Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Page 230

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LE NORD
Attempts to establish something like a common Scandinavian
language have not been completely lacking in older times. The
most remarkable of these attempts is perhaps the so-called
“Bridgetine language” created in the late middle ages. As late as
the i6th century, a common translation of the Bible might per-
haps have brought into being a common Scandinavian ecclesias-
tical language; indeed, it was largely due to a common version of
the Bible that Danish became the common literary language for
Denmark and Norway for centuries. Another fact which points
in the same direction is the facility with which the former Danish
and Norwegian provinces adopted the Swedish literary language
when, in the 17th century, they became incorporated into Sweden.
Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian have undergone consider-
able changes since the Yiking Age, and in so doing they have to
some extent deviated from each other in their phonetic systems
and pronunciation. On the other hand, the areas in which they
are spoken are situated so close to each other, and there has been
so much communication between them that many of the changes
took place on parallel lines. No doubt there has always been an
unbroken flow of mutual influences, even if the roads which this
influence followed cannot always be traced. All three languages
have simplified the original inflection in the same way. The only
one of them to preserve special plural forms of the verbs is
Swedish (jag springer I run; vi springa we run; jag sprang I ran;
vi sprungo we ran — han dr he is, de aro they are; han var he
was, de voro they were, etc.). In connection with this simplifica-
tion of the inflection, they have adopted a number of parallel
changes in word order and sentence structure. The vocabulary
has very largely been increased by the same borrowings. Thus the
borrowing of a large number of Low German words during the
middle ages is a feature of all three Scandinavian languages.
Finally, the fact that Denmark and Norway used to have the
same literary language could not fail to exercise a unifying in-
fluence.
If one would attempt briefly to characterize the relationship
between the three neighbouring Scandinavian languages, the first
fact which presents itself is that Swedish and Norwegian are
definitely the two which show the greatest similarity as regards
pronunciation. One very rarely hears a Swede complain that
he has failed to understand a Norwegian lecture or piece of re-
citation, even if it is the first time he hears that language. Further-