The national medical journals in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden publish selected papers from the other journals in their original languages. We wanted to know how well Scandinavian general practitioners understand their neighbour languages and English, today the "lingua franca" in medical publishing.
111 doctors (36 Norwegians, 32 Danes, 43 Swedes) completed a questionnaire in which they rated their own subjective understanding of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and English on a five point Likert scale.
The Norwegian doctors rated their understanding of Danish significantly higher than Swedish (p