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> Elfdalian sounds nothing like the country’s national language, Swedish Well that's provably false. Different yes, "nothing like" is an hyperbole. > But the

> Elfdalian sounds nothing like the country’s national language, Swedish Well that's provably false. Different yes, "nothing like" is an hyperbole. > But the national government of Sweden is a different story. They currently consider Elfdalian a dialect of Swedish, not its own language. Okay... > Speaking in Elfdalian, Swedish MP Peter Helander recently asked Parliament why that’s the case. But before Culture Minister Amanda Lind could answer the question, the parliamentary speaker interrupted them both to say that only Swedish may be spoken in the chamber. Well, congratulations, you played yourself! It is obvious that it is not that different, linguists can talk all day about what makes a language vs. a dialect, but it is obvious here that it's much closer to a dialect than a new language. Same with all the "multiple different latin derived-languages" at some point, if your neighbour speaks something different than you who cares? Are you going to be so petty that you won't understand him? So maybe it's not a whole new language, it's just you that talks in a slight different way? Too much nationalism sucks, and too much regionalism can be petty in the extreme.

tored 5y ago
Would you consider Danish and Swedish separate languages or are they dialects?
- raverbashing 5y ago
  This is one of the lowest mutual intelligibility pairs if you don't count Icelandic/Faroese, so different languages. Very similar, of course, but different (especially since Danish had more outside influence) - one source https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percentages-of-correct-answers-in-the-intelligibility-test-broken-down-for-group-of_tbl2_228758544 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percentages-of-correct-a... Now is Elfdalic more or less similar than Danish to Swedish? Based on the article video it seems there's some marked difference but probably more understandable than Danish.
  - tored 5y ago
    As a Swede I understand Danish better than Elfdalic. Elfdalic sounds closer to Icelandic and Faroese. Elfdalic also has other characters in their alfabet. I guess that has to do with that Elfdalic has been somewhat frozen in time, they speak closer to what we spoke in the region during the early middle ages. It is true that how languages sound does not equate to closeness of relationship, Swedish and Norwegian are much closer in sound than Swedish and Danish, but Swedish and Danish both belong to the family of East Nordic languages and Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese to West Nordic. Here is Tennysons poem Ring out Wild Bells in Elfdalic https://youtu.be/-3Q9kLgsHIs https://youtu.be/-3Q9kLgsHIs Swedish https://youtu.be/TID9osnlsiY https://youtu.be/TID9osnlsiY I'm not a linguist so I don't have the expertise to say if Elfdalic should be classified as a separate language or not, scientifically it may very well be a dialect, but if some one spoke to me like in the video I wouldn't recognize it as Swedish or any of the common dialects Swedish.
    - raverbashing 5y ago
      Cool, thanks for explaining it. I only know Swedish very superficially so I couldn't really tell how Elfdalic it sounds to native speakers. (I'm guessing exposure to Danish also makes Danish easier to understand for Swedes)
jobigoud 5y ago
> it is obvious here that it's much closer to a dialect than a new language It is not obvious at all since Swedish speakers don't understand it. Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible, but dialects must have intelligibility otherwise they are not dialects. It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic. > Same with all the "multiple different latin derived-languages" at some point, if your neighbour speaks something different than you who cares? Are you going to be so petty that you won't understand him? So maybe it's not a whole new language, it's just you that talks in a slight different way? Very strange take. Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other? That we just "talk in a slight different way"? You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right?
- raverbashing 5y ago
  > Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible > It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic. Interesting. Note that mutual intelligibility is not symmetrical. Yes, Icelandic is very similar to ON in writing, but in pronunciation it changed a lot. Not sure how close Elfdalian is to it. > Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other? No, no, I'm referring to the more nuanced divisions/dialects. Something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy#/media/File:Linguistic_map_of_Italy_-_Legend.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy#/media/File... Or the Langues d'Oil between their geographical neighbours. > You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right? But Portuguese speakers do understand Spanish better ;) http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/05/the-lopsided-mutual-intelligibility-of-spanish-and-portuguese/ http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/05/the-lopsided-mutual-intell...
mannerheim 5y ago
Övdalian diverged from Swedish and other Scandinavian languages quite a while ago. You can tell this from the voiced dental fricative, 'ð' (the 'th' in 'the' and 'father'), which is present in only Icelandic and Faroese, and the 'w' which is still pronounced like a 'w' in words like 'wattn' (water), 'warg' (wolf), and 'will' (to want), unique among modern Scandinavian languages, and indeed Germanic languages as a whole apart from English.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Thanks for the explanation, that sounds really interesting. Not sure it kept the w on the words where ON dropped it but apparently it did (maybe)? There's a reddit thread with orð>worð/uorð but not much more. (And they use warg instead of ulf so...)
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    Here's an Övdalian song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg You can hear the 'w' sound here, in a couple uses of the copula. Compare Övdalian 'werið' with Swedish 'varit' and Icelandic/Faroese 'verið', Övdalian 'war' with Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese 'var' (also English 'were', 'was', derives from the same Proto-Germanic root). There are actually two Old Norses. By AD 1000 or so, proto-Norse had diverged into Old West Norse and Old East Norse (probably still mutually intelligible dialects at this time). The former's descendents would become Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and a couple of dead variants in e.g. the Shetland Isles and Greenland. The latter's descendents would become Swedish, Danish, and Övdalian. We have far more records of OWN than OEN, but one thing we do know is that unlike OWN, OEN preserved the 'w' sound, which was eventually lost in Swedish and Danish. Övdalian also preserves some grammatical aspects of Old Norse. Modern standard Swedish has no case system, but Övdalian has a three-case system (nom, acc, dat; compare Icelandic and Faroese which have those and gen). Modern standard Swedish has two genders, common and neuter, but Övdalian retains the three gender system that's present in Icelandic, Faroese, and some dialects of Norwegian. At the same time, it's clearly quite different from Old Norse, unlike Icelandic which is famously conservative (n.b. that Icelandic has had sound changes that are not reflected in the written language, though, so even it isn't the same as Old Norse a thousand years ago). There is some Swedish influence here, the word for boy is 'påyk', cognate with 'pojke' which is not of Norse origin, but Finnish 'poika' (the Old Norse word was 'drengr' which is used in Icelandic, Faroese, and Danish; Norwegian uses 'gutt').

tored 5y ago

Would you consider Danish and Swedish separate languages or are they dialects?

raverbashing 5y ago
This is one of the lowest mutual intelligibility pairs if you don't count Icelandic/Faroese, so different languages. Very similar, of course, but different (especially since Danish had more outside influence) - one source https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percentages-of-correct-answers-in-the-intelligibility-test-broken-down-for-group-of_tbl2_228758544 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percentages-of-correct-a... Now is Elfdalic more or less similar than Danish to Swedish? Based on the article video it seems there's some marked difference but probably more understandable than Danish.
- tored 5y ago
  As a Swede I understand Danish better than Elfdalic. Elfdalic sounds closer to Icelandic and Faroese. Elfdalic also has other characters in their alfabet. I guess that has to do with that Elfdalic has been somewhat frozen in time, they speak closer to what we spoke in the region during the early middle ages. It is true that how languages sound does not equate to closeness of relationship, Swedish and Norwegian are much closer in sound than Swedish and Danish, but Swedish and Danish both belong to the family of East Nordic languages and Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese to West Nordic. Here is Tennysons poem Ring out Wild Bells in Elfdalic https://youtu.be/-3Q9kLgsHIs https://youtu.be/-3Q9kLgsHIs Swedish https://youtu.be/TID9osnlsiY https://youtu.be/TID9osnlsiY I'm not a linguist so I don't have the expertise to say if Elfdalic should be classified as a separate language or not, scientifically it may very well be a dialect, but if some one spoke to me like in the video I wouldn't recognize it as Swedish or any of the common dialects Swedish.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    Cool, thanks for explaining it. I only know Swedish very superficially so I couldn't really tell how Elfdalic it sounds to native speakers. (I'm guessing exposure to Danish also makes Danish easier to understand for Swedes)

jobigoud 5y ago

> it is obvious here that it's much closer to a dialect than a new language It is not obvious at all since Swedish speakers don't understand it. Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible, but dialects must have intelligibility otherwise they are not dialects. It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic. > Same with all the "multiple different latin derived-languages" at some point, if your neighbour speaks something different than you who cares? Are you going to be so petty that you won't understand him? So maybe it's not a whole new language, it's just you that talks in a slight different way? Very strange take. Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other? That we just "talk in a slight different way"? You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right?

raverbashing 5y ago
> Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible > It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic. Interesting. Note that mutual intelligibility is not symmetrical. Yes, Icelandic is very similar to ON in writing, but in pronunciation it changed a lot. Not sure how close Elfdalian is to it. > Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other? No, no, I'm referring to the more nuanced divisions/dialects. Something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy#/media/File:Linguistic_map_of_Italy_-_Legend.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy#/media/File... Or the Langues d'Oil between their geographical neighbours. > You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right? But Portuguese speakers do understand Spanish better ;) http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/05/the-lopsided-mutual-intelligibility-of-spanish-and-portuguese/ http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/05/the-lopsided-mutual-intell...

mannerheim 5y ago

Övdalian diverged from Swedish and other Scandinavian languages quite a while ago. You can tell this from the voiced dental fricative, 'ð' (the 'th' in 'the' and 'father'), which is present in only Icelandic and Faroese, and the 'w' which is still pronounced like a 'w' in words like 'wattn' (water), 'warg' (wolf), and 'will' (to want), unique among modern Scandinavian languages, and indeed Germanic languages as a whole apart from English.

raverbashing 5y ago
Thanks for the explanation, that sounds really interesting. Not sure it kept the w on the words where ON dropped it but apparently it did (maybe)? There's a reddit thread with orð>worð/uorð but not much more. (And they use warg instead of ulf so...)
- mannerheim 5y ago
  Here's an Övdalian song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg You can hear the 'w' sound here, in a couple uses of the copula. Compare Övdalian 'werið' with Swedish 'varit' and Icelandic/Faroese 'verið', Övdalian 'war' with Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese 'var' (also English 'were', 'was', derives from the same Proto-Germanic root). There are actually two Old Norses. By AD 1000 or so, proto-Norse had diverged into Old West Norse and Old East Norse (probably still mutually intelligible dialects at this time). The former's descendents would become Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and a couple of dead variants in e.g. the Shetland Isles and Greenland. The latter's descendents would become Swedish, Danish, and Övdalian. We have far more records of OWN than OEN, but one thing we do know is that unlike OWN, OEN preserved the 'w' sound, which was eventually lost in Swedish and Danish. Övdalian also preserves some grammatical aspects of Old Norse. Modern standard Swedish has no case system, but Övdalian has a three-case system (nom, acc, dat; compare Icelandic and Faroese which have those and gen). Modern standard Swedish has two genders, common and neuter, but Övdalian retains the three gender system that's present in Icelandic, Faroese, and some dialects of Norwegian. At the same time, it's clearly quite different from Old Norse, unlike Icelandic which is famously conservative (n.b. that Icelandic has had sound changes that are not reflected in the written language, though, so even it isn't the same as Old Norse a thousand years ago). There is some Swedish influence here, the word for boy is 'påyk', cognate with 'pojke' which is not of Norse origin, but Finnish 'poika' (the Old Norse word was 'drengr' which is used in Icelandic, Faroese, and Danish; Norwegian uses 'gutt').