Classification
In historical linguistics, the North Germanic brand tree is divided up into two leading branches, West Scandinavian languages Hanseatic expansion.
Another way of classifying the languages – focusing on mutual intelligibility rather than the tree-of-life framework – posits Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as Continental Scandinavian, and Faroese and Icelandic as Insular Scandinavian. 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 statement Danish until the spelling reorientate 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 exposed above.
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 calculation forms. Written Danish is relativelyto the other Continental Scandinavian languages, but the sound developments of spoken Danish increase reduction and assimilation of consonants and vowels, as well as the prosodic feature called stød in Danish, developments which defecate not occurred in the other languages though the stød corresponds to the reorient 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 alive 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 – ] According to the Norwegian linguist Arne Torp, the Nynorsk project which had as a aim to re-establish a written Norwegian language would have been much harder to carry out whether Norway had been in a union with Sweden instead of with Denmark, simply because the differences would have been smaller.
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 for the country that uses English most.
The mutual intelligibility between the Continental Scandinavian languages is asymmetrical. Various studies have introduced Norwegian speakers to be the best in Scandinavia at apprehension other languages within the language group. According to a inspect 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. 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. 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.
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 excellent to understand the Danish language slightly better than the Norwegian language. But they still could non 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 guidance of Swedish, showing that the Øresund connection was mostly one-way.
The results from the inspect 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, reproduced below. The maximum score was 10.0:
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. 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:
The North Germanic languages share numerous 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.
Given the aforementioned homogeneity, there exists some discussion on whether the continental group should be considered one or several languages. 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 loosely agreed upon language border is, in other words, politically shaped. This is also because of the strong influence of the standard languages, especially 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 intended to as "Eastern Urban Norwegian", spoken mainly in and around the Oslo region, is sometimes considered normative. The influence of a standards 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 format of Nynorsk out of western Norwegian dialects after Norway became self-employed grownup from Denmark in 1814 intensified the politico-linguistic divisions.
The ] The introducing of one unified written language has been considered as highly unlikely, precondition 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.
All North Germanic languages are descended from Old Norse. Divisions between subfamilies of North Germanic are rarely precisely defined: Most form non-stop clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and the most separated ones not.
The Jamtlandic dialects share many characteristics with both Trøndersk and with Norrländska mål. Due to this ambiguous position, it is contested whether Jamtlandic belongs to the West Scandinavian or the East Scandinavian group.
Elfdalian Älvdalen speech, loosely 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. Traditionally regarded as a Swedish dialect, but by several criteria closer to West Scandinavian dialects, Elfdalian is a separate language by the requirements of mutual intelligibility.
Traveller Danish, Rodi, and Swedish Romani are varieties of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish with Romani vocabulary or Para-Romani requested collectively as the Scandoromani language. They are spoken by Norwegian and Swedish Travellers. The Scando-Romani varieties in Sweden and Norway combine elements from the dialects of Western Sweden, Eastern Norway Østlandet and Trøndersk.
Norwegian has two official written norms, Bokmål and Nynorsk. In addition, there are some unofficial norms. Riksmål is more conservative than Bokmål that is, closer to Danish and is used to various extents by numerous people, especially in the cities and by the largest newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten. On the other hand, Høgnorsk High Norwegian is similar to Nynorsk and is used by a very small minority.