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f the bible and in olaus magnus a description of the northern peoples dialectal variation between west and east in old norse however was certainly present during the middle ages and several dialects had emerged old icelandic was essentially identical to old norwegian at least until about 1000 and together they formed the old west norse dialect of old norse and were also spoken in settlements in the faroe islands ireland scotland the isle of man and norwegian settlements in normandy 17 the old east norse dialect was spoken in denmark sweden settlements in russia 18 england and danish settlements in normandy old gutnish was spoken in gotland 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 5 dividing them into an insular group icelandic and faroese and a continental group danish norwegian and swedish the division between insular nordic önordiska ønordisk øynordisk 19 and continental scandinavian skandinavisk 20 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 led to significant danish influence on central and eastern citation needed norwegian dialects bokmål or dano norwegian 3 demographics edit the north germanic languages are national languages in denmark finland iceland norway and sweden whereas the non germanic finnish is spoken by the majority in finland in inter nordic contexts texts are today often presented in three versions finnish icelandic and one of the three languages danish norwegian and swedish 21 another official language in the nordic countries is greenlandic in the eskimo aleut family the sole official language of greenland in southern jutland in southwestern denmark german is also spoken by the north schleswig germans and german is a recognized minority language in this region german is the primary language among the danish minority of southern schleswig and likewise danish is the primary language of the north schleswig germans citation needed both minority groups are highly bilingual traditionally danish and german were the two official languages of denmark norway laws and other official instruments for use in denmark and norway were written in danish and local administrators spoke danish or norwegian german was the administrative language of holstein and the duchy of schleswig citation needed sami languages form an unrelated group that has coexisted with the north germanic language group in scandinavia since prehistory 22 23 sami like finnish is part of the group of the uralic languages 24 during centuries of interaction finnish and sami have imported many more loanwords from north germanic languages than vice versa language speakers official status swedish 13 200 000 a sweden finland european union nordic council danish 5 600 000 denmark faroe islands european union nordic council norwegian 5 000 000 norway nordic council icelandic 358 000 iceland faroese 90 000 faroe islands gutnish 5 000 26 elfdalian 3 500 total 24 256 500 the figure includes l2 speakers mostly located in finland approximately three million 25 classification edit this section needs more citations please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources unsourced material may be challenged and removed august 2010 learn how and when to remove this message extent of germanic languages in present day europe north germanic languages icelandic faroese norwegian swedish danish west germanic languages scots english frisian dutch flemish low german central german high german upper german high german dots indicate areas where it is common for l1 non germanic speakers to be l2 speakers of a neighbouring germanic language lines indicate areas where it is common for l1 germanic speakers to be l2 speakers of a neighbouring non germanic or other germanic language in historical linguistics the north germanic family tree is divided into two 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 groups of old norse respectively the east scandinavian languages and modern norwegian through danish were heavily influenced by middle low german during the period of hanseatic expansion 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 3 because of the long political union between norway and denmark moderate and conservative norwegian bokmål share most of the danish vocabulary and grammar and was nearly identical to written danish until the spelling reform of 1907 for this reason bokmål and its unofficial more conservative variant riksmål are sometimes considered east scandinavian and nynorsk west scandinavian via the west east division shown above 27 however danish has developed a greater distance between the spoken and written versions of the language so the differences between spoken norwegian and spoken danish are somewhat more significant than the difference between their respective written forms written 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 developments which have not occurred in the other languages though the stød corresponds to the changes in pitch in norwegian and swedish which are pitch accent languages scandinavians are widely expected to understand some of the other spoken scandinavian languages there may be some difficulty particularly with elderly dialect speakers however public radio and television presenters are often well understood by speakers of the other scandinavian countries although there are various regional differences of mutual intelligibility for understanding mainstream dialects of the languages between different parts of the three language areas sweden left the kalmar union in 1523 due to conflicts with denmark leaving two scandinavian units the union of denmark norway ruled from copenhagen denmark and sweden including present day finland the two countries took different sides during several wars until 1814 when the denmark norway unit was disestablished and made different international contacts this led to different borrowings from foreign languages sweden had a francophone period for example the old swedish word vindöga window was replaced by fönster from middle low german whereas 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 whereas 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 remained similar in pronunciation and words like børja were able to survive in some of the norwegian dialects whereas vindöga survived in some of the swedish dialects nynorsk incorporates much of these words like byrja cf swedish börja danish begynde veke cf sw vecka dan uge and vatn sw vatten dan vand whereas bokmål has retained the danish forms begynne uke vann as a result nynorsk does not conform to the above east west split model since it shares a lot of features with swedish dubious discuss according to the norwegian linguist arne torp the nynorsk project which had as a goal to re establish a written norwegian language would have been much harder to carry out if norway had been in a union with sweden instead of with denmark simply because the differences would have been smaller 28 currently english 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 north germanic languages despite the fact that it is the country that uses english most 29 mutual intelligibility edit see also germanic languages vocabulary comparison 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 30 31 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 29 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 32 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 skåne demonstrated a better understanding of danish than swedish speakers to the north 30 access to danish television and radio direct trains to copenhagen over the øresund bridge and a larger number of cross border commuters in the øresund region 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 slightly 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 youth in copenhagen had a very poor command of swedish showing that the øresund connection was mostly one way 30 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 30 reproduced below the maximum score was 10 0 city comprehension of danish comprehension of swedish comprehension of norwegian average århus denmark n a 3 74 4 68 4 21 copenhagen denmark n a 3 60 4 13 3 87 malmö sweden 5 08 n a 4 97 5 02 stockholm sweden 3 46 n a 5 56 4 51 bergen norway 6 50 6 15 n a 6 32 oslo norway 6 57 7 12 n a 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 at school and norwegian and having the highest score on a scandinavian language other than their native language as well as the highest average score icelandic speakers in contrast have a poor command of norwegian and swedish they do somewhat better with danish as they are taught danish in school icelandic is not mutually intelligible with scandinavian languages nor any language not even faroese which is thought closest 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 30 area country comprehension of danish comprehension of swedish comprehension of norwegian average faroe islands 8 28 5 75 7 00 7 01 iceland 5 36 3 34 3 40 4 19 vocabulary edit the north germanic languages share many lexical grammatical phonological and morphological similarities to a more significant extent than the west germanic languages do these lexical grammatical and morphological similarities can be outlined in the table below language sentence english it was a humid grey summer day at the end of june west frisian it wie in stribbelige fochtige graue simmerdei oan de ein fan juny low saxon dat weer was een vuchtige griese summerdag an t enn vun juni afrikaans dit was n vogtige grou somer dag aan die einde van junie dutch het was een vochtige grauwe zomerdag eind juni aan het einde van juni german es war ein feuchter grauer sommertag ende juni im späten juni swedish det var en fuktig grå sommardag i slutet av juni danish det var en fugtig grå sommerdag i slutningen af juni sidst i juni norwegian bokmål det var en fuktig grå sommerdag i slutten av juni norwegian nynorsk det var ein fuktig grå sommardag sumardag i slutten av juni icelandic það var rakur grár sumardagur í lok júní faroese tað var ein rakur gráur summardagur síðst í juni elfdalian eð war ien fuktun grå såmårdag i slutę åv juni gutnish de var en fuktur graar summadag ei släutait av jauni language boundaries edit given the aforementioned homogeneity there exists some discussion on whether the continental group should be considered one or several languages 33 the continental scandinavian languages are often cited as proof of the aphorism a language is a dialect with an army and 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 the generally agreed upon language border is in other words politically shaped this is also because of the strong influence of the standard languages particularly in denmark and sweden 33 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 is sometimes considered normative the influence of a standard norwegian is nevertheless less so than in denmark and sweden since the prestige dialect in norway has moved geographically several times over the past 200 years the organised formation of nynorsk out of western norwegian dialects after norway became independent from denmark in 1814 intensified the politico linguistic divisions the nordic council 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 34 clarification needed the creation of one unified written language has been considered as highly unlikely given the failure to agree upon a common standardized language in norway however there is a slight chance of some uniformization of spelling between norway sweden and denmark 35 36 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