Danish with people who are portrayed as not surprised. It would be as if someone spoke to you in your language but with a different accent.
 * Wouldn't Scandinavians prefer to switch to English when they meet each other? Their English seems to be quite good, BTW. Wouldn't communication be easier in this case? Doroletho (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The behaviour described above is indeed well documented for Scandinavians. Linguistic terms for it are "semi-communication" or "receptive multilinualism"; you'll find pointers if you google for those terms (ex.: ,). Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:47, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Do Scandinavians understand one another? written by a Danish woman with a Norwegian husband. Alansplodge (talk) 19:01, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Note, Polish belongs to a different Slavic subgroup (Lechitic), while R., B. and U. all belong to theirs, and before ~1918 they were considered dialects of a single macrolanguage "Russian" and they practically were so, that a Great Russian, a White Russian (Belarusian) and a Little Russian (Ukrainian) could and did communicate with each other in their own local idiom and understand each other (and practically there were no other options, unless they knew Standard Russian which was "native" hardly to ~10-20% of the population). You can compare this with Polish, Kashubian and Silesian, though today, I suppose, the latter two are harder to encounter.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:42, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I can confirm that this mutual intelligibility does happen. I have done it myself. I have learned Swedish in school and I speak Swedish to a very good degree. However, I have never learned Norwegian or Danish. So when I have been in Norway, I have spoken Swedish to the locals and they have spoken Norwegian back to me. I've had no problems with it. It's been a bit more difficult in Denmark, because even though the grammars of Danish and Norwegian are pretty much identical, the Danish have a weird "hot potato in mouth" accent which makes spoken Danish hard to understand. The Norwegians, on the other hand, speak like the Swedish.

There's also a kind of mutual intelligibility between Finnish and Estonian. At least I when I have been in Tallinn, I have managed to speak Finnish to the locals and they have spoken Estonian back to me. But I think that's limited to Tallinn. Once you go further into Estonia, people don't understand Finnish there. And anyway, Finnish and Estonian are further apart than the Scandinavian languages are from each other. Finnish and Hungarian, although related, are too different to be anywhere near mutually intelligible. J I P &#124; Talk 21:23, 9 May 2018 (UTC)