Scandinavian languages, Germanic languages northern
Region	Scandinavia , Faroe Islands , Iceland
Classification by family
- Indo-European - Germanic languages - Scandinavian languages
Language codes
ISO 639-5	ADG
IETF	ADG
change

Scandinavian languages, or northern Germanic languages are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in the Nordic countries of Scandinavia. They form a branch of the Germanic languages , themselves a subset of the Indo-European languages. The other two subfamilies are Germanic languages West Germanic and East Germanic , now extinct. About 20 million people speak a Scandinavian language as mother tongue.

Summary 1 History 2 Classification 2.1 Understanding Mutual 2.2 Sub-western group 2.3 Sub-eastern group 3 Notes and references 4 See also 4.1 Links Internal External 4.2 Links

History

Scandinavian languages began to differentiate themselves from other Germanic languages around the year 200. After periods of Proto-Norse and Old Norse , they split into two branches: an eastern branch, including the Danish and Swedish , and a western branch, including the Norwegian , the Faroese and Icelandic , for these last two made by Scandinavian settlers to Faroe Islands and Iceland around the year 800. Also related to the Scandinavian languages, the Norn was born in Orkney and Shetland to finally go out to 1700.

In the Middle Ages , the speakers of all Scandinavian languages could understand each other and saw speak the same language, called Danish until the ^thirteenth century in Sweden and Iceland. In the ^sixteenth century , the Danes and the Swedes always referred to a unique Scandinavian language, as evidenced by the introduction of the first Bible translation into Danish and the History of Northern peoples of Olaus Magnus.

Classification

Traditionally, the Scandinavian languages are divided into two main branches, West and East, respectively, derived from western and eastern dialects of Old Norse. East Scandinavian languages underwent a strong influence from Middle Low German during the period of expansion Hanseatic.

Another classification, focusing on mutual understanding rather than a model tree, place the results in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish in a continental group, while the Faroese and Icelandic are in the group insular Scandinavian languages. Because of the long political union between Denmark and Norway, the Norwegian traditional standard ( Bokml ) shares most of its vocabulary and grammar with Danish, and followed almost the same spelling reform until 1907. For this reason, Bokml is sometimes regarded as belonging to subgroup East and Nynorsk in western subgroup. However, the pronunciation of Danish was more distanced from the written form, a phenomenon of reduction and assimilation of consonants and vowels and prosody std.

Mutual Understanding

Understanding of continental Scandinavian languages is asymmetrical. Norwegian speakers would be better able to understand other languages of the group, whereas speakers of Danish Copenhagen and the Swedish-speaking Stockholm have great difficulty understanding. Swedish speakers are also the group most unequal abilities.

Sub-western group

• Old Norse (off)
• Icelandic
• Norwegian Nynorsk ( landsml )
• Faroese
• Norn (extinct)
• rodi

Subgroup East

• Danish
• Jutish
• Norwegian Bokml ( Riksml )
• Swedish
• Dalecarlian
• gutnisk

References