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Old Danish - Discussion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 1 of 10 22 August 2012 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm taking the liberty of creating this as a sort of place-holder for anyone who might
want to discuss the Old Danish language. I've always been interested in Old English, and have been studying German for a long time, and am always fascinated by the evolution of English from its Germanic neighbours and forebears, and the relationship between the modern Germanic languages, and their relationship to the corresponding old forms. It's a pretty big subject, and probably not fully documented, but fortunately there is some. I don't claim to be any kind of expert, just an interested amateur, and will probably be doing little more than dip my toe in. I've been keen on the idea of studying the Scandinavian languages in general for several years, although only took up (modern) Danish fairly recently. Something I had been reading coupled with something Iversen wrote in his multiconfused log inspired me to ask a question about his knowledge of Old Danish, which he kindly replied with some very useful links and quotations and translations of a segment of a very historic Danish legal document. I then went looking to see where else Old Danish has been discussed on here and so far have found an interchange between Iversen and Professor Arguelles from 2008, which is also very interesting. I didn't want to clutter up Iversen's log with any more questions, but it seemed that there was a useful discussion to be had, to which of course, Iversen is warmly invited, and anyone else who is interested. It would be nice to have Professor Arguelles back here again (for many things, not just this), but maybe that is being too optimistic. I will post all the links that seem to be relevant a bit later on. (I may need to use a different browser, as chrome often makes a hash of it, which is one reason to delay. The other is to first have a further search for other relevant threads, and then post a series of related links, hopefully with some useful structure to them. But see recent postings in Iversen's multicultural log, and also towards the end of "Germanic language family videos" in "Lessons in Polyglottery", around 7 September 2008 if you want to look before I get my link act together. Well, there aren't many people here apparently even studying modern Danish (or if there are, not many of them are posting), so I'm not sure how many people will be interested in Old Danish, but still, this is HTLAL after all, and the more obscure the better! :- ) Edited by montmorency on 22 August 2012 at 12:32am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 2 of 10 22 August 2012 at 3:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Given how close the (western) Scandinavian languages are even today, I guess my question as a tyro would be: Wouldn't the three languages have been even closer together 500 years ago? In other words, at what point is saying "Old Danish" not the same as saying "Old Swedish"? 800 years ago it was all Norse according to records, and both the native Scandinavians and outsiders stated in the surviving records of the time they all spoke one same language.
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| Quique Diglot Senior Member Spain cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4683 days ago 183 posts - 313 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 10 22 August 2012 at 9:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Do you know the Arkiv for Dansk Litteratur?
It's heavy with XIXth century authors (such as H.C. Andersen), but you can also find older stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 4 of 10 22 August 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
I guess you mean eastern (Danish, Bokmaal, Swedish), not western Scandinavian languages (Icelandic, Faroese, Nynorsk). There definitely was a difference between Old Danish and Old Swedish. Old Danish was much more progressive grammar wise, ie. it has lost most of the inflections pretty early while Old Swedish kept them. Additionally, there was not just a dialectal difference, but also a political one and those nations had different writing/spelling traditions (although spelling was not consistent within one nation, there are certain regularities that differ between those two nations). If you compare Old Danish with Old Icelandic, you see even greater differences. As today, the Scandinavian languages were mutually intelligible back then. You could count Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian even as 1 dialect continuum. Something similar could be said for Swedish and Danish somewhere in the runic era, but in the "Old ..." era (latin script, from about 12th century onwards) they were substantially different. Although I suspect the languages were still mutually intelligible, the differences seem greater to me than they are today. Edited by daegga on 22 August 2012 at 1:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4528 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 5 of 10 29 August 2012 at 4:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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If I'm not mistaken, Swedish and Danish are sister languages. But Norwegian is part of a different branch, the same one as Icelandic is it not? So even though Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are at this point in time mutually intelligible, I'd guess that Norwegian would stray further away from Swedish and Danish the farther back you go? As Norwegian is a West Scandinavian language, and Swedish and Danish are East Scandinavian languages. Would I be wrong in guessing that the reason why Norwegian is mutually intelligable with Swedish and Danish now has a lot to do with the fact that Norway was heavily influenced by Danish for about 500 years when Denmark and Norway were united?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm eager to learn as I'm fascinated by historical linguistics :) Edited by ZombieKing on 29 August 2012 at 4:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 10 29 August 2012 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||
What I have learned is that originally (early Viking age) we all spoke basically the same language, but sometime during the late Viking age it split into West Nordic and East Nordic. Icelandic and Norwegian ( and later Faroese) were the West Nordic ones and Swedish and Danish were the East Nordic ones. Later, due to Danish rule and dominance, Norwegian seized to exist as an independent language, other than in dialects. When Ivar Aasen decided to recreate a Norwegian language he therefore went to Western Norwegian rural areas and collected words and structures from that area. The result, Nynorsk, is therefore nick named West Norwegian Esperanto since it is a mix of a lot af dialects which is used only in writing, but not actually spoken by anyone. The rest of the country who spoke Danish due to the 400 years of Danish rule, slowly evolved into an independent Norwegian language. When I this summer went to Iceland I understood why Norwegian went the way it did from Danish, since Icelanders trying to speak Danish sound like Norwegians. The Swedish rule for a 100 years left no major traces in the Norwegian language As for the linguistic development within Sweden and Denmark, I believe that went at an independent slow pace, since they have always been independent and not ruled by anyone else. However, as far as I know, there was no point in time where the Scandinavian languages were not mutually intelligible. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4528 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 7 of 10 29 August 2012 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
That's very interesting. I had no idea that Nynorsk was actually somewhat of a constructed language, or should I say, dialect? I always thought it was a mere spelling reform. Since it differs from Bokmaal both in vocabulary and syntax (to a degree), would you consider it a separate language, or just another standard of Norwegian? I wonder if Nynorsk has in some ways became more similar to either Danish or Swedish on account of the altered vocabulary and grammar. What do you think, as a speaker of Norwegian? So would it be technically correct to classify Bokmaal as not a Western Scandinavian language anymore, but a hybrid language which is closer to the Eastern branch now? Also, I'm very interested in how Norwegian evolved from Danish into Bokmaal as it's known today. Did it happen naturally? Or did linguists and scholars put actual effort into changing aspects of Dano-Norwegian (Is there an official name for the Danish/Norwegian spoken by the Norwegians at that time?) into ones that were uniquely Norwegian? I'm sorry if I'm bombarding you with questions, but aside from East Asian languages, Germanic languages are my favourite and I particularly like the Scandinavian ones :) Edited by ZombieKing on 29 August 2012 at 10:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 10 29 August 2012 at 11:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have several times used Norwegian as a example of 'converging' development instead of 'diverging' development, in the sense that we here see a language (or dialect bundle) evolve in the direction of another language outside its own branch as defined by the historial linguists. And from a syncroncic perspective it would be misleading to lump Norwegian (even the Westerly dialects) together with ICelandic and Faroese.
The same kind of development has occurred for instance in Scots where English words have pushed out many original Scots terms, and quite generally it happens in all the places where dialects are getting closer and closer to a common uniform standard, as for instance in Italy. But in all these cases the langages in question were fairly closely related and mutually comprehensible - else you might have seen creolization instad of convergent evolution. In the case of Nerwegian the influence from Danish was stopped, both by Iver Aasen's movement (even though Nynorsk never became the main orthography in Norway) and by the separation from Denmark and later independence. If Norway still had been ruled from Copenhagen (through Christiania/Oslo), the Norwegians might have to watch TV in Low Copenhagenish as we Danes have to - and then it is an open question what would have happened to their language. Edited by Iversen on 29 August 2012 at 11:32am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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