Danish, Norwegian (including both written forms: Bokmål, the most common standard form; and Nynorsk) and Swedish are all descended from Old Norse, the common ancestor of all North Germanic languages spoken today. Thus, they are closely related, and largely mutually intelligible, particularly in their standard varieties. The largest differences are found in pronunciation and language-specific vocabulary, which may hinder mutual intelligibility to some extent in some dialects. All dialects of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish form a dialect continuum within a wider North Germanic dialect continuum.
Mutual intelligibility Generally, speakers of the three largest Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) can read each other's languages without great difficulty. The primary obstacles to mutual comprehension are differences in pronunciation. According to a scientific study of the three groups, Norwegians generally understand the other languages the best, while Swedes understand the least. (Norwegian)
Danish and Norwegian are especially comprehensible to one another. In general, Danish and Norwegian speakers will be able to understand the other's language after only a little instruction or exposure. Traditionally educated Norwegians, and especially speakers of Urban East Norwegian, understand spoken Danish fluently; indeed Urban East Norwegian is closer to 16th century Danish than modern Danish is due to being closely influenced by the written (Danish) language, which modern spoken Danish has diverged from to a greater degree. However, due to the same reason, present-day Danish speakers generally do not understand spoken Norwegian as well as the extremely similar written norms would lead one to expect. Some Norwegians may also have problems understanding Danish.
Because Norway's largest cities have received signals from Sweden's two national TV channels since the 1960s through private antennas, Norwegians generally have a better grasp of Swedish than vice versa; Sweden did not receive Norwegian TV until decades later.
Old Norse and Icelandic
Old Norse is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age, the Christianization of Scandinavia and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries.
The 12th-century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, and Danes spoke the same language, ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said ). Another term was ("northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility while Icelandic remains the closest to Old Norse.
History of Norwegian
In the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway (1536–1814), the official language — in the sense of written language — was Danish, not Norwegian. However it came to be seen as a common language of the kingdoms. The urban Norwegian upper class spoke Dano-Norwegian, a form of Danish with Norwegian pronunciation and other minor local differences. After the two countries separated, Danish remained the official language of Norway — although it was referred to as Norwegian in Norway — and remained largely unchanged until language reforms in the early 20th century led to the standardization of forms more similar to the Norwegian urban and rural vernaculars. Until 1907 the written language in Norway was more or less completely Danish; in the following decades various spelling reforms gradually made the language somewhat more different from Danish, although the differences are still fairly small. Since 1929, this written standard has been known as Bokmål. The other Norwegian written standard, Nynorsk, was constructed on the basis of Norwegian dialects. Attempts to bring Bokmål closer to and eventually merge it with Nynorsk have failed due to widespread resistance during the Norwegian language conflict. As part of this resistance, elites, most of the media and significant parts of the population supported an alternative spelling standard promoted by the Riksmål movement, that built on the Danish language tradition in Norway. The language struggle in Norway also had a class aspect, as the Norwegian educated elites traditionally had a strong affinity for Denmark and its culture, and thus saw the Danish written language as an important part of their identity. Until 1811 the University of Copenhagen had been the only university of Denmark-Norway, and educated Norwegians thus spent formative years in Denmark. When Norway's university was founded in 1811 it built on and maintained close ties to a Danish academic tradition, thereby continuing the influence of Danish among elites. The most recent reforms of Bokmål from 2005 have again brought the language closer to the Danish language tradition in Norway by including most of the Riksmål tradition in official Bokmål, thereby largely ending the Norwegian language conflict. (Norwegian)
Sample text
Danish
Norwegian (moderate Bokmål)
Norwegian (Nynorsk)
Swedish
English translation In 1877 Brandes left Copenhagen and took up residence in Berlin. However, his political views made Prussia an uncomfortable place to live, and in 1883 he returned to Copenhagen, where he was met by a completely new group of writers and thinkers, who were eager to accept him as their leader. The most important of his later works is his work about William Shakespeare, which was translated to English by William Archer and received recognition immediately.
Writing system
Danish and Norwegian
Generally, Norwegian orthography is more simplified and regularized and closer to actual pronunciation than Danish. As a rule, the graphic differences between the two languages do not reflect actual differences in pronunciation; while there are significant phonetic and phonological differences, they are rarely expressed in writing. The few exceptions are noted below.
In writing, Danish may employ either the letter or the letter to signify the short vowel phoneme . Norwegian almost always uses . Example: Danish (to lay), (to send) versus Norwegian , . Danish regularly, although not always, uses the letter combinations , instead of the double consonant letters , . In most cases this is not etymologically justified. In Norwegian and Swedish, only the etymologically justified spellings occur. Example: Danish (to know, Old Norse ), (this /common gender/, ON masculine accusative ) and (to send, ON ) versus Norwegian () / (), (but ); Danish (bad, ON ), (to want, Old Norse ) and (to hold, Old Norse ) versus Norwegian , (but () / / ()). Unlike Norwegian, Danish often uses instead of double . Example: (to scratch) but (certain [plural]) versus Norwegian , . Likewise in some other contexts, Danish (best), (last) versus Norwegian , (ON , , where denoted consonant combinations like etc.). Unlike Norwegian, Danish does not use double consonants at the end of words. Example: Danish can signify both the adjective pronounced (wise) and the adjective pronounced (certain), even though the plural forms of the adjectives, where the consonant occurs medially, are distinguished in writing by means of a double in the second word ( versus ). In contrast, Norwegian does distinguish between and in the same way as between and . Danish preserves the above rule both before inflexional and derivational endings beginning in a consonant and in compounding. Norwegian, too, prohibits word-final double consonants before inflexional endings beginning in a consonant (unless homography needs to be avoided), but not before derivational endings and in compounding. Example: Danish (all /common gender/) – (all /neuter gender/) – (all /plural/) – (always, literally "all time"); Norwegian – – , but . Norwegian has preserved the spellings , , and in the beginning of words when followed by , , , while modern Danish has simply , and . Today, this in part reflects the fact that these words are also pronounced differently in the two languages, see below. Examples: Danish (keep, hide), (dear), (wonderful, lovely) versus Norwegian (), , . A pair of diphthongs are spelled as and in Danish, but as and in Norwegian. The exact pronunciation of these diphthongs is also somewhat different in the two languages, see below, and the different spellings are phonetically justified at least for the second diphthong. Examples: Danish (way), (lied /past tense/) versus Norwegian , . In the oblique case forms of the 1st and 2nd person pronouns and of reflexive pronouns, the ei/ej diphthong is spelled in Danish, but in Norwegian: mig, dig, sig versus meg, deg, seg. In Danish, the preposition af "of, from" is spelled with (pronounced or, in compounds, ), whereas Norwegian has av with like Swedish. In loanwords, Danish generally has tended to partly preserve the spelling of the source language, whereas Norwegian traditionally usually has adapted the spelling to its own rules in order to reflect the expected pronunciation. Examples: Danish bureau (bureau), chauffør (chauffeur), information (information), garage (garage), centrum (centre), zone (zone) versus Norwegian byrå, sjåfør, informasjon, garasje, sentrum, sone. Traditional Danish punctuation requires that a comma be placed before and after every dependent clause, and although two recent reforms permit, optionally, the dropping of a comma before the dependent clause, the old system is still in general use. (Danish) In contrast, Norwegian only requires a comma after the dependent clause; a comma is placed before it only if the clause is parenthetic (the same rule as in English, but English also does not put a comma after a non-parenthetic clause). Swedish uses the same rule as English: a comma is not required before or after a non-parenthetic clause. Example where the dependent clause is parenthetic – (). Example sentence with nonparenthetic clause:
Top Level StructureSubjectVerb Danish Jeg ved, hvordan manden, (som) du snakker om, ser ud. Norwegian (Bokmål) Jeg vet hvordan mannen (som) du snakker om, ser ut. Norwegian (Nynorsk) Eg veit korleis mannen (som) du snakkar om(som) du talar om, ser ut. Swedish Jag vet hur mannen (som) du snackar om [colloquial](som) du talar om(som) du pratar om ser ut. English I know how the man (that) you talk about looks.
Danish capitalizes all words in multi-word proper designations, but Norwegian and Swedish only capitalize the first word: Det Hvide Hus (Danish) – Det hvite hus (Norwegian Bokmål) – Det kvite huset (Norwegian Nynorsk) – Vita huset (Swedish) – the White House (English).
Swedish differences Swedish orthography differs from Danish and Norwegian in the following respects:Comparison of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish orthography (in Danish). Danish and Norwegian use the letters and , but Swedish uses and as equivalents. All the three languages use the letter . Danish and Norwegian use , but Swedish uses . Danish might also use a single 'k' finally, even for short vowels. Swedish uses the letter in native words, but Danish and Norwegian use instead. In Swedish orthography, the etymological was abolished in 1906. Danish and Bokmål Norwegian still use it, although in some Norwegian words it is simplified to (verv, virvel, veps and optionally in verken/hverken). In Nynorsk, it is written following truly Norwegian pronunciation. Swedish uses , , before all front vowels like Danish, although pronounces them as palatals unlike Danish. Swedish, like Norwegian, mostly spells /kt/ as , whereas Danish uses '. Swedish uses the spelling och (and), whereas Danish and Norwegian use og.