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Languages of the Nordics

North Germanic
The Northern Germanic languages are divided into the two branches East
Scandinavian languages consisting of Swedish and Danish, separating it from
the West Scandinavian languages, consisting of Faroese, Icelandic and
Norwegian. However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic
languages into two groups: Insular Scandinavian, Faroese and Icelandic,
and Continental Scandinavian, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, based on
mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly
Danish) on Norwegian during the last millennium and divergence from both
Faroese and Icelandic.

Map outlining the Nordic languages and

their relation. Germanic: Shades of red Finnic: Shades of blue Greenlandic: Green Base map
copyright: Nordregio

By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian

languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian

language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite

intense rivalry between Denmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars
from the 16th to 18th centuries, and the nationalist ideas that emerged during the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separate orthographies,
dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish
are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect
continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as
those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohusln,
Dalsland, western Vrmland, western Dalarna, Hrjedalen, Jmtland and Scania,
could be described as intermediate dialects of the national standard languages.
Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand the others,
though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally understand
both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each
other. Both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they
understand each others languages.[4]
Swedish
Swedish is spoken natively by about 9 million people predominantly
in Sweden and parts of Finland. Standard Swedish, used by most Swedes, is
the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th
century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While
distinct regional varieties descended from the older rural dialects still exist, the
spoken and written language is uniform and standardized..
Danish
Danish is spoken by around six million people, principally in Denmark and in the
region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany. In addition around 1520%
of the population of Greenland speaks Danish as their home language.
Standard Danish is based on dialects spoken in and around the
capital, Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish does not have
more than one regional speech norm. More than 25% of all Danish speakers live
in the metropolitan area of the capital, and most government agencies,
institutions, and major businesses keep their main offices in Copenhagen,
something that has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm.
Norwegian

Norwegian is spoken by around five million people, primarily in Norway where it

is the official language. There are two official forms
of written Norwegian Bokml and Nynorsk. Two other written forms also
exist, Riksml and Hgnorsk but they both see very limited use. Bokml is a
Norwegianised variety of Danish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on
Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish. The now abandoned
official policy to merge Bokml and Nynorsk into one common language
called Samnorsk through a series of spelling reforms has created a wide
spectrum of varieties of both Bokml and Nynorsk.

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

Icelandic is the language of Iceland. The vast majority of Icelandic speakers

about 320,000live in Iceland. Apart from the addition of new vocabulary,
written Icelandic has not changed substantially since the 11th century, This
means that Icelandic and the Scandinavian Languages has seperated to the
point where they are no longer mutually intelligible.
In Iceland, linguistic purism is trying to bring the language back to its roots. An
effort is being made to replace loanwords, especially from Danish and English.
Faroese

Faroese is spoken as a native language by about 66,000 people, 45,000 of

whom reside on the Faroe Islands and 21,000 in other areas, mainly Denmark.
After the Reformation in 1536 the ruling Danes outlawed use of Faroese in
schools, churches and official documents. The islanders continued to use the
language in everyday life and it maintained a rich spoken tradition, but for 300
years the language was not used in written form.
A written standard for Modern Faroese was set in 1854, which is still in existence.
It is based on its Old Norse roots and similar to that of Icelandic. Faroese and
Icelandic are not mutually intelligible in speech, but the written languages
resemble each other quite closely.
In 1948, Faroese replaced Danish as the national language. Today Danish is
considered a foreign language, though around 5% of residents on the Faroes

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

Menkieli is a group of Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost part of

Sweden. Menkieli is a northern dialect entirely intelligible to speakers of any
other Finnish dialect, which achieved its status as an official minority language in
Sweden for historical and political reasons regardless of the fact that Finnish is
an official minority language in Sweden, too. The language is usually referred to
as Menkieli by the authorities while a common, and older, name
is tornedalsfinska which literally means Torne Valley Finnish. Few people
today speak Menkieli as their only language. Estimates of how many people
speak Menkieli vary from 30,000 to 70,000, with most of them living
in Norrbotten.
Kven

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

Sami is spoken by the Sami people in parts of

northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia. There
are, depending on the nature and terms of division, ten or more Sami languages
or dialects. The Sami languages are divided into two groups: western and
eastern. The groups may be further divided into various subgroups and ultimately
individual languages.
At present there are nine living Sami languages. The largest six of the languages
have independent literary languages. The largest are Northern Sami, with an
estimated 15,000 speakers and Lule Sami which has an estimated 1,500
speakers. Southern Sami, Inari Sami, Skolt Sami and Kildin Sami all have
less than 1000 speakers. The three other languages have no written standard
are critically endangered and have very few speakers remaining.
Parts of the Sami language area form a dialect continuum in which the
neighbouring languages may be mutually intelligible to a fair degree, but two
more widely separated groups will not understand each others speech.
Between Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami, the speakers are not
able to understand each other without practice.
Estonian

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

Greenlandic is spoken by about 57,000 Greenlandic Inuit

people in Greenland. It is closely related to the Inuit languages in Canada,
such as Inuktitut. The main dialect, Kalaallisut or West Greenlandic, has been
the official language of the Greenlandic autonomous territory since June 2009, as
a way of strengthening the language in its competition with Danish.
From the Danish colonization in the 1700s Greenlandic experienced increasing
pressure from the Danish language. In the 1950s, Denmarks linguistic policies
were directed at replacing Greenlandic with Danish. Of primary significance was
that post-primary education and official functions were conducted in Danish.
In 1973, a new orthography was introduced to bring the written Greenlandic
language closer to the spoken standard. The policy of greenlandization of
Greenlandic society which began with the homerule agreement of 1979. This
policy has worked to reverse the former trend towards marginalization of the
Greenlandic language by making it the official language of education. Since 2009
Greenlandic has become the sole official language in Greenland.

Dominant Languages of the Nordic countries

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

Languages of a future federation

If the will rises to create a Nordic federation, a mutual official language needs to
be agreed upon. The scandinavian languages of Swedish, Danish and
Norwegian are spoken by the majority of the inhabitants in the region and are
widely regarded as mutually intelligible. In addition There are many speakers of
Swedish in Finland and speakers of Danish in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and
Greenland. Finnish and Estonian make up the second largest language group in
the federation, and are not widely spoken in the region outside their native
countries except for in Finnish speakers in certain parts of Sweden.

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.

In a future federation the need to standardize and consolidate the Scandinavian

languages is sure to arise. Given the close proximity of the languages and the
removal of the political shaped language border, a common Scandinavian
language will be a possibility. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are already
considered dialects of each other, and with a common standardized scandinavian
written language the spoken languages can remain dialects, while a common
Scandinavian will be the official language of these areas.
Finnish and Estonian does currently not share enough language similarities to be
grouped and counted as dialects of the same language. Unifying the languages
will not be an option, and as such the languages should remain as they are. The
same argument can be made with regards to Icelandic and Faroese in regards to
Scandinavian and the sami languages. However, the Kven
and Menkieli languages are sufficient close to Finnish to be counted as Finnish
dialects, and in light of a shift into closer integration with Finnish, I believe that in
a future union these languages will be counted as the Finnish language.
With this the federation will have three major languages, Scandinavian, Finnish
and Estonian with the smaller languages in their respective areas. According to
the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries have the
opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in
other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation
costs. The languages included are Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and
Icelandic. This should continue in the event of a formation of a federation, and in
an federation including Estonia this should be exstended to also include
Estonian.
Possible languages of a Nordic Union
Secondary
Language
Speakers Primary Language
Language
Finland
Estonia
Sweden
Iceland
20,000,00
Denmark
Faroe Islands
Scandinavian 0
Norway
Greenland
Finnish
5,000,000
Finland
Sweden
Estonian
1,200,000
Estonia
Icelandic
320,000
Iceland, Nordic Council
Faroese
90,000
Faroe Islands
Greenlandic
50,000
Greenland
Norway
Sami Language
Sweden
s
25,000
Finland