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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 are 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, i.e. 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.^[1]

Contents

Classification

Family tree

See also

Notes

External links

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.

How Norwegian is related with Swedish and Danish.

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 speach which differs 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.

★ Proto-Norse

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★ West Scandinavian

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★ Icelandic

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★ Faroese

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★ Norn (extinct)

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★ Norwegian

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★
★
★ ''Trøndersk'' (Trøndelag)

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★
★
★ ''Østlandsk''

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★
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★ ''Vestlandsk''

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★
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★ ''Nord-Norsk''

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★
★
★ ''Sørlandsk''

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★ East Scandinavian

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★
★ Danish

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★
★
★ Island Danish

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★
★
★ East Danish (Blekinge, Halland, Skåne)

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★
★
★ Jutlandic (in Jutland)

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★
★
★ Zealandic (in Zealand)

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★
★ Swedish

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★
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★ ''Sveamål'' (Svealand)

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★
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★ ''Norrländska mål'' (Norrland)

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★
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★ ''Götamål'' (Götaland)

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★
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★ ''Östsvenska mål'' (Finland)

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★
★
★ ''Sydsvenska mål'' (Blekinge, Halland, Skåne)

★
★ Gutnish

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★
★ Language/dialect spoken on Gotland (see Gutnish)
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 is contested whether Jamtlandic belongs to the West Norse or the East Norse language group ([2]).
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 ([3]).

See also

★ Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish

★ Scanian dialect

Notes

1. Example: the Nordic Council's/Nordic Council of Ministers' political magazine ''Analys Norden'' ([1]).

External links

★ Ethnologue Report for North Germanic

★ Dictionary with Swedish - English Translations from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition

★ 'Swedish:' Älvdalska, det lokala språket