Did the swedish language come from german?
November 12, 2009 by
Filed under swedish language
I want to know if the swedish language came before the german or did the german langauge come before the swedish language?
November 12, 2009 by
Filed under swedish language
I want to know if the swedish language came before the german or did the german langauge come before the swedish language?
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I know that both are considered Germanic languages and that Swedish, along with Norwegian, Icelandic and Danish evolved from Old Norse, which evolved from proto-Norse. German is a Germanic language, of course, but I am unsure of its provenance. They are related, as are the peoples (Scandinavians being just one of the original Germanic tribes). I wouldn’t be surprised if they had evolved side by side rather than one “coming from” another.
Swedish – c. 1100AD (by convention; the Rök Stone (c. 9th century) is often cited as the beginning of Swedish literature)
Modern Swedish – 1541 Gustav Vasa Bible translation
Old High German – c. 550 AD
Middle High German – 1050-1350
Early New High German – 1350-1500
New High German – c. 1500AD language spoken today
They seem fairly the same age
They both came from “Proto-Germanic” spoken around 100 B.C.
Swedish was not a distinct national language until the 16th century. Until that time it was just a dialect of a common Scandinavian language along with Danish, Norwegian, Norn (Shetland Islands) and Icelandic dialects of Scandinavian. On the other hand, there are fragmentary written examples of the German language dating from as early as the 8th century A.D. So German really would be older.
If you go back far enough in time , about 300 B.C., Anglo-Saxon, German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages all come from a common proto-Germanic language which was probably spoken somewhere in what is now Poland and part of White Russia (Byelorus). Since there are no written records of Proto-Germanic, historical linguists have to reconstruct words in Proto-Germanic based on what is known about words in the existing Germanic languages.