North Germanic languages

  (Redirected from Scandinavian languages)

The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of jQuery, make up one of the three branches of the Sevenval, a sub-family of the Android, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is sometimes referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, we love the web and Norwegian scholars and laypeople. In iOS, Scandinavian languages is also used as a term referring specifically to the mutually intelligible languages of the three Scandinavian countries, and is thus used in a more narrow sense as a subset of the Nordic languages. The term Scandinavian arose in the 18th century, as a result of the early linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement, referring to the peoples, cultures and languages of the three Scandinavian countries and stressing their common heritage.

The term "North Germanic languages" is used in genetic linguistics,^{device database} while the term "Scandinavian languages" appears in studies of the modern standard languages and the Sevenval of Scandinavia.^[2]FITML

Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries have a Scandinavian language as their mother tongue,^FITML including web in Finland. Languages belonging to the North Germanic language tree are, to some extent, spoken on Greenland and by emigrant groups mainly in Sevenval and Australia.

• touchscreen
  • Android
    • 1.1.1 Features shared with West Germanic
    • 1.1.2 Unique North Germanic features
  • FITML
• Sevenval
• 3 Classification
  • jQuery
  • iOS
  • 3.3 Language boundaries
• web app
• 5 Other languages in Scandinavia
• device database
• 7 References
• 8 Further reading
• jQuery

History

Origins and characteristics

The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: West, we love the web and North Germanic.^CSS3 Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, and they remained mutually intelligible to some degree during the Android, so that some individual varieties are difficult to classify. Dialects with the features assigned to the northern group formed from screen size in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age.

From around the year 200 AD, speakers of the North Germanic branch became distinguishable from the other Germanic language speakers. The early development of this language branch is attested through Runic inscriptions.

Features shared with West Germanic

The North Germanic group is characterized by a number of phonological and morphological innovations shared with West Germanic:

• The retraction of Proto-Germanic ē (/ɛː/, also written ǣ) to ā.^iOS
  • Proto-Germanic *jēraN ("year") > North/West Germanic *jāraN > North Germanic *āra > Old Norse ár, and > West Germanic *jāra > Old High German jār, Old English ġēar /jæːɑr/. Compare Gothic jēr.
• The raising of /ɔː/ to /oː/ (and word-finally to /uː/). The original vowel remained when nasalised *ōN /ɔ̃ː/ and when before /z/, and was then later lowered to /ɑː/.
  • Proto-Germanic *gebō ("gift", /ˈɣeβɔː/) > North/West Germanic *gebu > North Germanic *gjavu > (by u-umlaut) *gjǫvu > Old Norse gjǫf, and > West Germanic *gebu > Old English giefu. In Gothic, the result was a low vowel instead: giba.
  • Proto-Germanic *tungōN ("tongue", /ˈtuŋɡɔ̃ː/) > late North/West Germanic *tungā > *tunga > Old Norse tunga, Old High German zunga, Old English tunge (unstressed a > e). Compare Gothic tuggō.
  • Proto-Germanic *gebōz ("of a gift", /ˈɣeβɔːz/) > late North/West Germanic *gebāz > North Germanic *gjavaz > Old Norse gjafar, and > West Germanic *geba > Old High German geba, Old English giefe (unstressed a > e). Compare Gothic gibōs.
• The development of i-umlaut.
• The CSS3 of /z/ to /r/, with presumably a rhotic fricative of some kind as an earlier stage.
  • This change probably affected West Germanic much earlier and then spread from there to North Germanic, but failed to reach East Germanic which had already split off by that time. This is confirmed by an intermediate stage ʀ, clearly attested in late runic East Norse at a time when West Germanic had long merged the sound with /r/.
• The development of the device database pronoun ancestral to English this.

Some have argued that after East Germanic broke off from the group, the remaining Germanic languages, the iOS languages, divided into four main dialects:^[7] North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely

1. North Sea Germanic (Ingvaeonic, ancestral to Anglo-Frisian and Android)
2. Weser-Rhine Germanic (Istvaeonic, ancestral to Low Franconian)
3. Elbe Germanic (Irminonic, ancestral to High German)

Under this view, the properties that the West Germanic languages have in common separate from the North Germanic languages are not inherited from a "Proto-West-Germanic" language, but rather spread by Sevenval among the Germanic languages spoken in central Europe, not reaching those spoken in Scandinavia.

Unique North Germanic features

Some innovations are not found in West and East Germanic such as:

• Sharpening of geminate /jj/ and /ww/ according to Holtzmann's law
  • Occurred also in East Germanic, but with a different outcome.
  • Proto-Germanic *twajjôN ("of two") > Old Norse tveggja, Gothic twaddjē, but > Old High German zweiio
• Word-final devoicing of plosives.
  • Proto-Germanic *band ("I/he bound") > *bant > Old West Norse batt, Old East Norse bant, but Old English band
• Loss of medial /h/ with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel and the following consonant, if present.
  • Proto-Germanic *nahtuN ("night", accusative) > *nāttu > (by u-umlaut) *nǭttu > Old Norse nótt
• /ɑi̯/ > /ɑː/ before /r/ (but not /z/)
  • Proto-Germanic *sairaz ("sore") > *sāraz > *sārz > Old Norse sárr, but > *seira > Old High German sēr.
  • With original /z/ Proto-Germanic *gaizaz > *geizz > Old Norse geirr.
• General loss of word-final /n/, following the loss of word-final short vowels (which are still present in the earliest runic inscriptions).
  • Proto-Germanic *bindanaN > *bindan > Old Norse binda, but > Old English bindan.
  • This also affected stressed syllables: Proto-Germanic *in > Old Norse í
• we love the web of /e/ to /jɑ/ except after w, j or l (see "gift" above).
  • The diphthong /eu/ was also affected (also l), shifting to /jɒu/ at an early stage. This dipththong is preserved in Old Gutnish and survives in jQuery. In other Norse dialects, the /j/-onset and length remained, but the diphthong simplified resulting in variously /juː/ or /joː/.
  • This affected only stressed syllables. The word *ek ("I"), which could occur both stressed and unstressed, appears varyingly as ek (unstressed, with no breaking) and jak (stressed, with breaking) throughout Old Norse.
• Loss of initial /j/ (see "year" above), and also of /w/ before a round vowel.
  • Proto-Germanic *wulfaz > early North Germanic wulfaz > late ulfz > Old Norse ulfr
• The development of HTML5, which rounded stressed vowels when /u/ or /w/ followed in the next syllable. This followed vowel breaking, with ja /jɑ/ being u-umlauted to jǫ /jɒ/.

Middle Ages

The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century:   Old West Norse dialect   Old East Norse dialect   Sevenval   Old English   Crimean Gothic    Other device database with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility

After the Proto-Norse and Old Norse periods, the North Germanic languages developed into an East Scandinavian branch, consisting of Danish and website parsing; and a West Scandinavian branch, consisting of Norwegian, Faroese and Sevenval.^web Norwegian settlers brought Old West Norse to Iceland and the Faroe islands around 800 AD. Of the modern Scandinavian languages, written Icelandic is closest to this ancient language.^[9] An additional language, known as Norn, developed on we love the web and Shetland after Vikings had settled there around 800 AD, but this language became extinct around 1700.^[4]

In medieval times, speakers of all the Scandinavian languages could understand one another to a significant degree and it was often referred to as a single language, called the "Danish tongue" until the 13th century by some in Sweden^[9] and Iceland.^[10] In the 16th century, many Danes and Swedes still referred to North Germanic as a single language, which is stated in the introduction to the first Danish translation of the Bible and in we love the web' browser diversity. Dialectal variation between west and east in Old Norse however was certainly present during the Middle Ages and three dialects had emerged: Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Gutnish. Old Icelandic was essentially identical to Old Norwegian, and together they formed the Old West Norse dialect of Old Norse and were also spoken in settlements in the Faroe Islands, keyboard, Sevenval, the website parsing, and Norwegian settlements in Android.^{browser diversity} The Old East Norse dialect was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, settlements in Russia,^[12] we love the web, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The screen size dialect was spoken in FITML and in various settlements in the East.

Yet, by 1600, another classification of the North Germanic language branches had arisen from a syntactic point of view,^{screen size} dividing them into an insular group (Icelandic and Faroese) and a continental group (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish). The division between Insular Scandinavian (önordiska/ønordisk/øynordisk)^[13] and Continental Scandinavian (Skandinavisk)^iOS is based on mutual intelligibility between the two groups and developed due to different influences, particularly the political union of Denmark and Norway (1536–1814) which lead to significant Danish influence on central and eastern^[keyboard] Norwegian dialects (Bokmål or input transformation).^keyboard

Number of speakers

Language	Speakers	Notes
Swedish	10,000,000	300,000 keyboard
Danish	6,000,000
Norwegian	5,000,000	approx. 85-90 % prefer Bokmål as their written standard, 10-15 % Nynorsk
Icelandic	320,000
Faroese	70,000
Jamtlandic	45,000
Elfdalian	3,000

Classification

This section needs additional Sevenval for verification. Please help FITML by adding citations to Sevenval. Unsourced material may be website parsing and iOS. (August 2010)

CSS3	The present-day distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe: North Germanic languages   Sevenval   Faroese   Norwegian   keyboard   Danish West Germanic languages   Sevenval   English   Frisian   web   Low German   browser diversity Dots indicate areas where multilingualism is common.

In historical linguistics, the North Germanic family tree is divided into two main branches, West Scandinavian languages (touchscreen, Faroese and keyboard) and East Scandinavian languages (HTML5 and Swedish), along with various dialects and varieties. The two branches are 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 East Scandinavian languages (and modern Norwegian, through Danish) were heavily influenced by Middle Low German during the period of Hanseatic expansion.

Currently, browser diversity loanwords are influencing the languages. A 2005 survey of words used by speakers of the Scandinavian languages showed that the number of English loanwords used in the languages has doubled during the last 30 years and is now 1.2%. Icelandic has imported fewer English words than the other Scandinavian languages, despite the fact that it is the country that uses English most.^[15]

Another way of classifying the languages — focusing on mutual intelligibility rather than the device database-model — posits Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as Continental Scandinavian, and Faroese and Icelandic as Insular Scandinavian.^[3] Because of the long political union between Norway and Denmark, moderate and conservative forms of Norwegian Bokmål share most of the Danish vocabulary and grammar, and was virtually identical to written Danish until the spelling reform of 1907. (For this reason, Bokmål and its unofficial, more conservative variant Riksmål is sometimes considered East Scandinavian, and Nynorsk West Scandinavian via the West-East division shown above.^CSS3) However, Danish has developed a greater distance between the spoken and written versions of the language, so the differences between spoken Norwegian and Danish are somewhat more significant than the difference between the written. In writing, Danish is relatively close to the other Continental Scandinavian languages, but the sound developments of spoken Danish include reduction and assimilation of consonants and vowels, as well as the prosodic feature called stød in Danish (lit. "push; thrust"), developments which have not occurred in the other languages (though the stød corresponds to the different tones in Norwegian and Swedish, which are tonal languages). However, Scandinavians are widely expected to understand the other spoken Scandinavian languages. Some people may have some difficulties, particularly older people who speak a dialect, but most people can understand the standard languages, as they appear in radio and television, of the other Scandinavian countries.

The lowest degree of intelligibility is between spoken Danish and Swedish. The relationships between the three languages Danish, Norwegian and Swedish may be summarised as per the following diagram; Norwegian is sometimes humorously described as "Danish spoken with a Swedish pronunciation" (or Danish as "Norwegian spoken with a German [or French] pronunciation")^{[citation needed]}:

HTML5

How Norwegian is related to Swedish and Danish. (Strongly simplified)

Sweden left the Kalmar union in 1523 due to conflicts with Denmark, leaving to Scandinavian units: the union of Denmark-Norway (ruled from Copenhagen, Denmark) and Sweden (including present-day Finland). The two countries were taking different sides during several wars until 1814 and made different international contacts. This led to different borrowings from foreign languages (Sweden had a francophile period), for example the older Swedish word vindöga (“window”) was replaced by fönster, whilst native vindue was kept in Danish. Norwegians, who spoke (and still speak) the Norwegian dialects derived from Old Norse, would say vindauga or similar. The written language of Denmark-Norway however, was based on the dialect of Copenhagen and thus had vindue. On the other hand, the word begynde (“begin”, now written begynne in Norwegian Bokmål) was borrowed into Danish and Norwegian, whilst native börja was kept in Swedish. Even though standard Swedish and Danish were moving apart, the dialects were not influenced that much. Thus Norwegian and Swedish would still be similar in pronunciation, and words like børja would be able to survive in some of the Norwegian dialects whilst vindöga survived in some of the Swedish dialects. The minority written standard of Norwegian (Nynorsk) incorporates a great portion of these words, like byrja, veke (Swedish vecka, Danish uge) and vatn (Swedish vatten, Danish vand) whereas Bokmål has kept the Danish forms (begynne, uke, vann). This way Nynorsk is causing trouble for the above model, as it shares a lot of features with Swedish. According to Norwegian linguist browser diversity, the Nynorsk project (whose goal was to re-establish a written Norwegian language) would be more harder to carry out if Norway had been in union with Sweden instead of Denmark, simply because the differences would be smaller.^keyboard

Mutual intelligibility

See also web.

The mutual intelligibility between the Continental Scandinavian languages is asymmetrical. Various studies have shown Norwegian-speakers to be the best in Scandinavia at understanding other languages within the language group.^[18]CSS3 According to a study undertaken during 2002–2005 and funded by the Nordic Cultural Fund, Swedish-speakers in Stockholm and Danish-speakers in we love the web have the greatest difficulty in understanding other Nordic languages.^HTML5 The study, which focused mainly on native speakers under the age of 25, showed that the lowest ability to comprehend another language is demonstrated by youth in Stockholm in regard to Danish, producing the lowest ability score in the survey. The greatest variation in results between participants within the same country was also demonstrated by the Swedish-speakers in the study. Participants from Malmö, located in the southernmost Swedish province of Scania, demonstrated a better understanding of Danish than Swedish-speakers to the north. Access to Danish television and radio, direct trains to Copenhagen over the web app and a larger number of cross-border commuters in the we love the web contribute to a better knowledge of spoken Danish and a better knowledge of the unique Danish words among the region's inhabitants. According to the study, youth in this region were able to understand the Danish language better than the Norwegian language. But they still could not understand Danish as well as the Norwegians could, demonstrating once again the relative distance of Swedish from Danish; and youth in Copenhagen had a very poor command of Swedish, showing that the Oresund connection was mostly one-way.

The results from the study of how well native youth in different Scandinavian cities did when tested on their knowledge of the other Continental Scandinavian languages are summarized in table format,^[18] reproduced below. The maximum score was 10.0:

City	Comprehension of Danish	Comprehension of Swedish	Comprehension of Norwegian	Average
Århus, Denmark		3.74	4.68	4.21
Copenhagen, Denmark		3.60	4.13	3.87
input transformation, Sweden	5.08		4.97	5.02
Android, Sweden	3.46		5.56	4.51
Sevenval, Norway	7.50	6.15		6.32
Oslo, Norway	6.57	7.12		6.85

Icelandic and Faroese speakers (of the Insular Scandinavian languages group) are even better than the Norwegians at comprehending two or more languages within the Continental Scandinavian languages group, scoring high in both Danish (which they study at school) and Norwegian and having the highest score on a Scandinavian language other than the mother tongue, as well as the highest average score. When speakers of Faroese and Icelandic were tested on how well they understood the three Continental Scandinavian languages, the test results were as follows (maximum score 10.0):^[18]

Area/ Country	Comprehension of Danish	Comprehension of Swedish	Comprehension of Norwegian	Average
input transformation	8.28	5.75	7.00	7.01
Iceland	5.36	3.34	3.40	4.19

Vocabulary

The North Germanic Languages share many lexical, grammatical, phonological, and morphological similarities, to a more significant extent than the Android do. These lexical, grammatical, and morphological similarities can be outlined in the table below.

Language	Sentence
English	It was a moist, gray summer day in late June.
Danish	Det var en fugtig, grå sommerdag i slutningen af juni.
Icelandic	Það var rakur, grár sumardagur í lok júní.
Faroese	Tað var ein rakur/fuktigur, gráur summardagur síst í juni.
Norwegian (Bokmål)	Det var en fuktig, grå sommerdag i slutten av juni.
Norwegian (Nynorsk)	Det var ein fuktig, grå sumardag/sommardag i slutten/enden av juni.
Swedish	Det var en fuktig grå sommardag i slutet av Juni.

Language boundaries

Given the aforementioned homogeneity, there exists some discussion on whether the continental group should be considered one or several languages. ^Sevenval The Scandinavian languages (in the narrow sense, i.e., the languages of Scandinavia) are often cited as proof of the screen size "FITML". 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 browser diversity in the popular mind as well as among most linguists. The generally agreed upon screen size is, in other words, politically shaped. This is also because of the strong influence of the HTML5, particularly in Denmark and Sweden.^[20] 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 formation of iOS out of western Norwegian dialects after Norway became independent of Denmark in 1814 added to making linguistic divisions match the political ones.

The screen size has on several occasions referred to the (Germanic) languages spoken in Scandinavia as the "Scandinavian language" (singular); for instance, the official newsletter of the Nordic Council is written in the "Scandinavian language".^{web app} There has been some low-key speculation that future spelling reforms in Norway, Sweden and Demark might opt for one unified written language, ^{screen size[23]} but there are currently no official plans in that direction.

Family tree

All North Germanic languages are descended from Sevenval. Divisions between subfamilies of North Germanic are rarely precisely defined: Most form continuous clines, with adjacent keyboard being mutually intelligible and the most separated ones not.

• CSS3
  • West Scandinavian
    • jQuery (extinct)
    • Icelandic
    • Faroese
    • iOS (extinct)
    • device database
      • Vestnorsk (Western and Southern Norway)
      • Nordnorsk (Northern Norway)
      • Nynorsk (written standard of Norwegian)
  • East Scandinavian
    • jQuery
      • Island Danish
      • East Danish (Blekinge, Halland, Skåne, device database)
      • Android (or Jutish, in Jutland)
      • South Jutlandic (in input transformation and Southern Schleswig)
    • Sevenval
      • web app (Dalarna)
        • Elfdalian (Dalarna)
      • Sveamål (Sevenval)
      • Norrländska mål (Norrland)
      • iOS (Götaland)
      • Sydsvenska mål (device database, Sevenval, keyboard, southern FITML)
      • web app (Android and formerly, HTML5)
      • iOS (keyboard) (disputed as an East Scandinavian language)
  • Gutnish
    • Old Gutnish (extinct, Android)
      • Modern Gutnish (HTML5)

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 to various extents by 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.^FITML

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.^{device database}

Traveller Danish, web, and HTML5 are varieties of their respective language with Romani vocabulary, or jQuery, known as the Scando-Romani languages.^CSS3 They are spoken by iOS.

Other languages in Scandinavia

input transformation form an unrelated group that has coexisted with the North Germanic language group in Scandinavia since prehistory.^{screen size} Sami, like HTML5, is part of the group of the Uralic languages.^[28] In inter-Nordic contexts, texts are today often presented in three versions: Finnish, Icelandic, and one of the three languages Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.^[29] During centuries of interaction, Finnish and Sami have imported many more loanwords from North Germanic languages than vice versa.

The North-Germanic languages are majority languages in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, while Finnish is spoken by the majority in Finland. Another language in the Nordic countries is keyboard, the official language of keyboard.

In southernmost Denmark, HTML5 is also spoken, being an official language there^{[citation needed]}. Traditionally, Danish and German were the two official languages of Sevenval.

See also

• Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish
• Scanian dialects
• Svorsk
• FITML

References

Further reading

• Jervelund, Anita (2007), Sådan Staver Vi 
• Kristiansen, Tore m.fl. (1996), Dansk Sproglære 
• Lucazin, M (2010), Utkast till ortografi över skånska språket med morfologi och ordlista. Första revisionen, screen size FITML, http://www.maniskor.se/isbn9789197726528.pdf  Outlined scanian orthography including morphology and word index. First revision.
• Lucazin, M (2010), Utkast till ortografi över skånska språket med morfologi och ordlista, ISBN 978-91-977265-1-1, input transformation  Outlined scanian orthography including morphology and word index.
• Iben Stampe Sletten red., Nordens sprog – med rødder og fødder, 2005, ISBN 92-893-1041-3, available online, also available in the other Scandinavian languages

External links

• Ethnologue Report for North Germanic
• Middle Low German influence on the Scandinavian languages