North Germanic languages - Article Index

Encyclopedia - North Germanic Languages: Encyclopedia Ii - North Germanic Languages - Classification
There are two main branches, West Scandinavian and East Scandinavian. The eastern branch is heavily influenced by especially Middle Low G...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia - Danish Language
Danish (dansk) belongs to the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the In...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia - Chinese Language
The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ, 华语/華語, Huáyǔ or 中文, Zhōngwén) forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Days Of The Week: Encyclopedia - Days Of The Week
In English the days of the week are: Sunday; Monday; Tuesday; Wednesday; Thursday; Friday; Saturday. Saturday and Sunday are commonly c...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Norse: Encyclopedia - Norse
Norse is an adjective relating things to Scandinavia and may be used in a number of ways: Norse mythology, ancient Scandinavian beliefs ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin: Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the wes...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Goths: Encyclopedia Ii - Goths - Origins
Explaining the origins of the Goths, Jordanes recounted: The same mighty sea has also in its arctic region, that is in the north, a grea...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Spoken Chinese
The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main g...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Goths: Encyclopedia Ii - Goths - Origins
Explaining the origins of the Goths, Jordanes recounted: The same mighty sea has also in its arctic region, that is in the north, a grea...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Diminutive: Encyclopedia Ii - Diminutive - Australian English
Australian English is known for its use of diminutives with the "-za" suffix applied to the shortened version of a person's name, especia...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - Contacts With Other Languages
Romanian language - Dacian language. The Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient Dacians. It may have been ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Spoken Chinese
The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main g...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - History
In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse. This...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Old Norse Orthography: Encyclopedia Ii - Old Norse Orthography - Anglicized Spelling
For the convenience of English writers and readers the Old Norse characters not used in English are commonly replaced with English ones. ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin: Encyclopedia Ii - Vulgar Latin - Grammar
Vulgar Latin - The loss of the noun case system. The sound changes that were occurring in Vulgar Latin made the noun case system of Cla...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Old Norse Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Old Norse Language - Dialects And Texts
The earliest inscriptions in Old Norse are runic, from the 8th century (although there are 200 inscriptions in Proto-Norse going as far b...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Norwegian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Norwegian Language - History
The languages now spoken in Scandinavia developed from the Old Norse language, which did not differ greatly between what are now Danish, ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Identification Of The Varieties Of Chinese: Encyclopedia Ii - Identification Of The Varieties Of Chinese - Self-descriptions Of Speakers Of Regional Variants
Although linguists have made great progress in describing and classifying the regional varieties of Chinese over the last century, their ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - History
In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse. This...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Days Of The Week: Encyclopedia Ii - Days Of The Week - Order
The week as we know it was introduced by astromancers around the 3rd century, replacing the Roman calendar in use until then. The order o...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Scandinavia: Encyclopedia Ii - Scandinavia - Greater Scandinavia Norden
Like other regions of the world, the usage and meaning of the term 'Scandinavia' can vary depending on defining criteria. Some or all of ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Spoken Chinese
The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main g...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Scandinavia: Encyclopedia Ii - Scandinavia - Greater Scandinavia Norden
Like other regions of the world, the usage and meaning of the term 'Scandinavia' can vary depending on defining criteria. Some or all of ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Proto-norse Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Proto-norse Language - Phonology
Proto-Norse language - Accent. Proto-Norse had two accents. The stress accent fell on the first syllable. Proto-Norse also had a pitch ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Grammar: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Grammar - Nouns
Romanian grammar - Gender. Romanian nouns are categorized into three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, feature preserved from L...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - History
The Romanian territory was inhabited in ancient times by the Dacians, an Indo-European people. They were defeated by the Roman Empire in ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - Sounds
Main article: Romanian phonology Romanian has seven vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ə/, and /ɨ/. Additionally, vowel    » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - Grammar
Romanian nouns are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative, da...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - Writing System
The first written record of a Romanic language spoken in the Middle Ages in the Balkans was written by the Byzantine chronicler Theophane...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - Classification And Related Languages
Romanian is a Romance language, belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family, having much in common with languages...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - Geographic Distribution
Romanian is spoken mostly in Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro, Bulgaria, but there are also Romanian language sp...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Sound System
The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. It is quite prone to considerable reduction and assimilati...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Grammar: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Grammar - Articles
Romanian grammar - Definite article. An often cited peculiarity of Romanian is that it is the only Romance language where definite arti...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin: Encyclopedia Ii - Vulgar Latin - Vocabulary
Certain words from Classical Latin were dropped from the vocabulary. Classical equus, "horse", was consistently replaced by caballus, "na...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Grammar: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Grammar - Adjectives
Romanian adjectives determine the quality of things. They always define a noun or pronoun, numeral or copulativ verb, so they can only fu...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Grammar: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Grammar - Pronouns
There are eight personal pronouns in Romanian: The pronouns above are those in the nominative case. They are usually omitted in Romanian ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Scandinavia: Encyclopedia Ii - Scandinavia - History
The Scandinavians were christianized in the 10th-13th centuries, resulting in three consolidated kingdoms. Denmark forged from the Lands...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Scandinavia: Encyclopedia Ii - Scandinavia - Etymology
The etymology for the names Scandinavia and Skåne (Scania) is considered to be the same. The name is most probably derived from the Germ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin: Encyclopedia Ii - Vulgar Latin - What Was Vulgar Latin?
The name "vulgar" simply means "common": it derives from the Latin word uulgaris, meaning "common", or "of the people". "Vulgar Latin" to...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Identification Of The Varieties Of Chinese: Encyclopedia Ii - Identification Of The Varieties Of Chinese - Comparison With Europe
Differences in the socio-political context of Chinese language and European languages gave rise to the difference in terms of linguistic ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Scandinavia: Encyclopedia Ii - Scandinavia - Languages
Main articles: North Germanic languages, Finno-Ugric languages Most dialects of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible, ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Dialects
Standard Danish (rigsdansk or rigsmål) is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital of Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Writing System
Danish is written using the Latin alphabet, with three additional letters: æ, ø, and å, which come at the end of the Danish alphabet, ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Goths: Encyclopedia Ii - Goths - History
From Scandinavia, the Goths migrated and set up a kingdom in Scythia ( modern-day Ukraine and Belarus). In the third century, the tribe s...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Identification Of The Varieties Of Chinese: Encyclopedia Ii - Identification Of The Varieties Of Chinese - Implications Of The Language / Dialect Distinction
The idea of single language has major overtones in politics and self-identity, and explains the amount of emotion over this issue. The id...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Goths: Encyclopedia Ii - Goths - Symbolic Meaning
In Medieval and Modern Spain, the Visigoths were thought to be the origin of the Spanish nobility (compare Gobineau for a similar French ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Romanian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Romanian Language - Language Sample
English text: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Old Norse Orthography: Encyclopedia Ii - Old Norse Orthography - List Of Names
A list of some commonly encountered Old Norse names with some of their English versions follows. Old Norse orthography - Gods. Óðinn...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Sound System
The sound system of Danish is in many ways unique among the world's languages. It is quite prone to considerable reduction and assimilati...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Geographical Distribution
Danish is the official language of Denmark, one of two official languages of Greenland (the other is Greenlandic), and one of two officia...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Grammar
The infinitive forms of most Danish verbs end in a vowel, which in almost all cases is the letter e. Verbs are conjugated according to te...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Vocabulary
Most Danish words are derived from the Old Norse language, with new words formed by compounding. A large percentage of Danish words, howe...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Days Of The Week: Encyclopedia Ii - Days Of The Week - Names
In English all the days of the week are named after the ruling luminary, with most of the names coming from Anglo-Saxon gods and goddesse...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Danish Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Danish Language - Writing System
Danish is written using the Latin alphabet, with three additional letters: æ, ø, and å, which come at the end of the Danish alphabet, ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Grammar
In general, all spoken varieties of Chinese are isolating languages, in that they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure) ra...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Morphology
Chinese morphology is strictly bound to a set number of syllables with a fairly rigid construction which are the morphemes, the smallest ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - History
Most linguists classify all of the variations of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an origin...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Written Chinese
The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is complex. It is compounded by the fact that spoken variations evolved f...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Influence On Other Languages
Throughout history Chinese culture and politics has had a great influence on unrelated languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Sounds
The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus consisting of a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Other Transcriptions
Chinese languages have been phonetically transcribed into many other writing systems over the centuries. The phagsba script, for example,...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Chinese Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Chinese Language - Romanization
Romanization is the process of transcribing a language in the Latin alphabet. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese lang...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Goths: Encyclopedia Ii - Goths - History
Our only source for early Gothic history is Jordanes' Getica, (published 551), a condensation of the lost twelve-volume history of the Go...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Goths: Encyclopedia Ii - Goths - Symbolic Meaning
In Medieval and Modern Spain, the Visigoths were thought to be the origin of the Spanish nobility (compare Gobineau for a similar French ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Old Norse Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Old Norse Language - Modern Descendants
Its modern descendants are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian and the extinct Norn language of the Orkney a...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Norwegian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Norwegian Language - Vocabulary
Compound words are written together in Norwegian (see Nominal compositum), which can cause words to become very long, for example sannsyn...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Old Norse Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Old Norse Language - Sounds
Old Norse language - Vowels. The vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. The orthography marks the long vowels with an ...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Old Norse Orthography: Encyclopedia Ii - Old Norse Orthography - Standardized Spelling
For various reasons 19th century scholars came up with a standardized spelling of Old Norse which remains in use. It is primarily based o...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Proto-norse Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Proto-norse Language - Sources Of Proto-norse
Proto-Norse language - Runic inscriptions. The most important singular source of Proto-Norse are the runic inscriptions in the elder fu...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Old Norse Orthography: Encyclopedia Ii - Old Norse Orthography - Icelandic Spelling
In many modern Icelandic publications of Old Norse works, the modern Icelandic spelling is used. Since it is based on the same basic syst...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Norwegian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Norwegian Language - Grammar
The number of grammatical genders in Norwegian is somewhat disputed, but the official view is that Norwegian nouns fall into three gender...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Norwegian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Norwegian Language - Examples
Below are a few sentences giving an indication of the differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk, compared to the conservative (nearer to Da...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin: Encyclopedia Ii - Vulgar Latin - Phonology
Vulgar Latin - Vowels. One profound change that affected every Romance language reordered the vowel system of classical Latin. Latin ha...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin: Encyclopedia Ii - Vulgar Latin - What Was Vulgar Latin?
The name "vulgar" simply means "common": it derives from the Latin word vulgaris, meaning "common", or "of the people". "Vulgar Latin" to...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Vulgar Latin: Encyclopedia Ii - Vulgar Latin - Vocabulary
Certain words from Classical Latin were dropped from the vocabulary. Classical equus, "horse", was consistently replaced by caballus, "na...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Norwegian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Norwegian Language - Sounds
The sound system of Norwegian is fairly similar to both Danish and Swedish, though no official spoken standard exists. The variant genera...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Norwegian Language: Encyclopedia Ii - Norwegian Language - Written Language
Norwegian language - The Alphabet. The Norwegian alphabet is as follows: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Ø Å (...   » Read the article

Encyclopedia - Scandinavia: Encyclopedia Ii - Scandinavia - Etymology
The etymology for the names Scandinavia and Skåne (Scania) is considered to be the same. The name is most probably derived from the Germ...   » Read the article