North Germanic languages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| North Germanic
Scandinavian
|
|
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Northern Europe |
| Genetic classification: |
Indo-European Germanic North Germanic |
| Subdivisions: | |
Blue - Continental Nordic languages
Green - Insular Nordic 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 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 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.
Often however the term Scandinavian (skandinavisk[a]) is used to designate merely the continental North Germanic languages, ie Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, thus excluding Faeroese 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 |
[edit] 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. 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.
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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. 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.[citation needed]
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 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.
[edit] 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
- West Scandinavian
- East Scandinavian
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.
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.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Example: the Nordic Council's/Nordic Council of Ministers' political magazine Analys Norden ([1]).
[edit] External links
- Ethnologue Report for North Germanic
- Dictionary with Swedish - English Translations from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition
- Älvdalska, det lokala språket
