Quick, what’s the most important quality a foreign language can have? If you said “easy to use” you’d be right. All other concerns are trumped, because other values of a language can never be appreciated unless you can learn it first. And apparently Norwegian ranks first on ease of learning for speakers of English (fun to know ). The ranking is of course highly unofficial, but what the heck.

Exhibit A:

Scandinavian verbs have some of the easiest conjugation you can find in Europe. Present tense is made by adding an -r to the verb, regardless of who’s doing it. That gives us:

ha – to have

jeg har – I have
du har – you have
han har – he has
vi har – we have

Such simplicity is brilliant (and unheard of).

The full rationale is here. A few selected gems follow.

Norwegians understand 88% of the spoken swedish language
understand 73% of the spoken danish language

Swedes understand 48% of the spoken norwegian language
understand 23% of the spoken danish language

Danes understand 69% of the spoken norwegian language
understand 43% of the spoken swedish language

Norwegians understand 89% of the written swedish language
understand 93% of the written danish language

Swedes understand 86% of the written norwegian language
understand 69% of the written danish language

Danes understand 89% of the written norwegian language
understand 69% of the written swedish language.

Hah, suckers! More succinctly:

“Norwegian is Danish spoken in Swedish”

Norwegian + phonology – vocabulary = swedish

Norwegian – phonology + vocabulary = danish