Help?

Hej!

I am an International Business student from Lahti, Finland. I would really need your help! I am doing my thesis about the Nordic bicycle markets, and I would need info about Norway. Could you will little online survey for me?
Link is down here:

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=0bdac86hbvt2ct4359779

I will be forever gratuful!
Takk takk!

Puss & kram, Mari

Hi. Sure, I'll help. Most of us understand swedish too, if you know and prefer that.

Hehe, I think my English is little bit better, so if it's ok for you guys.. But I was very happy to notice that even with my Swedish skill, I can also understand Norwegian pretty well.. Sound silly, but it made me proud.

One thing came to my mind.. I was in Iceland last spring as an exchange student, so it would be interesting to know, is it easy for a Norwegian person to understand Icelandic? I am just curious.

Not really.

You do know that in here you dont find the average biker, but people who ride bikes way more than the average?

Yes, I know that. And that's what I wanted to find, it's you who I am interested about!

Done

My Enlish is not so good, but anyways; It would have been fun to seen your results when you are done with your analysis:-)

Icelandic and Norwegian is two different languages. A Norwegian will not understand the spoken Icelandic, but maybe we can recognise 50 per cent of the written language because of the common origin in Old-Nordic .

Yes, sure! Just to specify, you are interested about the results of Norway or all the countries?

About Norwegian and Icelandic.. Sure I know that those are two different languages. But in my ears Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic sounds so similar that it makes me wonder how easy is it for you people to learn some of these "relative" languages. I didn't mean to offend anyone. I must admit I am kind jealous for you, Finnish is not the best language to have as a mother tongue, in the sense that it won't be so useful in the world - maybe you know what I mean.

I can understand and to some extent speak swedish, understand written danish, and spoken too, if I concentrate. Icelandic is tougher though, even if a lot of words look similar. I guess having a native tongue in the german language group makes it easier to learn german too.

Well... You will probaly beat us all in learning hungarian. Weird that Hungarian and finnish is in a different language-group than the rest of the european languages ! Is it true that finns understand words and some sentences of hungarian?

Finsk, estisk, ungarsk og en del andre dialekter språk er del av den Finsk-ugriske språkgruppen. Finsk og estisk hører til i "finsk-grenen", mens ungarsk hører hjemme i den ugriske grenen. De har felles dialekt grammatikk, men forskjellig vokabular.

En alminnelig men grov definisjon på "dialekt" er nok at man kan høre forskjeller i språket men forstår fortsatt det som blir sagt.

Overgangen fra dialekt til (fremmed) språk går derfor gjerne ved muligheten til å forstå hva som sies. Forstår man ikke hverandre, blir det snakk om to ulike språk (her finnes dog unntak).

Når selv norsk, svensk og dansk oppfattes som ulike språk - ikke som dialekter - og finsk, estisk og ungarsk avviker noe mer fra hverandre enn norsk, svensk og dansk, tipper jeg at disse antageligvis også bør defineres som ulike språk uten å ha en felles dialekt.

Samisk hører forøvrig også med til den finsk-ugriske språkgrenen.

Martin

Sorry. lider av dialeksi. Det riktige skal selvsagt være språk og grammatikk.

Yes.. so I can't understand anything from Hungarian, I can't see what does it have common with Finnish. But if researchers say so, I have to believe. Estonian is different thing, they have lots of same words but the meanings can be very confusing..

I can't remember lots of Estonian words but here is one example. The word "wedding", in Finnish it's "häät" and in Estonian "pulma". Pulma is also Finnish word which means trouble. So if Finnish and Estonion person are talking about weddings, there may be some misuderstandings.

There is this great webpage if you want to see the differences yourself: http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/languages/index_fi.htm

I really enjoy discussing about languages, so nice that you have taken part to this.

Ups, I forgot one question.. Could I ask one more question?

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=dliuuc4uok89eq7365039

So I would like to know, how much sponsoring affects to you..

Wedding means trouble for most of us...