If you see a long German or Swedish word, first of all, don't panic. It's more scared of you than you are of it. Secondly, take a closer look and you'll see it's actually just three normal words in a trenchcoat, huddling together to deter predators (French and English).
@Loukas it’s a Selbstverteidigungsmechanismus!
@gedankenstuecke well that's easy for you to say
@Loukas as my partner’s (kindergarden-aged at the time) nephew who’s a Spanish native speaker once said: “poor guy, can you imagine? Having to learn German as a child?”
@gedankenstuecke @Loukas The worst dialects are those where you painstakingly hold your breath at the end of every syllable and don’t actually finish saying it.

@pteranodo
Try Danish! We skip half the syllables entirely.

The rest we painstakingly end in what can best be described as a sound triangulated to the exact midpoint between sigh, mumble and murmur.

If you know a Germanic language you can decipher written Danish pretty well. It's just that we gave up on pronounciation.

@gedankenstuecke @Loukasmastodon.nu

@notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke as a Swede growing up in southern Sweden with Danish television and lots of trips to Copenhagen, I can sound (to other Swedes) surprisingly Danish by just letting the vowels/consonants vaguely taper out in the end of the last syllable.

@notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke by the way, don't know if this is true for Danish speakers, but to me (a Swedish speaker) written Dutch looks like I'm having a stroke. I understand half the words, but the other half looks like I should understand them, I just don’t.

(Edit: fixed spelling/wording)

@doculmus @notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke Exactly my experience the first time I heard someone speaking plattdeutsch - what the hell is this language? And why can I understyand it?

@Ruth_Mottram @doculmus @notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke

ha, i enjoy this.
grew up with plattdeutschen grandparents (i m the last gen who understands it), now a german/danish dual citizen ... i feel at home in this thread.

@doculmus @notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke

Aussprachendiskussionsbeitrag:

This classic video is known, i hope? Teaches you all you need to know about danish :)

Hilsen, a german/danish citizen
(yes, i suffered through the learning process ... )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqgRC5sfCaQ

Norway 200 Years! - (Danish Language Explained)

YouTube
@doculmus @notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke
I am native Dutch and the only Swedish I now is "Vir talar svenska" (Swedish textbook I got to learn Swedish, managed 4 chapters, forgot all of it because I never used it). But I got the same as you, about Swedish, Danish and Norse: it all looks familiar, and it seems I can pronounce the words in somewhat the right tone, but I am at a loss to most of their meaning.
@doculmus @notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke as a native English speaker, Dutch looks the same to me.
@Uglesett
I like that sketch, but they got the pronounciation wrong. Kamelåså is actually pronounced kemlwrđ.
@pteranodo @gedankenstuecke
@notsoloud @pteranodo that’s how Dutch is for me too, speaking German and English it’s easy-ish to read but speak? Hell no!
@gedankenstuecke @notsoloud @pteranodo In one of the Janwillem van de Wetering novels the cops congratulate a migrant on his Dutch. He says he likes a language that sounds like you've got a fly caught in the back of your throat.
@paulcowdell @gedankenstuecke @notsoloud @pteranodo As one of my (Finnish) friends once said, speaking Dutch is like mixing English, Swedish and German and clearing your throat every time you switch languages.
@gedankenstuecke Whenever I was unable to get by in my limited Dutch, I'd just insert the Norwegian word and pronounce it in a funny way. They always understood my meaning. @notsoloud @pteranodo
@notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke I'm glad you admit it. The language of speaking with hot potatoes in your mouth.

@notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke

When I visited Denmark as an English monoglot, many years ago, it frequently felt like my ears were very, very drunk. I'd hear things like "GrĂŚd ikke over spildt mĂŚlk," understand what was being said, then immediately become lost in sighs, mumbles, and murmurs again.

@notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke That about sums it up. I'm in Denmark quite often. Reading is not a problem. But the pronounciation make both speaking and listening conprehension difficult. Sometimes it just sounds as if they already had their 5th beer or so, at least in Thy... 😬
@notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke Danish is just German while gargling hot potatoes.
@notsoloud @pteranodo @gedankenstuecke I've read that in worldwide comparison, Danish children are slowest to learn to speak because of that. (The theory was that the rate "information pro spoken syllable" is pretty high in Danish, if I remember correctly.)

@gedankenstuecke

Most people just don't know how easy it is to learn #German. I learned it as a #baby!

@Loukas