North Germanic languages Totally Explained

Everything about The North Germanic totally explained

The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian 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. The language group is sometimes called Nordic languages, a direct translation of the term "nordiske sprog/nordiska språk/nordiske språk", the most common endogenous term by scholars and laymen in the North Germanic languages.
The term "North Germanic languages" is used in genetic linguistics, while the term "Scandinavian languages" appears in studies of the modern standard languages and the dialect continuum of Scandinavia. including a significant Swedish minority in Finland. Languages belonging to the North Germanic language tree are also (to some extent) spoken on Greenland and by immigrant groups mainly in North America and Australia.

History

From around year 200, speakers of the North Germanic branch became distinguishable from the other Germanic language speakers. Runic inscription give document to the early development of this language.
After the Proto-Norse and Old Norse periods, the North Germanic languages developed into an East Scandinavian branch, consisting of Danish and Swedish; and a West Scandinavian branch, consisting of Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic. Scandinavian settlers brought the Danish tongue to Iceland and the Faroe islands around 800 CE. Of the modern Scandinavian languages, written Icelandic is closest to this ancient language. An additional language, known as Norn, developed on Orkney and Shetland after Vikings had settled there around 800 CE, but this language became extinct around 1700. In the 16th century, 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 Olaus Magnus' A Description of the Northern Peoples.
Yet, by 1600, the genetic East Scandinavian and West Scandinavian branches had become reconfigured from a syntactic point of view and Continental Scandinavian (Skandinavisk) developed due to the geographic distance between the two regions, mainly, and is based on the degree of mutual comprehensibility between the languages in the two groups.

Classification

In historical linguistics, the North Germanic family tree is divided into two main branches, West Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic) and East Scandinavian languages (Danish 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, English loan words are influencing the languages. A 2005 survey of words used by speakers of the Scandinavian languages showed that the number of English loan words used in the languages have 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's the country that uses English most.
Another way of classifying the languages — focusing on mutual intelligibility rather than the tree of life-model — posits Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as Continental Scandinavian, and Faroese and Icelandic as Insular Scandinavian. According to a study undertaken during 2002-2005 and funded by the Nordic Cultural Fund, Swedish-speakers in Stockholm and Danish-speakers in Copenhagen have the greatest difficulty in understanding other Nordic languages. reproduced below. The maximum score was 10.0:

City	Comprehension of Danish	Comprehension of Swedish	Comprehension of Norwegian	Average
Århus		3.74	4.68	4.21
Copenhagen		3.60	4.13	3.87
Malmö	5.08		4.97	5.02
Stockholm	3.46		5.56	4.51
Bergen	6.50	6.15		6.32
Oslo	6.57	7.12		6.85

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 and use 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):
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.

Other languages in Scandinavia

Sami languages form an unrelated group that has coexisted with the North Germanic language group in Scandinavia since prehistory. Sami, like Finnish, is part of the Finno-Ugric language group. In inter-Nordic contexts, texts are today often presented in three versions: Finnish, Icelandic, and one of the three languages Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
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 Kalaallisut language, one of the official languages of Greenland beside Danish.

Further Information

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