Seminar 2

OLD GERMANIC LANGUAGES, THEIR

ALPHABETS AND WRITTEN RECORDS

I. Old Germanic alphabets.

1.1. The runic alphabet, its origin. Futhark and other
runic alphabets. Runic inscriptions
1.2. Learn the Runic alphabet and be ready to decipher
Runic inscriptions.
1.3. The Gothic alphabet.
1.4. The Latin alphabet.
II. Periodization of the Old Germanic language history.
Characteristics of periods.
III. Old Germanic languages and their written records.
3.1. East Germanic languages.
3.2. West Germanic languages: Old English, Old High
German, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian.
3.3. Old Norse and its division into eastern and western
subgroups.
3.3.a) West Scandinavian l-ges: Icelandic;
Norwegian; Faroese.
3.3.b) East Scandinavian languages: Swedish; Danish.
 Answers
I. Old Germanic alphabets.
1.1. The runic alphabet, its origin. Futhark and other runic
alphabets. Runic inscriptions
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to
write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet
and for specialized purposes thereafter. The Scandinavian variants are also
known as futhark (or fuþark, derived from their first six letters of the alphabet:
F, U, Þ, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant is futhorc (due to sound changes
undergone in Old English by the same six letters). Runology is the study of the
runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology
forms a specialized branch of Germanic linguistics.

The earliest runic inscriptions date from around 150 AD, and the alphabet was
generally replaced by the Latin alphabet along with Christianization by around
700 AD in central Europe and by around 1100 AD in Scandinavia; however, the
use of runes persisted for specialized purposes in Scandinavia, longest in rural
Sweden until the early twentieth century (used mainly for decoration as runes in
Dalarna and on Runic calendars).

The three best-known runic alphabets are the Elder Futhark (around 150 to 800
AD), the Old English Futhorc (400 to 1100 AD), and the Younger Futhark
(800–1100). The Younger Futhark is further divided into the long-branch runes
(also called Danish, although they were also used in Norway and Sweden),
short-twig or Rök runes (also called Swedish-Norwegian, although they were
also used in Denmark), and the Hälsinge runes (staveless runes). The Younger
Futhark developed further into the Marcomannic runes, the Medieval runes
(1100 AD to 1500 AD), and the Dalecarlian runes (around 1500 to 1800 AD).

The origins of the runic alphabet are uncertain. Many characters of the Elder
Futhark bear a close resemblance to characters from the Latin alphabet. Other
candidates are the 5th to 1st century BC Northern Italic alphabets: Lepontic,
Rhaetic and Venetic, all of which are closely related to each other and descend
from the Old Italic alphabet.
Each rune most probably had a name, chosen to represent the sound of the rune
itself. The names are, however, not directly attested for the Elder Futhark
themselves. Reconstructed names in Proto-Germanic have been produced, based
on the names given for the runes in the later alphabets attested in the rune
poems and the linked names of the letters of the Gothic alphabet. The asterisk
before the rune names means that they are unattested reconstructions. The 24
Elder Futhark runes are.

Run U Transliter IPA Proto-Germani Meaning

e CS ation c name

ᚠ f /f/ *fehu "wealth, cattle"

ᚢ u /u(ː)/ ?*ūruz "aurochs" (or *ûram

"water/slag"?)

ᚦ þ /θ/, ?*þurisaz "the god Thor,giant"

/ð/

ᚨ a /a(ː)/ *ansuz "one of the Æsir (gods)"

ᚱ r /r/ *raidō "ride, journey"

ᚲ k /k/ ?*kaunan "ulcer"? (or *kenaz

"torch"?)

ᚷ g /g/ *gebō "gift"

ᚹ w /w/ *wunjō "joy"

ᚺ h /h/ *hagalaz "hail"(the precipitation)

ᚻ

ᚾ n /n/ *naudiz "need"

ᛁ i /i(ː)/ *īsaz "ice"

ᛃ j /j/ *jēra- "year, good year, harvest"

ᛇ ï(oræ) /æː/( *ī(h)waz/*ei(h) "yew-tree"

?) waz

ᛈ p /p/ ?*perþ- meaning unclear, perhaps

"pear-tree".

ᛉ z /z/ ?*algiz unclear, possibly "elk".

ᛊ s /s/ *sōwilō "Sun"

ᛏ t /t/ *tīwaz/*teiwaz "the god Tiwaz"

ᛒ b /b/ *berkanan "birch"

ᛖ e /e(ː)/ *ehwaz "horse"

ᛗ m /m/ *mannaz "Man"

ᛚ l /l/ *laguz "water, lake" (or possibly

*laukaz "leek")

ᛜ ŋ /ŋ/ *ingwaz "the god Ingwaz"

ᛝ

ᛟ o /o(ː)/ *ōþila-/*ōþala- "heritage, estate,

possession"

ᛞ d /d/ *dagaz "day"

1.3. The Gothic alphabet

The Gothic alphabet (also called Wulfilian writing) was created in c. IV AD by

the Gothic bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila) who translated the Bible from Greek into
Gothic. We can say that the Gothic alphabet was created on the basis of the
so-called Greek unitary alphabet. Also the Goths were the first of the Teutons to
become Christians.

The Gothic script consisted of 27 letters of which 19 were taken from the Greek
uncial script with some admixture of Latin 'h’, j', 'r', 's', 'f ', 'q' and runic 'u' & 'o’
 The names of the Gothic letters are connected with the appropriate rune
names,but the alphabetical order is the same as in the Greek alphabet. Besides,
the Gothic letters have got the same numerical meanings as the Greek letters:
a-1, b-2, g-3… The symbols ‘kappa’ and ‘sampi’ have got only numerical
meanings 90 and 900 accordingly.

The fragments of Ulfila's translation of the Gospels are extent in manuscripts of

5th and 6th c. AD. The most important of them is 'the Silver Codex" (Codex
Argenteus). The manuscript is written on parchment with silver and golden
letters. It is kept now in Uppsala, Sweden. ---

The Gothic alphabet shouldn't be confused with the so-called ‘Gothic script’
(готичний шрифт)- a variety of the Latin alphabet (hand)

Usually, when publishing Gothic texts, the Wulfilian alphabet is transmitted in

Latin transcription. In this case, for the transmission of interdental [θ] Wulfila
transmitted with the help of the Greek letter ᴪ (псі), Germanists use the letter ꝥ,
borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon or Old Icelandic alphabet. To transmit Goth ƕ
(h + v) Wolfil used the Greek letter θ (тета). The letter θ is replaced by the letter
ƕ in a later period.
From the runic letter, graphonyms (names of letters) were also borrowed, which
denoted certain objects and categories.
1.4. The Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet, also called Roman alphabet, the most widely used alphabetic
writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and the
languages of most of Europe and those areas settled by Europeans. Developed
from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 BCE, it can be traced
through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet
used in Syria and Palestine about 1100 BCE.The earliest inscription in the Latin
alphabet appears on the Praeneste Fibula, a cloak pin dating from about the 7th
century BCE, which reads, “MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NUMASIOI” (in
Classical Latin: “Manius me fecit Numerio,” meaning “Manius made me for
Numerius”). Dated not much later than this is a vertical inscription on a small
pillar in the Roman Forum, and the Duenos inscription on a vase found near the
Quirinal (a hill in Rome) probably dates to the 6th century BCE. Although
experts disagree on the dating of these objects, the inscriptions are generally
considered to be the oldest extant examples of the Latin alphabet.
The Classical Latin alphabet consisted of 23 letters, 21 of which were derived
from the Etruscan alphabet. In medieval times the letter I was differentiated into
I and J and V into U, V, and W, producing an alphabet equivalent to that of
modern English with 26 letters. Some European languages currently using the
Latin alphabet do not use the letters K and W, and some add extra letters
(usually standard Latin letters with diacritical marks added or sometimes pairs
of letters read as one sound).

II. Periodization of the Old Germanic language history.

Characteristics of periods.
The Old English period: brief outline and main features

The historical development of a language is a continuous

uninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid
transformations. Therefore any periodization imposed on
language history by linguists, with precise dates, might
appear artificial, if not arbitrary. Yet in all language histories
divisions into periods and cross-sections of a certain length,
are used for teaching and research purposes. The commonly
accepted, traditional periodization divides English history
into three periods: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME)
and New English (NE). OE begins with the Germanic
settlement of Britain (5th c.) and ends with the Norman
Conquest (1066); ME begins with the Norman Conquest and
ends on the introduction of printing (1475), which is the start
of the New English period (NE) which lasts to the present
day. A famous English scholar Henry Sweet divides the
three main periods into early, classical, and late. Division
into chronological periods is based on two aspects: external
and internal (extra-linguistic and intra-linguistic). The
following periodization of English history is based on the
above-mentioned three periods; it subdivides the history of
the English language into seven periods differing in
linguistic situation and the nature of linguistic changes.
1. The first – pre-written or pre-historical – period, which
may be termed Early Old English, lasts from the West
Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing,
i.e. from the 5th to the end of the 7th c. It is the stage of
tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders (Angles,
Saxons, Jutes and Frisians). The tribal dialects were used for
oral communication; there was no written form of English.
The English of this period has been reconstructed from the
written evidence of other Old Germanic languages,
especially Gothic, and from later OE written records.
2. The second historical period extends from the 8th c. till
the end of the 11th century. The English language of that
time is referred to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon; it can
also be called Written OE as compared with the pre-written
Early OE period. The tribal dialects gradually changed into
local or regional dialects: West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian and
Northumbrian. With the rise of the Kingdom of Wessex, the
West Saxon dialect prevailed and most written records of
this period have survived in this dialect. OE was a typical
Old Germanic language, with a purely Germanic vocabulary,
and few foreign borrowings. OE was an inflected or
“synthetic” language with a well-developed system of
morphological categories, especially in the noun and
adjective. Therefore, Henry Sweet called OE the “period of
full endings”.
3. The third period, known as Early Middle English, starts
after 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, and covers the
12th, 13th and half of the 14th c. It was the stage of the
greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system
and by foreign influences – Scandinavian and French. Under
Norman rule the official language in England was French, or
rather its variety called Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman; it
was also the dominant language of literature. The local
dialects were mainly used for oral communication and were
little employed in writing. Towards the end of the period
their literary prestige grew, as English began to displace
French in the sphere of writing, as well as in many other
spheres. Early ME was a time of great changes at all the
levels of the language, especially in lexis and grammar.
English absorbed two layers of lexical borrowings: the
Scandinavian element in the North-Eastern area (due to the
Scandinavian invasions since the 8th c.) and the French
element in the speech of townspeople in the South-East,
especially in the upper social classes (due to the Norman
Conquest). Numerous phonetic and grammatical changes
took place in this period. Grammatical alterations were so
drastic that by the end of the period they had transformed
English from a highly inflected language into a mainly
analytical one. Therefore, H. Sweet called Middle English
the period of “leveled endings”.
4. The fourth period – from the later 14th c. till the end of
the 15th century – embraces the age of Chaucer, the greatest
English medieval writer and forerunner of the English
Renaissance. We may call it Late or Classical Middle
English. It was the time of the restoration of English to the
position of the state and literary language and the time of
literary flourishing. The main dialect used in writing and
literature was the mixed dialect of London. The literary
authority of other dialects was gradually overshadowed by
the prestige of the London written language. In periods of
literary efflorescence, like the age of Chaucer, the pattern set
by great authors becomes a more or less fixed form of
language. Chaucer’s language was a recognized literary
form, imitated throughout the 15th c. Literary flourishing
had a stabilizing effect on language, so that the rate of
linguistic changes was slowed down. The written records of
the late 14th and 15th c. testify to the growth of the English
vocabulary and to the increasing proportion of French
loan-words in English. The phonetic and grammatical
structure had undergone fundamental changes. Most of the
inflections in the nominal system – in nouns, adjectives,
pronouns – had fallen together. H. Sweet called Middle
English the period of “levelled endings”.
5. The fifth period – Early New English – lasted from the
introduction of printing and embraced age of Shakespeare.
This period started in 1475 and ended in 1660. The first
printed book in English was published by William Caxton in
1475. This period is a sort of transition between two literary
epochs - the age of Chaucer and the age of Shakespeare
(also known as the Literary Renaissance).Caxton’s English
of the printed books was a sort of bridge between the
London literary English of the ME period and the language
of the Literary Renaissance. The London dialect had risen to
prominence as a compromise between the various types of
speech prevailing in the country and formed the basis of the
growing national literary language. In this period the country
became economically and politically unified; the changes in
the political and social structure, the progress of culture,
education, and literature led to linguistic unity. Thus, the
national English language was developed. Early New
English was a period of great changes at all levels,
especially lexical and phonetic. The progress of culture and
economy led to the growth of the vocabulary. New words
appeared from internal and external sources. As for the
phonetic changes, the vowel system was greatly
transformed, which resulted in the growing gap between the
written and the spoken forms of the word (that is, between
pronunciation and spelling). The loss of most inflectional
endings in the 15th c. justifies the definition “period of lost
endings” given by H. Sweet to the NE period.
6. The sixth period lasts from the mid-17th c. to the end of
the 18th c. It is called “the age of normalization and
correctness”. The norms of literary language were fixed as
rules. Numerous dictionaries and grammar-books were
published and spread through education and writing. During
this period the English language extended its area far beyond
the borders of the British Isles, first of all to North America.
The 18th c. is called the period of “fixing the
pronunciation”. The great vowel shift was over and
pronunciation was stabilized. Word usage and grammatical
constructions were also stabilized. The formation of new
verbal grammatical categories was completed. Syntactical
structures were perfected and standardized.
7. The English language of the 19th and 20th c. represents
the seventh period in the history of English – Late New
English or Modern English. By the 19th c. English had
acquired all the properties of a national language. The
classical language of literature was strictly distinguished
from the local dialects. The dialects were used only in oral
communication. The “best” form of English, the Received
Standard, was spread through new channels: the press, radio,
cinema and television.
 The expansion of English overseas was due to the growth of
the British Empire in the 19th c. and with the increased
weight of the United States. English has spread to all the
inhabited continents. Some geographical varieties of English
are now recognized as independent variants of the language.
In the 19th and 20th c. the English vocabulary has grown
due to the rapid progress of technology, science, trade and
culture. There have been certain linguistic changes in
phonetics and grammar: some pronunciations and forms
have become old-fashioned, while other forms have been
accepted as common usage. It is apparent that an English
speaker of the 21st century uses a form of language different
from that used by the characters of Dickens or Thackeray
one hundred and eighty years ago. Therefore we may be
fully justified in treating the 19th and 20th c. as one
historical period in a general survey of the history of
English. But in order to describe the kind of English used
today and to determine the tendencies at work now, the span
of the last forty or fifty years can be singled out as the final
stage of development, or as a cross-section representing
Present-day English.

III. Old Germanic languages and their written records.

3.1. East Germanic languages.

East Germanic languages, a group of long extinct Germanic languages once
spoken by Germanic tribes located between the middle Oder and the Vistula.
According to historical tradition, at least some of the Germanic tribes migrated
to the mouth of the Vistula from Scandinavia. Little is known of Gepidic,
Rugian, and Burgundian; some knowledge of Vandalic, Visigothic, and,
especially, Ostrogothic is provided by the names recorded in Greek and Latin
writings. The only East Germanic language on which there is extensive
information is the Gothic—more specifically, Visigothic—that was spoken
along the western shore of the Black Sea about the middle of the 4th century
CE.

Knowledge of Gothic is derived primarily from the remains of a Bible

translation made for the Visigoths living along the lower Danube by Ulfilas, a
Visigothic bishop of the Arian church, who lived during the 4th century. The
surviving manuscripts of this translation, which are not originals but later copies
thought to have been written in northern Italy during the period of Ostrogothic
rule (493–554), include considerable portions of the New Testament. The
best-known manuscript is the Codex Argenteus, written in silver and gold letters
on purple parchment and containing (in 188 leaves remaining from an original
330 or 336) portions of the four Gospels. Closely related to these biblical
manuscripts are eight leaves containing fragments of a commentary (called the
Skeireins in Gothic) on the Gospel According to John. Minor nonbiblical texts
include a fragment of a calendar, two deeds containing some Gothic sentences,
and a 10th-century Salzburg manuscript that gives the Gothic alphabet, a few
Gothic words with Latin transliteration, and some phonetic remarks with
illustrative examples.

In the 4th and 5th centuries Gothic (Visigothic and Ostrogothic) must have
spread to some degree, along with the conquering Goths, throughout much of
southern Europe; but there is no evidence for its survival in Italy after the fall of
the Ostrogothic kingdom, and in Spain it is doubtful that the Visigoths retained
their language until the Arab conquest. In the 9th century the German monk
Walafrid Strabo mentions that Gothic was still being used in some churches near
the lower Danube. After that time Gothic seems to have survived only among
the Goths of the Crimean Peninsula, who were last mentioned in the middle of
the 16th century by a Flemish diplomat named Augier Ghislain de Busbecq,
who, while on a mission to Constantinople in 1560–62, collected a number of
words and phrases showing that their language was still essentially a form of
Gothic.

The Gothic alphabet, said to have been created by Ulfilas, contained 27

symbols, two of which functioned only as numbers, while the remaining 25
were used as both numbers and letters. The shape, numerical value, and
ordering of the symbols show clearly that the alphabet was based primarily on
that of Greek, though a few symbols seem to have been adapted from the Latin
alphabet.

The Gothic consonant system seems to have been largely identical with that
assumed above for Proto-Germanic: p, t, k, kw (this last sound was probably
much like the qu in queen); f, þ, h, hw (this last sound was probably pronounced
much like the wh in white); b, d, g; s, z; m, n; l, r; w, j. The nasal n was
presumably velar before the velar consonants k, q, and g; in these positions it
was usually written (as in Greek) as g or gg. Examples of this spelling include
dragk ‘drank,’ igqis ‘you two,’ and briggan ‘bring,’ although n was occasionally
used as in Latin (e.g., þank ‘thanks,’ inqis ‘you two,’ and bringiþ ‘bring ye’).

The Gothic alphabet contained the five simple vowel symbols, i, e, a, o, and u,
from which four compound symbols, ei, ai, au, and iu, also were made; in
addition, w was used to transliterate Greek υ and οι (both of which were
pronounced as umlauted u /ü/ in 4th-century Greek). The generally accepted
development of the Proto-Germanic vowels in Gothic can be diagrammed as
follows:
Brackets in the Proto-Germanic line indicate that the two linked sounds
coalesced into one; brackets in the Gothic line indicate two variants of the same
sound that are in different phonetic environments. Proto-Germanic *i and *e
apparently first merged as a single vowel and then became Gothic i in most
positions but became ai before h, hw, and r. Similarly, Proto-Germanic *u∼o
became Gothic u in most positions, but au before h, hw, and r.

Gothic shows a number of archaic features that had been almost or entirely lost
by the time the other Germanic languages began to appear in writing; among
these are a passive voice and one type of past tense formed with reduplication, a
dual number in the first and second persons of its verbs and pronouns, and a
special vocative case in one noun class. At the same time, Gothic also shows
changes from Proto-Germanic, among which are the shortening of most long
vowels in final unstressed syllables and the loss of most short vowels (e.g.,
Proto-Germanic *erþō ‘earth’ became Gothic airþa, Proto-Germanic *stainaz
‘stone’ became Gothic stains). Finally, voiced fricatives that occurred or came
to occur at the end of a word are unvoiced (e.g., nominative *hlaiaz, accusative
*hlaian ‘bread, loaf’ changed to hlaifs and hlaif, respectively.

3.2. West Germanic languages: Old English, Old High German,

Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian.
OLD GERMAN LANGUAGES FROM INDO-EUROPEAN The separation of
the common Germanic language took place for a very long time. This process
is conventionally divided into two periods:

1. Early Germanic - from the era of gradual separation from the western
Indo-European area to the stabilization of the common Germanic language as a
separate system. At this time, it still retains many features inherent in the
Indo-European-based language: the relative autonomy of the syllable, the lack
of structural difference between stressed and unstressed syllables, the presence
in the paradigm of the name of two stressed types (with constant and moving
stress) , and in the system of verbs of two species-temporal bases, which are
conventionally called infect and perfect.

2. Late Germanic to the 1st disintegration into separate groups of Germanic

dialects. A distinctive feature of this period is, first of all, the stabilization of
the German system due to the stabilization of the common Germanic language
emphasis: it is fixed on the first syllable of the root and acquires a dynamic
(force) character, as a result of which there is an opposition of stressed and
unstressed syllables, stressed and unstressed vowels begin to develop
differently, there are phenomena of assimilation.

Already in the early Germanic language there were undoubtedly some dialectal
differences, which in the late Germanic period deepened and ultimately caused a
clear division of the Germanic language. In the era that followed the Great
Migration, territorial tribal dialects began to develop from Germanic tribal
dialects, and later the languages of nationalities, the Old Germanic languages,
began to form from them. This process was inextricably linked with the
formation of ancient tribes and tribal alliances of Germanic states and their
gradual strengthening. foreign population of the territories they conquered.

From the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, Bastards, only a few words
have come down to us - the names and names of places. One Gothic language
is known to us more or less fully thanks to the large coherent texts of the IV
century, which have survived to the present day. Tribal Ingwian dialects of
English, Saxon and Utah in the British Isles formed the Old English language.
Very similar to it were the dialects of the Frisian tribes, from which the
non-Frisian language was formed. The Saxon tribes that remained in the Baltic
lands used the dialects that became the basis for the creation of the ancient Xon
language.

Of the 3 Easton tribes located along the Rhine and the Bezer, the greatest role
was played by the Franks, whose dialects suffered different fates. Part of the
western Lower Frankish dialects in interaction with the dialects of the Frisians
and Saxons became the basis for the creation of the ancient Dutch language.
Other Western Franks mixed with the Romanized population of the former
Gaul. Middle and Upper Frankish dialects mixed with the dialects of the
Erminon tribes of the Alemanni, Svevi, Quads, Germundurs, Marcomanni, and
others — and gave rise to Old High German with them. . divided into two
branches. Western gave rise to the Norwegian language, the southwestern
dialects of which in the 1X-X centuries. They were transferred by immigrants
to Iceland, where in conditions of isolation they developed into a separate Old
Icelandic language, and to the Faroe Islands, where the local Faroese language
was also formed. The eastern branch of the Old Northern language became the
basis for the development of Old Swedish and Old Danish. The development of
individual Germanic languages had much in common, but there were also
differences due to different socio-historical circumstances in which the people
existed. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, language covered the period V of the
second half of the XI century. 3 sometimes the tribal dialects of the Germans of
Britain became the basis for the formation of territorial- language.

Northumbrian and Mercian from the English dialect, Wessex from the Saxon
dialect and Kent from the Utah dialect. Each of them left their memorabilia.
Few ancient English monuments of runic writing have survived. The most
famous of these is the inscription on a stone cross near the village of Rutwell in
the south-west of Scotland. Here are written in runes a small poem of religious
content. Another runic inscription in Old English is made on a box made of
whalebone found in France near the town of Clermont-Ferrand. This text
contains a few verses about the whale's whiskers. Both inscriptions probably
belong to the Vll century.

The monuments of Latin writing of this period are much richer. The
Anglo-Saxons had many different genres of poetry: table, wedding, funeral
cries, dwarf poems, and others. Some of them were recorded in later times from
oral narration. The most outstanding monument of the Anglo-Saxon epic is the
poem "Beowulf", which reached the list of the tenth century, but was composed
somewhere in the late VII-early VII century. It tells of the exploits of the
legendary hero Beowulf, who frees the neighboring people of the Danes from
the terrible and cruel monster Grendel, and in old age saves his own people
Gauts from the dragon that ravaged the whole country. Several Anglo-Saxon
lyric-enic and enic poems have also survived (The Traveler, The Cry of Deora,
The Sailor, The Ruins).

After the adoption of Christianity (late VI century.) In England begins to

develop clerical poetic literature, which is still clearly felt the influence of folk
epic tradition. These are translations of biblical legends to the legendary poet
Kedmon, who allegedly lived in the VII century.). Important literary and
linguistic monuments are the works of Kunevulf (late VIII-early 1X century) -
mainly the lives of the saints "Slena", "Andrew", "Julian" and others.

Prose in the Anglo-Saxons begins to develop in the VIII century. The most
important monuments are the works of King Alfred of Wessex (848-901) -
mainly translations of Latin works that were intended for study at school.
Alfred's translations were notable for their creative character and were far from
the then slavish imitation of the original. For example, in the translation of
"World History" Orosia Alfred inserted his original text, a story about the
travels of Okhtere and Wolfstan. Examples of late Anglo-Saxon clerical prose
were the works of scholarly clerics Elfrick (10th century) and Wolfstan (early
11th century). Wolfstan owns many sermons, which are marked by high pathos.
In terms of structure, Old English was an inflectional language. It had a
complex system of declension of nouns and verbs, a free order of words in a
sentence. The vocabulary was quite homogeneous, borrowings from other
languages were relatively small. Celtic excerpts were limited mainly to
toponymy. of the Latin language, the Anglo-Saxons borrowed words mainly of
a domestic nature, and some of them could get into their dialects on the
continent, others were borrowed on the island from the Celts. Later Latin
borrowings of the song workers, military, so-called "poems of the Kedmon
cycle" (they were attributed in the Old English language account for the time of
Christianization of England (since the VI century.).

Uh-XI century. English and Saxon dialects are heavily influenced by the
Scandinavian dialects spoken by the Vikings, who invaded the British Isles and
settled on their coasts. These Scandinavians were eventually assimilated, but
their language left a noticeable mark in English - about 650 lexical borrowings,
mostly of a domestic nature. Even such Scandinavian words were borrowed
into English, which did not seem to be needed, because there were appropriate
proper designations (modern English law, fellow guy, sky window, take, die).
The influence of Scandinavian dialects and their mixing with Old English could
accelerate a number of structural development processes, in particular the
process of disintegration of Old English inflection.

In 1066, England was conquered by the Normans and bilingualism was

established in the country. The official language of governmental acts, the
language of the royal court, the judiciary, the church and education is French
(especially the Norman dialect), while English is limited to the sphere of
colloquial use. Wessex's written tradition is declining in this regard, the Old
English language for a long time loses its normalizing centers and acts as
separate dialects.

The Old English language has existed since the 5th century. until 1550. From
most of this period, any significant monuments pnsemnosti in this language did
not reach. The oldest 11 specimens are individual words, names, etc. in Latin
manuscripts, especially in the Frisian Truth (802). Frisians are also credited
with several runic inscriptions (mostly on coins), but doubts are expressed about
their Frisian character. The most believable is the Frisian runic inscription on
the sword from Arum. which reads edlboda a sign of illness (edl corresponds to
d. English adl hooroba).

Certain signs that the ancient friezes had their heroic epic (mentions of the
poet-singer Bernlef), dwarf poems, ballads, etc. In later legal texts we come
across fragments of alliterative and rhyming poems, poetic formulas, paths, and
so on.

Among the linguistic monuments that have survived in later records, there is the
ballad "Thet Freske Riim", written around 1490. rhymed couplet; B tells about
how Charlemagne gave the Frisians a number of privileges; "The Saga of
Magnus", which assumes a shift in time plans: the saga tells of how the friezes
led by the standard-bearer Magnus defeated the Romans and for this
Charlemagne allegedly gave them "seven freedoms" (their content is given
here): rhyming chronicle of about XII vol. "On the ancient freedom of the
Frisians", which also reports (in the process) of the privileges granted to the
Frisians by Charles. Even in these monuments a significant place is occupied
by the legal theme (privileges and freedoms), all other monuments of ancient
Frisian writing are continuous legal texts compiled in the XI century. 1 lower.
The most important of them are: "Seventeen Privileges" (XI century),
"Twenty-Four Statutes" (end of XIII century), "Ancient Laws of Magistrates"
(XI century), "Diplomatic Code of Western Lauvers" (XI century, part of this
text is attributed to 1X century), etc. The so-called letters (Urkunden) are
interesting from the linguistic point of view. These are various documents,
letters, chronicles written in Middle Friesland between 1329 and 1573.

Ancient Frisian documents and monuments have come down to us in

manuscripts, which are usually called Rustrinsky, Brokmersky, Emsinaysky, and
others after the place of their final completion or collection. The oldest of them,
which originated in the territory east of the Lauvers River, are traditionally
called the Old East Frisian, and the later ones, which were created during the
XV century. (when the Frisian language was already driven out of these
territories), - Old West Frisian. This division, however, is criticized because it is
based not on linguistic but on local features. Based on the linguistic features of
these texts, among them are the monuments of the classical Old Frisian period
and post-classical, and among the latter there are separate letters.

Classical Old Frisian language is very homogeneous. It has a fairly consistent

spelling, the length of vowels is indicated only in extreme cases by postposition
e or doubling the letter. Deaf and sonorous interdental consonants p, d are
transmitted by a combination of letters th. Full vowels are often used at the end
of words. Vocabulary is almost exclusively German, many legal terms are
known only in Frisian. The sentence structure is stereotypical. A stylistic
feature of classical Old Frisian is the use of alliterations and poetic formulas.

Postclassical ancient Frisian texts represent several spelling systems. The

length of vowels is transmitted by the postposition e, doubling less often.
Instead of the letter g is often written gh, instead of th usually d or t, the order
sk, sc also sch, norad with and is used in. In inflections, the coincidence of
singular and genitive endings is often observed, the voices in the endings are
reduced, and e is most common. The great influence of Middle Low German
and Middle Dutch languages in spelling and vocabulary is noticeable. Under
the influence of Latin syntax, the sentence structure becomes clearer and more
logical. In the language of ancient Frisian letters, a characteristic phenomenon
is a very chaotic syntax, arbitrary spelling, a kind of special terminology, often
used stamps.

The ancient Axon language, used by the continental Saxons, covered the period
1X-XI1 centuries. As the Saxons became closer and closer to the southern and
central Germans, the Old Saxon language gradually acquired more and more
definite Erminonian features. Because of this, in the literature the 1st hypoderm
is called the Old Lower German language, which can hardly be considered
correct. There are few monuments of writing in the Old Saxon language that
have come down to us, and they are mainly of a religious nature. This is a poem
by Heliand ("Savior"), written in an alliterative verse. It describes the life of
Christ, but in the description of historical events and facts, in landscapes, etc.,
the influence of the German heroic epic is clearly felt. 3 manuscripts of the XII
century. preserved 6 thousand lines, it is believed that the original was created
in the 1X century. At the same time include an excerpt from the poem
"Genesis", which in 300 lines embedded the biblical legend of the creation of
the world. In both monuments, the Upper Nimes influences are already very
noticeable. Certificates, tax lists, blessings, etc. came from smaller monuments.

The Old High German part of the Frankish state, where the central and southern
Germanic tribes - the Franks, Alemanni, Bavarians, Thuringians and others -
was the formation of the German nation. Their tribal dialects gradually became
territorial, and their aggregation developed a new language system - the
language of the German nation. Later, in these territorial dialects, new local
differences appear, not related to the former tribal division.

Old High German language covered the period from VIII to XI centuries. It had
the following main dialects: 1) Middle German, which included: Middle
Frankish (Ripuarian and Moselle), Rhine-Frankish and East Frankish, and 2)
South German - South Frankish, Bavarian, Alemannic. Each of them had their
own writing.

Those Franks who lived in the western part of the Frankish state, as already
mentioned, switched to the language of the local population - vernacular Latin,
and it was this Gallo-Romance language began to be called frencisc Frankish
language. The native language of the Franks-German was called the word diu-
tisc literally vernacular (from diot people). Later, this name was extended to the
language of those Germanic tribes that lived beyond the Rhine (in the so-called
"inner" Germany). 3 mid-twelfth century. this word became the name of the
German people and their own language (modern German Deutsch).

The oldest monuments of the Old High German language were .glosses and
dictionaries-glossaries of the VSh century. Even in the days of paganism there
will be a monument "The Tale of Hildebrant" of the VII century. -excerpt of an
epic poem from the cycle about Dirich Bernsky. Southern and Low German
elements are combined in the language of "Song". This is a highly artistic work
of great value as a sample of the pre-Christian heroic epic of the Germans.

The prosaic Christian monuments of this period include a number of translations

of clerical literature, such as "1sidor", a treasure of theological treatise of the
VIII century, which is noted for its high skill and meaningful reproduction of
the original; "Tatian" is a very mechanistic translation of the Gospel. Great
importance in the late X- early XI century. had the translation activity of
Notker, the head of the monastery school in Saint-Gallen. He translated a
number of classical and religious works from Latin, these translations were used
in the schools of that time as textbooks. Notker also wrote many folk sayings
and proverbs. In his manuscripts he used a well-thought-out spelling system.
Notker first tried to create German philosophical terminology. But in his
language there are many Latin borrowings. From the XI century. There were
also translations of Abbot Biliram, a translation of the popular collection of
fiction stories "Physiologist" and others. An example of business prose of these
times is the "Strasbourg Oaths" of 842 in the Rhine-Frankish dialect.

Of the poetic monuments of this period, the Vesobrun prayer of 814 is

outstanding. Also interesting is the poem "Muspilli" (second half of the 1st
century) about the Last Judgment, a poetic translation of the Gospel performed
by Otfrid (60s years IX century.), Who for the first time in German poetry
departed from the alliterative verse and applied rhyme. The secular character,
albeit with expressive Christian motives, is a small rhyming poem "Song of
Ludwig", which celebrates the victory of the West Frankish King Louis 1II1
over the Normans in 881.

Phonetically, the Old High German language has significantly departed. from
the All-German. The alternation of vowels (ablaut) and the phenomenon of
umlaut are widely represented here. The main differences in the consonant
system are due to the second (Upper German) movement of consonants. In
most Upper German dialects, the breakthroughs b, d, and g have lost their
sonority. In the grammatical structure of the Old High German language still
retains significant remnants of inflection. The unstressed endings and affixes
here are still very diverse and full-sounding. But, starting from the tenth
century, the reduction of unstressed vowels intensifies, and different case and
personal endings begin to coincide. As a result, the old system of declension on
the bases is destroyed, the former division of weak verbs into classes is lost.
The fifth instrumental case is completely supplanted. There is still no clear
word order in the sentence structure, prepositional cases predominate over
prepositional constructions. Along with two-syllable sentences, one-syllable
sentences without a subject are common. The structure of a complex sentence
is not yet established, the number of its models is small. The influence of Latin
is very noticeable in the vocabulary of written monuments.
In the history of the Dutch language period VII-XI centuries. It is sometimes
called Old Dutch, but there are objections to this, because the Dutch language
did not exist at that time. At that time, the Lower Frankish dialects were used
by the Germans in the Netherlands and neighboring Belgium, so it is more
correct to call this period the lower Frankish markings of this language-gloss in
the "Salic truth" -code of laws of the Salic Franks period Carolingians. From
IX-X centuries. translations of some Psalms of the Old Testament have arrived.
Also important are the Lower Frankish glosses in various Latin manuscripts,
ancient toponyms of the Netherlands.

The Lower Franconian dialect interacted with the Frisian and Saxon dialects.
Frisian features in the Old Lower Frankish e, for example, the group of
consonants ft compared to the Frankish cht (n. Bruilott wedding), the loss in
many words of the prefixes ge-, be- (heel next to geheel at all, һoren along with
behoren belong), the combination sj , ij. (sjouwen); as well as many words of
Frisian origin. The Frisian influence is especially noticeable in the northern
provinces of the Netherlands. The influence of Saxon dialects is most
noticeable in the dictionary. XII century is already considered the beginning of
the Middle Dutch language.

In Scandinavia, until the Viking Age itself, a single Old Norse, or Old Northern,
language was widespread. It has preserved a number of other rather clear
features of the German-based language. For example, the ending of the
nominative singular of the separate classes of the declension -s, which in other
Germanic languages either passed into -g or disappeared, is preserved here as
R: Goth. dags, d. scand. dagaR day (<erm. * dagaz): Goth. wulfs, d. scand.
wulfaR в0вк (<герм. * wulfaz); Goth. gasts, d. scand. In the preservation of
the final unstressed vowels, the Old Norse language turns out to be even more
archaic than the Gothic language; cf. Scandinavian horna, Gothic haurn pie.
Debugging of final vowels and consonants, as well as loss of weakly stressed
vowels are becoming more frequent, for example: horna> horn plural, "hornu>
horn; B" landu> 1gnd plural country. "landu> lgpd country, * gastiR> geste
guest," herto> hjarta heart, etc. Before the vowels of the back row ziikae initial
j, w: * jerа> ar peak, * juke> ok yoke, * wulfaR> dfr wolf, * wurda The final n
first nasalizes the previous vowel, and then debugs: "geban> gefa lgeval to give,
* ohsan> oha znah. ox. Especially common assimilation of consonants, for
example: * gulra> goll eoloto, "finpan> finne to find, * stai- paR> steinn stone,
* stolaR> stoll cmilets.
Simultaneously with these sound changes, and partly as a consequence, the
conjugation of verbs is simplified: d . skand. "bipdiR you knit and" bindip ein
knits already sound the same bindr. kalla-sik 36atshsya> kallas (k) to be called,
named, in contrast to other Germanic languages, the denoted article, which
developed in the Old Norse language from the indicative pronoun, does not
stand before the noun, but joins its ending: dagr day> dagr-inn There are new
pronouns hann sin, hon ona, etc.

Even in the Viking Age, all North Germans perceived their tribal dialects as the
same language, which is usually called donsk tunga, ie Danish. individual
Scandinavian languages appeared only in the late Middle Ages.

In Х ст. the division of Scandinavian dialects into eastern and western groups
has already been clearly defined. The western group of Icelandic dialects is
poggan mal malic language. In the eastern group, the old diphthongs are
monophthonized: d. Isl., D. Norv. steinn-d. swed., d. dat. sten stone; d. isl., d.
norv. auga group umlaut conducted not as consistently as in the western: d. isl.
komr - d. swed., d. dat. komer he comes; d. isl. vӕri- d. swed .., d. dat. vare
sin would be. In the eastern group y is diphthongized in iu before the
combination -пgw-, -nkw-, -ggw-: d. Isl. sungwa-d. shiazd. siunga, d. lat.
siunge cnivati. The initial vr- in the east is preserved, in the west it is simplified
to g-: d. Swede. wripa Assimilation of consonant groups in the east occurs less
frequently than in the west: d. swed., d. dates. ӕпkia-д. isl., d. norv. ekkia
widow; d. sheed., d. dat. tantul-d. isl., d. norv. tottul nalto. The ending of the
dative case of the set in the bases in -i- in the west -upum, in the east -umin, for
example: d. Isl., D. Norv. 1otunuit-d. swed., d. dat. fotumin legs. The reverse
liability in the east is also simplified: d. Swed., D. Dates. kallas - d. iisl., d.
nora. kallask be called, named, Old Norse and Old- at this time have a common
name Poggen or D. Sheed. ogha, d. lat. in the eye. In the eastern d. Isl. guide
to return. to roll.

Ancient Danish language covers 1X-XVI centuries. In X1- XIII century

Denmark expanded its territory at the expense of the Baltic Slavs. In 1397, it
annexed Sweden and later became dependent on the Hanseatic League for a
while. The oldest monuments of the ancient Danish period were the runic
inscriptions of the Vikings, of which about 400 were found, the manuscript
"Codex runicus" (Codex runicus) of the late XIII century, where the laws of the
Danish province of Skåne ., these are the provisions of local laws, Zealand and
Jutland law, the manuscript "Law of the City of Flensburg", excerpts from a
collection of legends, medical advisers and more. Monuments of the XIV-XV
centuries - mostly translated literature of religious and didactic content. The
oldest Danish printed book is the Danish Rhymed Chronicle of 1495.

During the Viking Age, the ancient Danish language spread to other lands,
especially to eastern England and Normandy.

Phonetic changes are characteristic of the ancient Danish period:

monophthongization of diphthongs (5th century), transition a> o (13th century),
and others. But the most important of them was the so-called Danish movement
of consonants, still occurring in the XII-XII centuries. and consisted in the fact
that the deaf breakthroughs p, t, k after the vowel passed into the calls b, d, g,
and then into the fricative v, d, y. Only the first stage affected PNSM. At the
same time, there was a false feature of the Danish language, the so-called shock
("stod"), ie the laryngeal bow of the vocal cords during the pronunciation of
sound, similar to the German "hard attack". Until the end of the Old Danish
period, the Danish language continued to spread to other territories, in the XV
century. it became the state language in Norway. Ancient Vedic from the
Viking Age to the Reformation. Its oldest monuments are inscriptions in
younger runes, of which more than 2,500 have been collected. Written
monuments in the Latin alphabet appear in Sweden almost a hundred years later
than in other Scandinavian countries. The oldest of them are two sheets of the
monument of "Vestyot law", dating from 1225-50, while the full text is 1280.
From the beginning of the XIV century. records of local laws have come down
to us; to the middle of the XIV century. include the monument "Code of King
Magnus Erickson". The manuscript with an excerpt from the collection of
legends Codex Bureanus and others is also valuable. Somewhat later are the
lists of three knightly ballads and the rhyming "Eric's Chronicle", which
describes the events of Swedish history in 1249-1319. Monuments of the second
half of the XIV century - translations of the Bible and legends, prayer book,
educational and religious works. From secular monuments there are translations
of knightly novels, rhyming chronicles, medical treatises, collections of
proverbs, etc.

Phenomena of ancient Swedish phonetics were the establishment of a balance

between stressed and unstressed syllables, the transformation of all stressed
syllables in dovri (XV century.), the labialization of long and in o (the second
half of the XIV century.), etc. 3 XIII century. palatalization and cnipantization
g, k, sk (ie, their transformation into i. tg, 9) .Norway, the language existed from
VIII to XVI sg., ie

The old four-case system of declension of ancient Swedish nouns and adjectives
is gradually being destroyed, and the verb paradigm is being simplified.

In the twelfth century as a result of several crusades against the Finns, the
ancient Swedish language penetrated into Finland, which from 1284 became
dependent on Sweden.

The Old Norse language was formed on the basis of various tribal dialects, of
which there were especially many in Norway. The Old Norse period lasted
from the VII century. to 1525. The unification of the Norwegian tribes in the
1X century. created conditions for the formation of nationality and a single
language. During this time, the Norwegian language was written. During the
Viking Age, the Norwegian language spread beyond the country to Iceland, the
Faroe Islands and other islands.

The first monuments of the Old Norse language are inscriptions in younger
runes. There are about 350, mostly from the XI century. and piziyshih. The
Latin alphabet spread in Norway from the second half of the 11th century, but
the manuscripts reach us only from the second half of the 12th century —
fragments of laws, land books, and religious works. The most important of
them is a monument of the XIII century. "Royal Mirror", which contains a
dialogue between the father and the dream about the affairs and responsibilities
of the merchant, warrior and king. Also valuable is the manuscript "Saga of
Didric of Berne" of the late X11I century.

The end of the XV century. Norwegian is being pushed out of official use in the
country by Danish. The church, the judiciary, and the administration cease to
use it. The main area of its use remains conversation, everyday
communication, and only in rural areas, where the language is represented only
by dialectal varieties. In Norwegian cities, mixed dialects with Norwegian
phonetics and syntax and Danish vocabulary are formed.

The ancient Icelandic language was formed on the basis of the West Norwegian
dialects spoken by the first settlers. Chronologically, the Old Icelandic period is
limited to the IX-XVI centuries. Back in the XII-XIV centuries. The Dutch and
Norwegian languages were practically indistinguishable, calling them the same
name pognt mal. The name islenzkt mal arose only in the XV century.

The value of the ancient Icelandic linguistic heritage for German studies is
enormous. First, she got a lot of sights. However, the Icelandic runic
inscriptions (45 of them) are not of great importance, but the rich and original
literature in the ancient Icelandic language has been preserved - the Eddies, the
poetry of the Skalds, and the prose sagas.

The Latin alphabet probably came here from England in the late XI - early XII
centuries. The first manuscripts in Latin are known from the end of the century:
an excerpt from a book of sermons, two excerpts from records of Icelandic laws,
a description of the lands of the Rekjaholt monastery, a work on the church
calendar, and others.

Literary works of the heyday of Icelandic culture of the XII-XI centuries. have
come down to us in manuscripts dating no earlier than the middle of the
thirteenth century.

Folk eddic songs were collected in the so-called "Elder Eddie" (1st century,
reached in the manuscript of the twelfth century), which has three sections:
mythological songs, gnomic and heroic. Mythological songs "Eddie" have a lot
of great importance because they have no parallels in the work of continental
Germans. They give a very detailed picture of the religious beliefs of the
Scandinavians. Eddie's heroic songs explain the plots of the heroic epic that
developed among the Germans on the continent during the resettlement of
peoples (legends about Cigurda, the death of the Hibelungs, about Ermanarik,
Swangild, etc.).

The poetry of the Skalds (IX-XIII centuries) depicted the events of its time. The
wife-singers of the skald glorified the military exploits of the conig and his
warriors with the help of exquisitely complex verses. In contrast to the epic,
skaldic poetry, along with alliterative verse, necessarily had an inner rhyme and
a clear size. A characteristic feature of the poetics of the skalds were canings,
complex two-part metaphorical descriptions of a simple concept. There was a
competition between skalds in the creation of kenings, where they sometimes
showed extraordinary ingenuity.
The so-called "Younger Edda" (c. 1222-1223) was written by the poet Snorri
Sturluson as a kind of textbook for skalds, here he set out guidelines for
composing poetic works and provided examples to follow. This collection also
has three parts: 1) a review of mythology; 2) a collection and explanations of
the most important kenings; 3) metrics-description of poetic dimensions and
stanzas used in skaldic poetry.

Icelandic prose sagas were based on the oral stories of the first non-immigrants
from Norway to Iceland. Most of these works were recorded in the period
between the last quarter of the XII and the end of the XIII century. Among
them are family sagas that tell the story of prominent families, depict pictures of
life, family relationships and customs of the Scandinavians of the Viking Age.
Some sagas are legendary, fantastic, and based on less plausible facts and
names. Transmitted in the oral tradition, the sagas were gradually saturated
with fairy-tale motifs, folk fiction. An important feature of ancient Icelandic
phonetics is the lack of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. Among the
Germanic languages, this is one that has no indefinite article. In ancient
Icelandic pronouns, a double has survived. The vocabulary is characterized by
an extremely small number of foreign borrowings.

The Old Faroese language was also formed on the basis of the former
Norwegian dialects brought by settlers to the Faroe Islands in the second half of
the 1st century. Its phonetics and vocabulary are close to the West Norwegian
dialects, and its morphology is close to the Old Icelandic language. The oldest
monuments are several runic inscriptions and letters. The end of the XVI
century. land books reach us, and from the beginning of the XVII century.
protocols of the local parliament-lagting. The most important cultural and
linguistic monuments are folk ballads, composed since the XIV century. and
were recorded in the XVII century.
3.3. Old Norse and its division into eastern and western
subgroups.
Scandinavian languages, also called North Germanic languages,
group of Germanic languages consisting of modern standard Danish,
Swedish, Norwegian (Dano-Norwegian and New Norwegian), Icelandic,
and Faroese. These languages are usually divided into East Scandinavian
(Danish and Swedish) and West Scandinavian (Norwegian, Icelandic,
and Faroese) groups.

3.3.a) West Scandinavian l-ges: Icelandic; Norwegian;

Faroese.

Icelandic:Icelandic is a North Germanic language. As a West Scandinavian language,

it is most closely related to Faroese, extinct Norn, and western Norwegian dialects.The language
is more conservative than most other Germanic languages. While most of them have greatly
reduced levels of inflection (particularly noun declension), Icelandic retains a four-case synthetic
grammar (comparable to German, though considerably more conservative and synthetic) and is
distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Since the written language has not
changed much, Icelanders can read classic Old Norse literature created in the 10th through 13th
centuries (such as the Eddas and sagas) with relative ease.

Icelandic has very minor dialectal differences phonetically. The language has both
monophthongs and diphthongs, and consonants can be voiced or unvoiced.

The language of the sagas is Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse. The
Dano-Norwegian, then later Danish rule of Iceland from 1536 to 1918 had little effect on the
evolution of Icelandic (in contrast to the Norwegian language), which remained in daily use
among the general population. Though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages,
Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to the 16th century, especially in
vowels (in particular, á, æ, au, and y/ý).
Norwegian:Norwegian language, Norwegian Norsk, North Germanic language
of the West Scandinavian branch, existing in two distinct and rival
norms—Bokmål (also called Dano-Norwegian, or Riksmål) and New
Norwegian (Nynorsk).Old Norwegian writing traditions gradually died out in
the 15th century after the union of Norway with Denmark and the removal of
the central government to Copenhagen. Dano-Norwegian stems from the written
Danish introduced during the union of Denmark and Norway (1380–1814).
When in 1814 Norway achieved independence, the linguistic union with Danish
persisted, but educational problems due to the linguistic distance between
Danish and spoken Norwegian and to sociopolitical considerations, as well as
the ideology of “national Romanticism,” stimulated a search for a national
standard language.Ivar Aasen, constructed a language norm primarily from the
dialects of the western and central rural districts. This standard continued the
Old Norwegian tradition and was meant to eventually replace Danish. After
long research and experimentation, he presented this New Norwegian norm
(called Landsmål, but now officially Nynorsk) in a grammar, a dictionary, and
numerous literary texts. New Norwegian was officially recognized as a second
national language

Faroese: Faroese language, also spelled Faeroese, Faroese Føroysk,

language spoken in the Faroe Islands .Faroese belongs to the West
Scandinavian group of the North Germanic languages. It preserves more
characteristics of Old Norse than any other language except modern
Icelandic, to which it is closely related, but with which it is mutually
unintelligible. Because Danish was the official language of the Faroe
Islands, literary activity on the islands was minimal, though the local
dialects continued to develop. Traditional dance ballads were written
down after 1773 before the establishment in 1846 of an independent
orthography, and they make up the greater part of Faroese traditional
literature. Initially described by the Danish language scholar Rasmus
Rask—who wrote the first Faroese grammar (1811)—as a dialect of
Icelandic, Faroese is actually an independent language, intermediate
between West Norwegian and Icelandic and containing many Danish
loanwords

3.3.b) East Scandinavian languages: Swedish; Danish.

The North Germanic tribes settled on the southern coast of Scandinavia and in
Northern Denmark (since the 4th c. A.D.). They lived relatively isolated and
showed little dialectal variation at that time. It used the original Germanic
Alphabet called the Runes/the Runic Alphabet. It appeared in the 3rd – 4th c.
A.D. It has come down to us in runic inscriptions – separate words
written/carved on objects made of wood, stone, metal. It was spoken by all
North Germanic tribes.
In Scandinavia there were 3 kingdoms (Sweden, Denmark and Norway) that
were constantly fighting for dominance and they had 3 respective Ls (earliest
records in these Ls date back to the 13th c.): Old Danish – later it developed into
Danish; Old Swedish - later it developed into Swedish; Old Norwegian – was
the last to develop, later transformed into Norwegian
In the 8th c. A.D. sea-rovers and merchants founded numerous colonies on the
islands in the North Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean (the Shetland Islands, the
Orkneys, the Faroe Islands) and reached even Iceland and Greenland. Thus two
more North Germanic Ls appeared: Faroese (In the Faroe Islands the writing
was done in Danish for centuries. The first written records in Faroese appeared
only in the 18th c.); Icelandic (9th c. A.D.)