Language in a unified Scandinavia

Hey, I wasn't sure if this should go in pre or post 1900, so I'm hoping that this is okay, seeing as how a unified Scandinavia would probably require a pre-1900 PoD.

My question is, how do you guys think the various Scandinavian languages would interact in a united Scandinavian country? I already know that Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are pretty close, would there possibly be the creation of a "Standard" Scandinavian language (with Danish/Norwegian/Swedish remaining local dialects, like Germany's regional dialects)? Or would this be a multi-lingual state? Or might one language (guessing either Danish or Swedish, depending on PoD) take over as the majority language?
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Hey, I wasn't sure if this should go in pre or post 1900, so I'm hoping that this is okay, seeing as how a unified Scandinavia would probably require a pre-1900 PoD.

My question is, how do you guys think the various Scandinavian languages would interact in a united Scandinavian country? I already know that Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are pretty close, would there possibly be the creation of a "Standard" Scandinavian language (with Danish/Norwegian/Swedish remaining local dialects, like Germany's regional dialects)? Or would this be a multi-lingual state? Or might one language (guessing either Danish or Swedish, depending on PoD) take over as the majority language?

It depend on how Scandinavia are unified, if unified by military might, we will likely see the language of the capital end up as standard language, if as a loose personal union, which later evolve into a federation we will likely see a mix between Danish and Swedish become dominant. If a result of Scandinavism we will likely see a more accidental unification more dominated by the literacy produced. I lean to it would look closest to Danish/Bokmål at least in written form, Danish use the most archaic spelling of the three languages, while pronouncement we will likely see the softer tones of Swedes and Norwegians dominate, simply because the harsh Low German pronouncement of Danish has spread from Copenhagen and the rural population had until modern day a more Scandinavian pronouncement.
 
Ehhh.... I'd argue that prior to the 20th century, none of those languages really even existed.

Like most of Europe, and indeed most of the world, Scandinavia was divided not into linguistic groups matching the states that existed then or that do today, but into a continuum of related dialects. There was a real change as you moved north into Lappland or east out of Swedish-Finland, because those areas had entirely different language families. To a much lesser extend, going south through Denmark revealed a noticeable linguistic "jump" as southern and northern Germanic dialects were quite different. But within the Iceland-Norway-Sweden-Denmark continuum.... there simply were no clear lines to be drawn.

What happened resembled what occurred in the rest of Europe. State boundaries were established based on military and economic realities. Each state was unitary and its court spoke a single dialect. Most literate people wrote in the court dialect or Latin. Very gradually, and mostly in the last 150 years, the court dialect became treated as the "National Language" and the majority of dialects (spoken by most of the population) were "wrong" and so public education "corrected" them.

In fact, compared to France, Italy, Britain, Spain, and Italy, the dialects of Scandinavia were much more closely related. As such, it would be a quite seamless process to absorb all the regional dialects into a single tongue. Said tongue would be a mixture of the court dialect and bits from "The Classics" - the Scandinavian written works that the state wants to identify itself with. The exceptions would be [1] Finnish, [2] Lappish (but they'd still be absorbed a fair bit), and [3] if the state was unified and run in a manner that alienated the majority of people in a region (Norway, say) then that region might retain a language as a self-identifier.
 
Ehhh.... I'd argue that prior to the 20th century, none of those languages really even existed.

Like most of Europe, and indeed most of the world, Scandinavia was divided not into linguistic groups matching the states that existed then or that do today, but into a continuum of related dialects. There was a real change as you moved north into Lappland or east out of Swedish-Finland, because those areas had entirely different language families. To a much lesser extend, going south through Denmark revealed a noticeable linguistic "jump" as southern and northern Germanic dialects were quite different. But within the Iceland-Norway-Sweden-Denmark continuum.... there simply were no clear lines to be drawn.

What happened resembled what occurred in the rest of Europe. State boundaries were established based on military and economic realities. Each state was unitary and its court spoke a single dialect. Most literate people wrote in the court dialect or Latin. Very gradually, and mostly in the last 150 years, the court dialect became treated as the "National Language" and the majority of dialects (spoken by most of the population) were "wrong" and so public education "corrected" them.

In fact, compared to France, Italy, Britain, Spain, and Italy, the dialects of Scandinavia were much more closely related. As such, it would be a quite seamless process to absorb all the regional dialects into a single tongue. Said tongue would be a mixture of the court dialect and bits from "The Classics" - the Scandinavian written works that the state wants to identify itself with. The exceptions would be [1] Finnish, [2] Lappish (but they'd still be absorbed a fair bit), and [3] if the state was unified and run in a manner that alienated the majority of people in a region (Norway, say) then that region might retain a language as a self-identifier.

I think this about sums it up.
 
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