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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

> speaking four languages is pretty normal in Europe

Clearly we have different experiences (swedish person living in spain currently) but I haven't met that many people who speak four languages and are from a european country (but have yet to been in eastern europe).

That finns speak swedish is a special case though, as AFAIK, they learn swedish in school and being finn-swedish is a thing too.

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I am a classical musician, and in my profession it is quite common. I speak a lowly 3 languages, but many colleagues speak 4+. It is a very international market, and if you leave your home country to study, it is not uncommon to work in yet another country before returning home.

Our solo flute speaks a whopping 6 languages well, and I suspect our harp player knows even more.

Id love to know how you earned those downvotes.

I should have mentioned: this is in Sweden.

In Iceland it's pretty normal. We know Icelandic (ofc.) and learn English, one Scandinavian language (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish), then at 15 one of German, French, Italian or Spanish. We are on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. I'd expect more linguistic pluralities on the mainland.

I feel that's a bit of an overstatement, having studied them a bit is one thing, but most people here cannot comfortably communicate at all in Danish or a 4th language, and cannot read a book in these languages.

Being Swedish I bet you at minimum can understand and communicate proficiently with speakers and writers of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and English. Probably you learned either Spanish, French, or German in school as well?

Nordic countries are a special case.

Norden er et spesielt tilfelle.

Norden är ett speciellt fall.

Norden er et specielt tilfælde.

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