North Germanic languages
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The North Germanic languages make up 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 laypeople.
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.
Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries speak a Scandinavian language as their native language, including an approximately 5% minority in Finland. Languages belonging to the North Germanic language tree are also commonly spoken in Greenland and, to a lesser extent, by immigrants in North America.
See also
- Comparison of Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish
- Ingvaeonic languages
- Low Franconian languages
- Gender in Danish and Swedish
- High German languages
- Scanian dialect
- Svorsk
- East Germanic languages
- West Germanic languages
- South Germanic languages
