Danish language

Classification and related languages

Danish belongs to the East Scandinavian languages, together with Swedish. Though Norwegian is classified as a West Scandinavian language together with Faroese and Icelandic, a more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility places Icelandic and Faroese in a separate Insular Scandinavian branch while Norwegian is considered to be a Mainland Scandinavian language and grouped with Danish and Swedish. Written Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are particularly close, though the phonology and prosody of all three languages differ somewhat. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand the others, though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand any of the other languages.

Related Topics:
Faroese - Icelandic - Bokmål

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