North Germanic Languages

The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, 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 sometimes referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Swedish and Norwegian scholars and laypeople. In Scandinavia, Scandinavian languages is also used as a term referring specifically to the mutually intelligible languages of the three Scandinavian countries, and is thus used in a more narrow sense as a subset of the Nordic languages. The term Scandinavian arose in the 18th century, as a result of the early linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement, referring to the peoples, cultures and languages of the three Scandinavian countries and stressing their common heritage.

The term "North Germanic languages" is used in genetic linguistics, while 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 have a Scandinavian language as their mother tongue, including a Swedish minority in Finland. Languages belonging to the North Germanic language tree are, to some extent, spoken on Greenland and by emigrant groups mainly in North America and Australia.