Originally Posted by
kiki1982
Isn't there a large minority of Swedish living in Finland? But indeed, Finnish is not a Scandinavian language. It belongs to one group with Hungarian, but allegedly those two can't understand each other either (not surprising, seeing as they are so far away from each other and have probably developed on their own for most of the time). What we were probably thinking of was Danish and Swedish which are so similar that the two can just talk to each other. Danish people also crop up in Swedish dramas without being subtitled (such as Wallander). I'm not sure whether Norwegian is similar or understandable, although Sweden and Norway were one kingdom for a long time (but that's saying nothing, I mean, look at Hungarian and German...).