> Oddly enough, the Swedes I know can't actually communicate with Danes in spoken language either, despite written Danish and Swedish being nearly identical.
It's not that odd. Take threedaymonk's example: English is written almost the same way in New York and in Glasgow, yet an American in Glasgow might have some difficulty understanding people at first. And of course mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish will be lower than between New Yorker and Glaswegian.
Written Portuguese and Spanish are also very similar, and while it's possible to keep a "bilingual" conversation with some effort, I (a Portuguese speaker) and my Spanish-speaking friends just use English instead.
It's not that odd. Take threedaymonk's example: English is written almost the same way in New York and in Glasgow, yet an American in Glasgow might have some difficulty understanding people at first. And of course mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish will be lower than between New Yorker and Glaswegian.
Written Portuguese and Spanish are also very similar, and while it's possible to keep a "bilingual" conversation with some effort, I (a Portuguese speaker) and my Spanish-speaking friends just use English instead.