The
North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the
Germanic languages, a sub-family of the
Indo-European languages, along with the
West Germanic languages and the
East Germanic languages. Derived from
Proto-Norse and
Old Norse, they're spoken in
Denmark,
Norway,
Sweden, the
Faroe Islands,
Iceland and (to some extent)
Greenland, as well as by a significant Swedish minority in
Finland and by immigrant groups mainly in
North America and
Australia. The language group is often called either
Scandinavian or, today, less frequently in the English language,
Nordic languages. The latter term is a direct translation from "nordiska språk", most commonly used by both scholars and laymen in the
Nordic countries and is often favored by these when writing in English.
Often however the term
Scandinavian (skandinavisk[a]) is used to designate merely the continental North Germanic languages, for example Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, thus excluding Faroese and Icelandic. For example, in inter-Nordic contexts, texts may be labelled as either Finnish, Icelandic, or Scandinavian, where the latter will be written in either one of the three mutually comprehensible continental languages.
Classification
Traditionally, one has differentiated between two main branches,
West Scandinavian and
East Scandinavian, derived from the western and eastern dialect group of
Old Norse, respectively. There was also an
Old Gutnish branch spoken on the island of
Gotland. The eastern branch consists of
Danish and
Swedish, along with their various dialects and varieties. The western branch includes
Norwegian,
Faroese and
Icelandic. Later, East Scandinavian along with Norwegian was heavily influenced by
Middle Low German, and therefore another way of classifying the languages — focusing more on
mutual intelligibility than the
tree of life-model — posits Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as
Continental Scandinavian, and Faroese and Icelandic as
Insular Scandinavian.
As a result, Danish and Norwegian may in reality be somewhat more similar to each other than either is to Swedish. Because of the long political union between Norway and Denmark, Norwegian
Bokmål shares much of the Danish vocabulary. In addition, because of Danish pronunciation, Swedes usually find it easier to understand Norwegian than Danish. One
witticism about Norwegian that expresses the basic similarities and differences between the languages is that "Norwegian is Danish spoken in Swedish." The relationships between the three languages may be summarized by the diagram below.
The relationship can be very asymmetrical. One source claims that while Norwegians understand almost 90% of spoken Swedish, Swedes understand only about 50% of spoken Norwegian. These results could be due to the fact that Norwegians generally are more accustomed to Swedish language and culture, than Swedes generally are to Norwegian, as well as to the fact that a large percentage of the Norwegian population lives near Sweden, while no main population centres of Sweden lie near the Norwegian border. The lowest degree of intelligibility is between spoken Danish and Swedish.
In the southernmost Swedish province of
Scania most people can watch Danish television and Denmark can be reached by direct trains to Copenhagen over the Öresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark. 16 000 people commute between the countries every day. People in Scania generally understand spoken Danish far better than people living further north in Sweden. People also have a better knowledge of the unique Danish words. There are at least a couple of hundred words used in everyday speech which differ between Swedish and Danish. Many Swedes work in Denmark and in the Danish areas closest to Sweden people understand Swedish far better than in for example the remote province of
Jutland. Spoken Norwegian is considered more difficult to understand than spoken Danish by people in Scania.
The North Germanic languages are often cited as proof of the
aphorism "
A language is a dialect with an army and navy." The differences in dialects within the countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark can often be greater than the differences across the borders, but the political independence of these countries leads continental Scandinavian to be classified into
Norwegian,
Swedish, and
Danish in the popular mind as well as among most linguists. This is also because of the strong influence of the
standard languages, particularly in Denmark and Sweden. Even if the language policy of Norway has been more tolerant of rural dialectal variation in formal language, the
prestige dialect often referred to as "Eastern Urban Norwegian", spoken mainly in and around the
Oslo region, can be considered to be quite normative. The creation of
Nynorsk out of dialects after Norway became independent of Denmark in
1814 was an attempt to make the linguistic divisions match the political ones.
Family tree
All North Germanic languages are descended from
Old Norse. Divisions between subfamilies of North Germanic are rarely precisely defined: Most form continuous clines, with adjacent
dialects being mutually intelligible and the most separated ones not.
Beside the two official written norms of Norwegian, there exist two established unofficial norms:
Riksmål, similar to, but more conservative than Bokmål, which is used in different extent numerous people, especially in the cities and
Høgnorsk "High-Norwegian",similar to Nynorsk, used by a very small minority.
Jamtlandic shares many characteristics with both Trøndersk and with Norrländska mål. Due to this ambiguous position, it's contested whether Jamtlandic belongs to the West Norse or the East Norse language group (
(External Link
)).
Älvdalsmål "Älvdalen Speech", generally considered a
Sveamål dialect, today has an official orthography and is, because of a lack of mutual intelligibility with
Swedish, considered as a separate language by many linguists (
(External Link)).
External results
Click here for more details on North Germanic Languages
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://north_germanic_languages.totallyexplained.com">North Germanic languages Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
We see you're using Internet Explorer. Try Firefox, we think you'll like it better.
· Firefox blocks pop-up windows.
· It stops viruses and spyware.
· It keeps Microsoft from controlling the future of the internet.
Click the button on the right to download Firefox. It's free.
NEW: Download the Totally