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From: dallison@beta.tricity.wsu.edu (David W. Allison)
Subject: Re: Norwegian and Danish (was : Re: Scots and English (was: Re: Flemish and Dutch))
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Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 17:08:18 GMT
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R.Wagenaar (se9402@artemis.wi.leidenuniv.nl) wrote:
: In article <Pine.OSF.3.91i.950505215610.18237A-100000@saul1.u.washington.edu
: Halldor Arnason  <harnason@u.washington.edu> wrote:
: >On 4 May 1995, Corey A. Reid wrote:
: >
: >Hmm, let's see.  Icelandic has four declension cases for nouns, pronouns,
: >adjectives and numbers, Danish has three for pronouns and two for nouns
: >while numbers and adjectives are not declined.  Danish has two genders,
: >Icelandic three.  Icelandic has the subjunctive mood, Danish doesn't,
: >Danish has indefinite article, Icelandic doesn't.  Icelandic verb endings
: >depend on person, Danish don't.  Yeah, pretty much the same grammar. 

: How about Norwegian and Danish? I've always believed that those two langau
: are so closely related, that there are no linguistic arguments to call the
: two sepearate languages. 

: Is that also a myth?

That most assuredly is a myth.  During the time the Danes ruled Norway,
Danish was imposed as the literary language.  While this had an effect
on the orthography and to some extent, the vocabulary; the pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary of the Norwegians is very much distinct from that
of the Danes.  This has been disguised by the fact that the literary
language, Bokmaal (excuse the obsolete orthography, but this is a seven
bit machine), has only slowly been brought in line with spoken Norwegian.
The speech of Norway is better reflected by Nynorsk.




--
      David Allison
      Prosser, Washington, USA
      dallison@beta.tricity.wsu.edu
