North Germanic Languages - Family Tree

Family Tree

All North Germanic languages are descended from Old Norse. Divisions between subfamilies of North Germanic are rarely precisely defined: Most form continuous clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and the most separated ones not.

  • Proto-Norse
    • West Scandinavian
      • Greenlandic Norse (extinct)
      • Icelandic
      • Faroese
      • Norn (extinct)
      • Norwegian
        • Vestnorsk (Western and Southern Norway)
        • Nordnorsk (Northern Norway)
        • Nynorsk (written standard of Norwegian)
    • East Scandinavian
      • Danish
        • Island Danish
        • East Danish (Blekinge, Halland, Skåne, Bornholm)
        • Jutlandic (or Jutish, in Jutland)
        • South Jutlandic (in South Jutland and Southern Schleswig)
      • Swedish
        • Dalecarlian dialects (Dalarna)
          • Elfdalian (Dalarna)
        • Sveamål (Svealand)
        • Norrländska mål (Norrland)
        • Götamål (Götaland)
        • Sydsvenska mål (Blekinge, Halland, Skåne, southern Småland)
        • Östsvenska mål (Finland and formerly, Estonia)
        • Jamtlandic (Jämtland) (disputed as an East Scandinavian language)
    • Gutnish
      • Old Gutnish (extinct, Gotland)
        • Modern Gutnish (Gotland)

Beside the two official written norms of Norwegian, there exist two established unofficial norms: Riksmål, similar to, but more conservative than Bokmål, which is used to various extents by numerous people, especially in the cities and Høgnorsk "High-Norwegian", similar to Nynorsk, used by a very small minority.

Jamtlandic shares many characteristics with both Trøndersk and with Norrländska mål. Due to this ambiguous position, it is contested whether Jamtlandic belongs to the West Norse or the East Norse language group.

Älvdalsmål "Älvdalen Speech", generally considered a Sveamål dialect, today has an official orthography and is, because of a lack of mutual intelligibility with Swedish, considered as a separate language by many linguists.

Traveller Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are varieties of their respective language with Romani vocabulary, or Para-Romani, known as the Scando-Romani languages. They are spoken by Norwegian and Swedish Travellers.

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