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North Germanic languages

Encyclopedia : N : NO : NOR : North Germanic languages

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 the three Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, and 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 the Scandinavian or the Nordic languages. The latter term is the most commonly used by both scholars and laymen in the Nordic countries and is often favored by these when writing in English.

Contents

Classification

Line dividing the North and West Germanic languages.}}
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Line dividing the North and West Germanic languages.}}

There are two main branches, West Scandinavian and East Scandinavian, derived from the western and eastern dialect group of Old Norse, respectively. The eastern branch is heavily influenced by Middle Saxon especially and consists of Danish and Swedish, along with their various dialects and varieties. The western branch includes Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic. Another way of classifying the languages — focusing more on mutual intelligibility than historical development — posits Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as Continental Scandinavian, and Faroese and Icelandic as Insular Scandinavian.

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As a result, Danish and Norwegian may in reality be somewhat more similar to each other than either is to Swedish. Due to the long political union between Norway and Denmark, Norwegian Bokmål shares much of the Danish vocabulary. In addition, due to 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 above.

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 what Swedes generally are to Norwegian. The lowest degree of intelligibility is between spoken Danish and Swedish. Danes understand approximately 45% of spoken Swedish, but the Swedes can only grasp about 25% of what the Danes are saying. For written material, the comprehension percentages rise to 70-90% for all language combinations. Of course, these numbers are highly dependent on exactly where in the dialect continuum the speakers are situated.

The North Germanic languages are often cited as proof of the aphorism "A language is a dialect with an army and a 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 due to 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. Note that 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 by a large number of people, especially in the cities and Høgnorsk "High-Norwegian",similar to Nynorsk, used by a very small minority.

Älvdalsmål "Älvdalen Speech", generally considered a Sveamål dialect, today has an official orthography and is, due to lack of mutual intelligibility with Swedish, considered as a separate language by many linguists.

See also

External links

Germanic languages
Afrikaans | Danish | Dutch | English | Faroese | Frisian |
German | Icelandic | Norwegian | Scots | Swedish | Wymysojer | Yiddish

 

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