Languages of The Nordics
Languages of The Nordics
Languages of The Nordics
com/languages/
Nynorsk and Bokml provide standards for how to write Norwegian, but not for
how to speak the language. There is no officially sanctioned standard of spoken
Norwegian, and most Norwegians speak their own dialect in all
circumstances. Thus, the use of any Norwegian dialect, whether it coincides with
the written norms or not, is accepted as correct spokenNorwegian. In areas
where East Norwegian dialects are used, there is a tendency to accept a de
facto spoken standard for this particular regional dialect, standard stnorsk, in
which the vocabulary coincides with Bokml. Outside Eastern Norway this
spoken variation is not used.
Norwegians are educated in both Bokml and Nynorsk. A 2005 poll indicates that
86.3% use primarily Bokml as their daily written language, 5.5% use both
Bokml and Nynorsk, and 7.5% use primarily Nynorsk. 27% of
the Norwegian municipalities have declared Nynorsk as their official language
form, and these comprise about 12% of the Norwegian population. Nynorsk is
the majority form of the four counties Rogaland, Hordaland, Sogn og
Fjordane and Mre og Romsdal, which together comprise the region
of Vestlandet.
Most Norwegians learn the Nynorwegian language in school, and all native
speakers learn standardized Norwegian. The languages are as closely related as
Norwegian is to Danish and Swedish, and are and mutually intelligible.
Icelandic
learn it as a first language, and it is a required subject for students in third grade
and up.
Finno-Ugric
The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages are a branch of the Uralic language
family spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people. The major
modern representatives of the family are Finnish and Estonian. The other Finnic
languages in the Baltic Sea region are Ingrian, Karelian and Veps. Vro and Seto
are spoken in southeastern Estonia.
Menkieli (in northern Sweden) and Kven (in northern Norway) are Finnish
dialects that the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway have given the
legal status as independent languages. They are mutually intelligible with
Finnish. Even though Estonian and Finnish have similar linguistic roots they
share less in common and are of a smaller degree mutually intelligble.
Finnish
Finnish is spoken by around five million people and is the language spoken by
the majority of the population in Finland and by Finns outside Finland. There are
notable Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Estonia, Brazil,
Canada, and the United States.
There are two main varieties of Finnish used throughout the country. The
standard language is used in formal situations like political speeches and
newscasts. Its written form, the book language, is used in nearly all written
texts. The spoken language, is the main variety of Finnish used in TV and radio,
and may be preferred to a dialect in personal communication.
The dialects of Finnish are divided into two distinct groups, the Western dialects
and the Eastern dialects. The dialects are almost entirely mutually intelligible and
distinguished from each other by only minor changes in vowels, diphthongs and
rhythm. For the most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology, grammar
and vocabulary.
Meankieli
The Kven language is used in northern Norway by the Kven people. For
political and historical reasons, it received the status of a minority language in
2005. Linguistically it is seen as a mutually intelligible dialect of
the Finnish language, and grouped together with the Perpohjola
dialects such as Menkieli. Despite its recent gain of status as a minority
language, there is still a major discussion among the Kven about whether
the Finnish orthography should be applied to the language or if a
new orthography should be devised. In 2007 the Kven language board was
formed and the council will work out a written Kven language, but use Finnish
orthography to maintain inter-Finnish language understanding. The number of
people speaking Kven in Norway is between 2,000 and 8,000, but there are very
few young people who speak it, making it an endangered language.
Sami
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken natively by about 1.1 million
people. The two different historical Estonian languages (sometimes
considered dialects), the North and South Estonian languages, are based on
the ancestors of modern Estonians migration into the territory of Estonia in at
least two different waves.
The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect,
the lnemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding
to Lnemaa and Prnumaa, the saarte murre (islands) dialect
of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa and the idamurre or eastern dialect on the
northwestern shore of Lake Peipsi. The southern group consists of the Tartu,
Mulgi, Vru (Vro) and Setu (Seto) dialects. These are sometimes considered
either variants of a South Estonian language, or separate languages altogether.
Also, Seto and Vro distinguish themselves from each other less by language
and more by their culture.
After the restoration of Republic of Estonia, Estonian went back to being the
only state language in Estonia which in practice meant that use of Estonian
was promoted while the use of Russian was discouraged. Modern standard
Estonian has evolved on the basis of the dialects of Northern Estonia.
Eskimo-Aleut
EskimoAleut is a language family native to Alaska, the Canadian
Arctic, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, Greenland, and the Chukchi Peninsula on
the eastern tip of Siberia.
The EskimoAleut language family is divided into two branches, the Eskimo
languages and the Aleut language. The Aleut language family consists of a
single language, Aleut, spoken in the Aleutian Islands and the Pribilof Islands.
Aleut is divided into several dialects.
The Eskimo languages are divided into two branches, the Yupik languages,
spoken in western and southwestern Alaska and in easternmost Siberia, and
the Inuit languages, spoken in northern Alaska, in Canada, and in Greenland.
Inuit, which covers a huge range of territory, is divided into several varieties.
Neighbouring varieties are quite similar, although those at the farthest distances
from the centre in the Diomede Islands and East Greenland are quite
divergent.
Greenlandic
Languag
e
Speakers Official Status
Sweden,
Finland,
European Union, Nordic
Swedish 9,000,000 Council
Denmark,
Faroe Islands,
European
Danish
6,000,000 Union, Nordic Council
Norwegia
n
5,000,000
Norway, Nordic Council
Finnish
5,000,000
Finland,
Sweden
European Union
Estonian 1,200,000
Estonia,
European Union
Icelandic 320,000
Iceland, Nordic Council
Faroese 90,000
Faroe Islands
Greenlan
dic
50,000
Greenland
30,000Menkieli 70,000
Sweden
Sami
25,000
Norway,
Sweden,
Finland
Kven
2000-8000
Norway
A common language?
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. 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.
The Nordic Council has on several occasions referred to the languages spoken
in Scandinavia as the Scandinavian language ; for instance, the official
newsletter of the Nordic Council is written in the Scandinavian language. 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.