North Germanic languages


The North Germanic languages are one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish scholars and people.
The term North Germanic languages is used in comparative linguistics, whereas the term Scandinavian languages appears in studies of the modern standard languages and the dialect continuum of Scandinavia. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are close enough to form a strong mutual intelligibility where cross-border communication in native languages is very common, particularly between the latter two.
Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries speak a Scandinavian language as their native language, including an approximately 5% minority in Finland. Besides being the only North Germanic language with official status in two separate sovereign states, Swedish is also the most spoken of the languages overall. 15% of the population in Greenland speak Danish as a first language.
This language branch is separated from the West Germanic languages, consisting of languages like English, Dutch, and German to the south, and does not include the Finnic and Sami languages spoken in the same region, which belong to the completely unrelated Uralic language family.

Modern languages and dialects

The modern languages and their dialects in this group are:

Distinction from East and West Germanic

The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: West, East and North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, and they remained mutually intelligible to some degree during the Migration Period, so that some individual varieties are difficult to classify. Dialects with the features assigned to the northern group formed from the Proto-Germanic language in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe.
Eventually, around the year AD200, speakers of the North Germanic branch became distinguishable from the other Germanic language speakers. The early development of this language branch is attested through runic inscriptions.

Features shared with West Germanic

The North Germanic group is characterized by a number of phonological and morphological innovations shared with West Germanic:
  • The retraction of Proto-Germanic ē to ā.
  • * Proto-Germanic *jērą 'year' > Northwest Germanic *jārą, whence
  • ** North Germanic *āra > Old Norse ár,
  • ** West Germanic *jāra > Old High German jār, Old English ġēar vs. Gothic jēr.
  • The raising of to . The original vowel remained when nasalised *ǭ and when before, and was then later lowered to.
  • * Proto-Germanic *gebō 'gift' > Northwest Germanic *geƀu, whence
  • ** North Germanic *gjavu > with u-umlaut *gjǫvu > ON gjǫf,
  • ** West Germanic *gebu > OE giefu vs. Gothic giba.
  • * Proto-Germanic *tungǭ 'tongue' > late Northwest Germanic *tungā > *tunga > ON tunga, OHG zunga, OE tunge vs. Gothic tuggō.
  • * Proto-Germanic gen. sg. *gebōz 'of a gift' > late Northwest Germanic *gebāz, whence
  • ** North Germanic *gjavaz > ON gjafar,
  • ** West Germanic *geba > OHG geba, OE giefe vs. Gothic gibōs.
  • The development of i-umlaut.
  • The rhotacism of to, with presumably a rhotic fricative of some kind as an earlier stage.
  • * This change probably affected West Germanic much earlier and then spread from there to North Germanic, but failed to reach East Germanic which had already split off by that time. This is confirmed by an intermediate stage ʀ, clearly attested in late runic East Norse at a time when West Germanic had long merged the sound with.
  • The development of the demonstrative pronoun ancestral to English this.
  • * Germanic *sa, sō, þat 'this, that' + proximal *si 'here' ;
  • ** Runic Norse: nom. sg. sa-si, gen. þes-si, dat. þeim-si etc., with declension of the first part;
  • * fixed form with declension on the second part: ON sjá, þessi m., OHG these m., OE þes m., þēos f., þis n.
Some have argued that after East Germanic broke off from the group, the remaining Germanic languages, the Northwest Germanic languages, divided into four main dialects: North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely
  1. North Sea Germanic,
  2. Weser–Rhine Germanic, and
  3. Elbe Germanic.
The inability of the tree model to explain the existence of some features in the West Germanic languages stimulated the development of an alternative, the so-called wave model.
Under this view, the properties that the West Germanic languages have in common separate from the North Germanic languages are not inherited from a "Proto-West-Germanic" language, but rather spread by language contact among the Germanic languages spoken in central Europe, not reaching those spoken in Scandinavia.

North Germanic features

Some innovations are not found in West and East Germanic, such as:
  • Sharpening of geminate and according to Holtzmann's law
  • * Occurred also in East Germanic, but with a different outcome.
  • * Proto-Germanic *twajjǫ̂ > Old Norse tveggja, Gothic twaddjē, but > Old High German zweiio
  • *Proto-Germanic *triwwiz > Old Norse tryggr, Gothic triggws, but > Old High German triuwi, German treu, Old English trīewe, English true.
  • Word-final devoicing of stop consonants.
  • * Proto-Germanic *band > *bant > Old West Norse batt, Old East Norse bant, but Old English band
  • Loss of medial with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel and the following consonant, if present.
  • * Proto-Germanic *nahtų > *nāttu > *nǭttu > Old Norse nótt
  • > before
  • * Proto-Germanic *sairaz > *sāraz > *sārz > Old Norse sárr, but > *seira > Old High German sēr.
  • * With original Proto-Germanic *gaizaz > *geizz > Old Norse geirr.
  • General loss of word-final, following the loss of word-final short vowels.
  • * Proto-Germanic *bindaną > *bindan > Old Norse binda, but > Old English bindan.
  • * This also affected stressed syllables: Proto-Germanic *in > Old Norse í
  • Vowel breaking of to except after w, r or l.
  • * The diphthong was also affected, shifting to at an early stage. This diphthong is preserved in Old Gutnish and survives in modern Gutnish. In other Norse dialects, the -onset and length remained, but the diphthong simplified resulting in variously or.
  • * This affected only stressed syllables. The word *ek, which could occur both stressed and unstressed, appears varyingly as ek and jak throughout Old Norse.
  • Loss of initial , and also of before a round vowel.
  • * Proto-Germanic *wulfaz > North Germanic ulfz > Old Norse
  • The development of u-umlaut, which rounded stressed vowels when or followed in the next syllable. This followed vowel breaking, with ja being u-umlauted to jǫ.

    Middle Ages

After the Old Norse period, the North Germanic languages developed into an East Scandinavian branch, consisting of Danish, Swedish and Old Gutnish, and a West Scandinavian branch, consisting of Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic. Norwegian settlers brought Old West Norse to Iceland and the Faroe Islands around 800. Of the modern Scandinavian languages, written Icelandic is closest to this ancient language. An additional language, known as Norn, developed on Orkney and Shetland after Vikings had settled there around 800, but this language became extinct around 1700.
In medieval times, speakers of all the Scandinavian languages could understand one another to a significant degree, and it was often referred to as a single language, called the "Danish tongue" until the 13th century by some in Sweden and Iceland. In the 16th century, many Danes and Swedes still referred to North Germanic as a single language, which is stated in the introduction to the first Danish translation of the Bible and in Olaus Magnus' A Description of the Northern Peoples. Dialectal variation between west and east in Old Norse however was certainly present during the Middle Ages and several dialects had emerged. Old Icelandic was essentially identical to Old Norwegian, at least until about 1000, and together they formed the Old West Norse dialect of Old Norse and were also spoken in settlements in the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Norwegian settlements in Normandy. The Old East Norse dialect was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, settlements in Russia, England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. Old Gutnish was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East.
Yet, by 1600, another classification of the North Germanic language branches had arisen from a syntactic point of view, dividing them into an insular group and a continental group. The division between Insular Nordic and Continental Scandinavian is based on mutual intelligibility between the two groups and developed due to different influences, particularly the political union of Denmark and Norway which led to significant Danish influence on central and eastern Norwegian dialects.