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The Nordic languages
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From how long back are there proof that we spoke Proto-Norse – or North Germanic– in Sweden?
Tommy, have you got your cousins here? Yep: This is a Norwegian. He says "rolig" when he means calm. And this is a Dane. He also says "rolig" when he means calm. -- I think, 'cause I can't understand what he says, he sort of just gurgles when he talks.
And both are wrong. "Rolig" means fun. Like me. That's what you think Tommy. The Nordic languages differ quite a lot, even though a Swede can understand much of what Norwegians and Danes say. But once they actually spoke the same language.
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have the same origin. They are Indo-European languages, just like English and German. From the middle of the second century there is evidence of a joint language in the Nordic region: Proto-Norse or North Germanic. Well, no-one actually knows what Proto-Norse sounded like, but it's written down on the earliest rune stones. From the 7th-century onwards, Proto-Norse developed rapidly.
By the 9th-century, at the start of the Viking era, it had many differences from the other Indo-European languages. Words that began with 'W', followed by 'O' or 'U', lost their 'W' in the nordic languages. But in the languages that later became English or German, the 'W' remained. The same thing happened in many words that started with a J-sound. So at the start of the Viking Era, Proto-Norse was already a new language: Old Norse.
We often divide Old Norse into several distinct languages: ... Old West Norse, that later became Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian ... Old East Norse, that became Danish and Swedish. ... And Old Gutnish that later became a dialect on Gotland. But the languages were still very much alike.
The northern folk themselves called their languages Danish Tongue. Aaaaah. The Nordic languages continued to develop. Between 1380 and 1814 Denmark and Norway were ruled as one nation - a union. Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroes also all belonged to Norway in this union.
The written languages of Denmark and Norway were the same. That meant that the languages developed together and got many similarities. For example the letters for ö and ä. Ö Ø Ø Ä Æ Æ In 1814 Norway was free from the union. The Norwegians by then wanted to get rid of the language based on Danish. Instead they wanted a written language based on Norwegian words and dialects.
Because of this, the Storting decided in 1885 to adopt another official written language alongside the old one. Listen to these two sentences: Jeg kommer fra Norge Eg kjem frå Noreg These are both in Norwegian. But the first sentence is in the older language: Bokmål The second sentence is in the new language: Nynorska Swedish is the largest of the Nordic languages today. Swedish is spoken by about 10 million people in Sweden and in Finland. Norwegian is spoken by about 5 million people.
One thing that distinguishes Norwegian is that it almost never uses the letters c, q, w, x, and z. Danish is spoken by about 6 million people in Denmark, northern Germany and in Greenland. The Danes have a peculiar way of naming numbers. Guess what this means: Femoghalvfjerds It means 75. Icelandic and Faroese are very much alike, and are also very similar to Old Norse.
Icelandic is spoken by 320,000 people and Faroese by 75,000. But what about Finland? Finland is also situated in the Nordic region. Isn't Finnish a Nordic language? No.
The term 'Nordic Languages' only refers to those languages that grew out of Proto-Norse as described here. Finnish belongs to another group of languages and has a story of it's own. This you will hear about some other time.