2.2.4 Language
Description
This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
2.2.4 Language
Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese are all
North-Germanic languages developed from the Old Norse spoken in Viking
age Scandinavia. (Also English is classified as a Germanic language.)
A Swede, a Dane and a Norwegian can understand each other with varying
degrees of difficulties, but none of them will fully understand
Icelandic or Faroese without studying the languages. Finnish is an
entirely different case, it's a Finno-Ugric language related to
Estonian and Hungarian. There is, however, a Swedish-speaking minority
in Finland, which ties it linguistically to Scandinavia. Also, Finnish
is related to the Sámi languages spoken in Norway, Sweden and Finland
by the Sámi or Lapps, the aborigines of northern Scandinavia (and the
Kola peninsula and adjacent lands).
Melodic accent & glottal stop
Norwegian and Swedish except Finland-Swedish belong to the few
European languages with a melodic accent. (Others are Lithuanian and
Serbo-Croatian.) The way this melodic accent is expressed vary quite a
lot between different dialects, but the dichotomy exists everywhere
having an important role to differentiate between words which
otherways would have been confused.
Words with one syllable, words stressed on the end and short words
with an unstressed suffix usually has what could be called "one
syllable accent" (rarely marked, but then by acute accent). Words
derived from two-syllable roots usually have an almost equal stress on
both syllables.
In south Swedish dialects the "one syllable accent" is expressed as a
falling tone on the first syllable, while "two syllable accent" is
expressed as a rise and a fall of the tone on the first syllable.
Questions are expressed by a rising tone on the second syllable.
In most Danish dialects (and some Scanian too) this melody accent has
been replaced by a glottal stop (stød) in place of the "one syllable
accents".
Are linguistic definitions of any value?
Maybe not, but nevertheless they show up now and then in the group.
An example:
Dr. R. Rautiu <r.rautiuradu@ic.ac.uk> writes:
Contemporary Germanists are dividing the North-West Germanic branch in
a
1. Continental branch comprising: Swedish, Danish, Bokmål (Norwegian)
2. Insular branch comprising: Icelandic, Faeroese and sometimes
Nynorsk (closer to insular than continental linguistic traits),
some specialists put Nynorsk as a transitional language between
the continental and the insular groups.
Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no> replies:
About trying to group Nynorsk and Bokmål to different East/West Nordic
groups: It's really a red herring as Nynorsk and Bokmål exist as
written languages only. No one actually speaks Nynorsk for example.
The same goes for Bokmål.
Some dialects would be "closer" to either one or the other, depending
on what you end up with if you try to create a "written" form of a
dialect. Norwegian language has as many dialects as there are cities
and villages and valleys and fjords, and there is no way to create a
common written language from that. Bokmål and Nynorsk are just two
constructed written languages, where Bokmål is something that once
upon a time came from written Danish, and Nynorsk was constructed from
south-west Norvegian dialects -- and some personal colouring from the
constructor (cultural and political).
Eugene Holman writes:
The majority of the traditional inhabitants of Iceland, the Faroe
Islands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and some regions of western Finland
speak closely related Germanic languages belonging to the North
Germanic ( = Scandinavian = Nordic) subgroup. North Germanic is a
subgrouping within Germanic (formerly called Teutonic). Thus English,
German, Yiddish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, Lezebuurjesh, and the now
extinct Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, Old High German, Gothic,
Burgundian, Vandal, Longobardian, etc. are all Germanic or Teutonic
languages ( - but they are not Nordic languages).
The late Einar Haugen, one of the leading authorities on the
Scandinavian languages, once characterized Norwegian as "Danish spoken
with a Swedish accent". The essential difference between the three
Scandinavian languages is that Danish and (Bokmål) Norwegian have a
long history of shared culture and vocabulary which Swedish lacks,
while Norwegian and Swedish have many shared features of
pronunciation, which Danish lacks. Actually, the truth is somewhat
more complex, since Norwegian and Danish have radically simplified
their pronunciation and grammar in a way that Swedish has not, but the
pronunciation of Danish has subsequently been influenced by that of
German, while Swedish and Norwegian have not.
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