The North Germanic languages, also called Scandinavian languages, are spoken by about 20 million people in Scandinavia. They include Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese. These languages share several distinctive grammatical features like adding definite articles as suffixes to nouns. While they derive from a common Proto-Germanic ancestor and share many sound changes, political and cultural developments over time have led to some differences in vocabulary between the languages. The oldest written records that show features of Scandinavian languages are runic inscriptions from the 8th to 11th centuries, while manuscripts in Latin script from the 12th century on provide more materials in Old Norse, the main representative of the older forms of these languages.

1. Scandinavian Languages
(The North Germanic languages)
Malaki Marina
3LM3

2. The North Germanic Languagesmake up one of the three branches of
the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the IndoEuropean languages, along with the West
Germanic languages and the extinct East
Germanic languages.

3. The term “Scandinavian”
arose in the 18th century as a result of the early
linguistic and cultural Scandinavian movement,
referring to the peoples, cultures, and languages of
the three Scandinavian countries and stressing their
common heritage.

4. All the modern Germanic
languages
are closely related; they become progressively closer
grammatically and lexically when traced back to the
earliest records.
This suggests that they all derive from a still earlier
common ancestor, which is traditionally referred to
as Proto-Germanic and which is believed to have
broken from the other Indo-European languages

5. Linguistic Groups
The Germanic languages today are conventionally
divided into three linguistic groups: East Germanic,
North Germanic, and West Germanic. This division
had begun by the 4th cent.

6. North Germanic Languages
are spoken by about 20 million people, chiefly in
Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Norway,
and Sweden

7. NGL have several distinctive
grammatical features in common
 adding of the definite article to the noun as a suffix.
Thus "the book" in English is expressed in Swedish
as boken, "book-the" (bok meaning "book" and en meaning "the" ).
 distinctive is a method of forming the passive voice by
adding -s to the end of the verb or, in the case of the
present tense, by changing the active ending -r to -s (st in Icelandic). This is illustrated by the Swedish jag
kaller, "I call" ; jag kallas, "I am called" ; jag kallade, "I
called" ; jag kallades, "I was called."

8. Classification
 North Germanic family tree is divided into two
main branches, West Scandinavian
languages (Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic)
and East Scandinavian
languages(Danish and Swedish), along with
various dialects and varieties.
 There was also an Old Gutnishbranch spoken on
the island of Gotland.

9. Classification by mutual
intelligibility
 Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as Continental
Scandinavian
 Faroese and Icelandic as Insular Scandinavian.
 Because of the long political union between
Norway and Denmark, moderate and
conservative forms of Norwegian Bokmål share
most of the Danish vocabulary and grammar, and
was virtually identical to written Danish until the
spelling reform of 1907.

10. History
 Sweden left the Kalmar union in 1523 due to conflicts
with Denmark, leaving two Scandinavian units: the
union of Denmark-Norway (ruled from Copenhagen,
Denmark) and Sweden (including present-day
Finland). The two countries were taking different sides
during several wars until 1814 and made different
international contacts.

11. History
 This led to different borrowings from foreign
languages (Sweden had a francophone period), for
example the older Swedish word vindöga (“window”)
was replaced by fönster (from Middle Low German),
whereas native vindue was kept in Danish.
Norwegians, who spoke (and still speak) the
Norwegian dialects derived from Old Norse, would
say vindauga or similar. The written language of
Denmark-Norway however, was based on the dialect
of Copenhagen and thus had vindue. On the other
hand, the word begynde (“begin”, now
written begynne in Norwegian Bokmål) was borrowed
into Danish and Norwegian, whereas native börja was

12. Common Features
 the first Germanic sound shift or consonant shift (also
called Grimm's law), which set the Germanic subfamily
apart from the other members of the Indo-European
family.
 For example, the sounds p, d, t, and k in the former
became f, t, th, and h respectively in the latter, as in
Latin
pater, English father; Latin dent, English tooth; and
Latin cornu, English horn.

13. Common Features
 Before the 8th cent a second shift of consonants
took place in some of the West German dialects.
 under certain
circumstances, d became t, and t became ss or z,
as in English bread, Dutch brood, but
German Brot; English foot, Dutch voet, but
German Fuss; and English ten, Dutch tien, but
German zehn.

14. Common Features
 Recessive Accent, whereby the stress usually
falls on the first or root syllable of a word,
especially a word of Germanic origin.
 Umlaut a type of vowel change in the root of a
word. It is demonstrated in the
pairs foot (singular), feet (plural) in
English; fot(singular), fötter (plural) in
Swedish;
and Kampf (singular), Kämpfe (plural) in
German

15. Common Features of Scandinavian
Languages
 the loss of initial j, as is seen by comparing the Danish,
Swedish, and Norwegian år and the Icelandic ár with
the English “year” and the German Jahr.
 The w disappeared before rounded vowels; the
Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ord and the
Icelandic oró stand in contrast to the English “word”
and the German Wort.
 Rising diphthongs appeared in the Scandinavian
languages but not in the other Germanic languages;
this can be seen by comparing the Danish and
Norwegian hjerte, the Swedish hjärta, and the
Icelandic hjarta with the English “heart” and the
German Herz.

16. Common Features of Scandinavian
Languages
 Numerous consonant assimilations are confined to
Scandinavian, as is seen when the Danish and
Norwegian drikke, the Swedish dricka, and the
Icelandic drekka are compared with the English “drink”
and the German trinken.
 Numerous consonant assimilations are confined to
Scandinavian, as is seen when the Danish and
Norwegian drikke, the Swedish dricka, and the
Icelandic drekka are compared with the English “drink”
and the German trinken.

17. The first written documents
 to reflect features of the Scandinavian languages are
runic inscriptions of the eighth to 11th centuries, written
in early (Danish-Norwegian and Swedish) runes. In the
12th and 13th centuries, Latin script came into use in
Scandinavia; the first Old Norse manuscripts date to
this time. The Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, sagas,
and other works were composed in Old Icelandic,
which is thus the main representative of the older
Scandinavian languages.

18. Survived Documents

19. Survived Documents

20. Survived Documents