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In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse.This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted the appearance of two similar dialects, Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden).
Generally, speakers of the three largest Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) can read each other's languages without great difficulty. The primary obstacles to mutual comprehension are differences in pronunciation. According to a scientific study of the three groups, Norwegians generally understand the other languages the ...
Faroese speakers (of the Insular Scandinavian languages group) are even better than the Norwegians at comprehending two or more languages within the Continental Scandinavian languages group, scoring high in both Danish (which they study at school) and Norwegian and having the highest score on a Scandinavian language other than their native ...
Swedish (endonym: svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ⓘ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family, spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland. [2] It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the fourth most spoken Germanic language, and the first among its type in the Nordic countries overall.
North Germanic peoples, Nordic peoples [1] and in a medieval context Norsemen, [2] were a Germanic linguistic group originating from the Scandinavian Peninsula. [3] They are identified by their cultural similarities, common ancestry and common use of the Proto-Norse language from around 200 AD, a language that around 800 AD became the Old Norse language, which in turn later became the North ...
The Insular Scandinavian languages—Faroese and Icelandic—on the other are only partially intelligible to speakers of the continental Scandinavian languages. The Uralic languages are linguistically unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Finnish is the majority language in Finland, and a recognized minority language in Sweden.
Old Swedish (Modern Swedish: fornsvenska) is the name for two distinct stages of the Swedish language that were spoken in the Middle Ages: Early Old Swedish (Klassisk fornsvenska), spoken from about 1225 until about 1375, and Late Old Swedish (Yngre fornsvenska), spoken from about 1375 until about 1526.
The history of Scandinavia is the history of the geographical region of Scandinavia and its peoples. The region is located in Northern Europe , and consists of Denmark , Norway and Sweden . Finland and Iceland are at times, especially in English-speaking contexts, considered part of Scandinavia.