1332
150. The development of the Nordic languages from the mid-16th century to the end of the 18th century: Sociolinguistic aspects
1. Swedish - it must reasonably be assumed- to a varying 2. Danish and Norwegian degree also in speech. It had been transformed 3. Icelandic and Faroese from a synthetic classical Germanic tongue 4. Literature (a selection) into a more modem, analytic language. It was also strongly coloured by Low German. The 1. Swedish more widespread the ability to read and write became, the more natura! it was that the old 1.1. The sociolinguistic situation around written norm, nurtured above all by the 1550 church, should be broken down and make way The Swedish language as it was around the for a modem language. It has traditionally middle of the 16th c., had undergone far been suggested that the impetus for the major reaching changes in terms ofvocabulary, mor changes affecting Swedish came from Ger- phology and, not least, syntax in writing and man. In the largest towns at least, and espe- 150. Sociolinguistic aspects 1333 cially the capital, bilingualism was no doubt we able to follow this variation through his- commonplace. German infiuence was clearly tory. However, from the beginning of the 17th in evidence in both public administration and c. onwards we do find samples of spoken dia- trade. Moberg (1989) has given an in-depth lects of Swedish in written texts. As for later account of the bilingualism of medieval Stock- periods, evidence of social differences in holm. She emphasizes that it must have been speech can be found in grammars, and also the result of intense day-to-day contact over in texts of an oral character, such as letters a long period, but that this was not a question and comedies, although sources of these types of a diglossic situation. Danish, too, exerted must be approached with a certain amount of a significant infiuence: in the late Middle Ages, caution. Obviously, we also need to reckon Sweden formed part of a union with Den- with the infiuence of one social class on an- mark-Norway, and a similar linguistic pattern other, or at any rate of higher classes on lower. prevailed in all three countries. At the macro level, the social development during this per- iod can be seen as an adjustment to the feudal 1.2. The sociolinguistic stratification conditions prevailing on the continent, with of spoken Swedish according to a powerful nobility and an infiuential urban Sven Hof merchant class, together with a reasonably To find a solid foundation for a study of so- well-educated clergy spread fairly widely cially determined linguistic differences, we across the country — three groups which stood must move on to the 18th c. Sven Hors Sven- out from the great mass of the peasantry. A ska språkets råtta skrivsått [On the correct clear linguistic marker of the social differences writing of the Swedish language] from 1753 was the use of the plural / instead of the sin- admittedly has as its primary aim the laying gular du as the form of address for persons down of authoritative rules on orthography, of higher rank. The common linguistic devel- but since it is Hors contention that correct opment of the Nordic countries came to an writing should be based on correct speech, his end for Sweden when it broke free from the discussion also brings him onto the subject of union in the 1520s. With the new Bible trans- variation in the spoken language and the so- lation of 1541, Sweden turned its back on the cial value of the different variants. Hof points Danish-infiuenced language of the union peri- out (§§117-122) that considerable linguistic od. It also laid a foundation for the linguistic variation exists in Sweden. Every province has unity of the country by providing much-need- its own mode of speech, which is rarely uni- ed guidance on orthography. form beyond a radius of a few tens of kilo- Beneath this relatively stable surface, how- metres. In addition to this regional diversity, ever, there must have been an immense there is also situational and social variation. breadth of variation in the spoken language. One difference is that existing between the lan- The modern Swedish that emerged in the final guage of the public and the private spheres. centuries of the Middle Ages cannot have been A typical feature of the speech variety of the in the repertoire of every Swede. Clearly it public sphere is that it preserves the old, longer must have been coloured to a greater or lesser forms of words which in private speech are degree by different regional substrates, which often abbreviated, giving rise to word pairs are also discernible in 0Sw. texts. It has long such as fader-far `father', eder-er `you, your', been held that, as early as the Middle Ages, hava-ha 'have' and sade-sa `said'. As Carin there were Swedish dialects which were rela- Ipstman (1992) shows, occasional instances of tively similar to those that would be recorded the shorter forms can be found even in texts at a much later date. Some modern-day rural from the Middle Ages, but it would be a long dialects exhibit features that are otherwise time before they were fully accepted in writing. known only from classical 0Sw., and which The spoken language of the private sphere en- sometimes are even older than that. It is al- compasses a good deal of variation, and Hof most inconceivable that a modern language divides it into two categories: umgångesspråk could have been superimposed on an archaic — a language of (polite or educated) conver- one without leaving traces in the form of social sation, used by the upper classes — and gemene differences. Presumably, therefore, a broad mans språk — the language of the common spectrum of spoken Swedish existed, with the man, used by the great mass of other Swedes. variety providing the basis for writing at one Thus, even in a single place, variations in end and a very archaic form of speech at the spoken language could occur. Hof describes other. Only to an extremely limited extent are the differences between the various styles of 1334 XIV. The development of the Nordic languages speech in some detail, quoting numerous could also assume another form in the lan- examples. In particular, he sheds light on the guage of conversation, -ena. According to relationship between Uppland speech and Wessen (1965, 200), this variant arose in the public speech (see especially §§ 336-345). 17th c. under the influence of the informal pro- Uppland speech, in the form used by the com- nunciation of the definite plural of non-neuter mon man or woman, is, he says, completely nouns. Innovations in educated colloquial out of place in the public sphere. The only speech were, in other words, able to compete form of it that is deemed acceptable is the successfully with developments in more for- variety used in more fashionable circles in mal language. As late as the beginning of the Stockholm and the neighbouring provinces. 20th c., a form such as husena 'the houses' (Roughly the same geographical demarcation could be identified as a "form of the future". had previously been proposed by Arvidi and Today, though, it is losing ground, displaced Columbus. See Widmark 1992, 165.) This by the old form husen, although it has gained higher variety of Uppland speech, according something of a foothold in the dialects. The to Hof, is the one that enjoys most prestige, language of polite conversation thus appears but as a rule its forms are still not accepted to have fought an at times successful, at times in the context of public speaking. The polite losing battle against the language of public conversational form ckihår `this', for example, speaking. To a certain extent it was also must be replaced in more demanding situ- adopted by the common people. Its downward ations with clatta. To Hof s way of thinking, diffusion must presumably have been medi- then, the norm-defining position of public ated primarily by the large servant class, and speech is virtually uncontested. A command above all in the towns. A linguistic infiuence of it also required a good command of the in the opposite direction would hardly have written language. According to Hof (§ 189), been natural. Ståhle suggests (1979, 210) that both sexes were generally able to read, and a the form solan 'the sun' may have been chosen good number of men and women could also as a hypercorrection of the dialectal sola. In write. In addition, he mentions (§ 338) that, the same way, although much later, husena among the well-read especially, the language may have declined in use because it had also of public speaking sometimes replaced the lan- become common among the broad masses of guage of conversation, a practice which he the people. When solen, husen finally also dis- views as unnatural. Thus, to Hof, a good mas- placed the forms found in aristocratic speech, tery of the language meant a firm grasp of both it was not because they actually existed to public speech and an educated language of some extent in the dialects, but rather because conversation. of the prestige associated with writing and Hof s categorization of the varieties of public speaking. Swedish makes it clear that we are concemed here with three different levels of speech, each of which must be described and taken into ac- 1.3. The language of polite conversation count if we wish to capture the changes oc- As has already been indicated, Hof makes it curring in the language. In certain cases this clear that the language of (polite) conversation tripartite divisjon is particularly clear (see embraced a good deal of local variation, but Widmark 1991). In public speech, the old -en that the Stockholm variety enjoyed the most form of the definite article of strong feminines prestige. The age of this type of conversational and the neuter plural was retained. In the local language is difficult to determine. It probably dialects of central Sweden — which are of no played a socially differentiating role and evolved concem to Hof — the same ending can appear over a long period, from the Middle Ages as -a or -i. In addition, Hof mentions a com- onward. In the 17th c., it strongly coloured pletely different form, -an (§ 338), associated the writings of aristocratic women, such as with the polite colloquial language of Stock- Agneta Hom's handwritten autobiography or holm. According to Ståhle (1979, 210, 215, Beata Rosenhane's letters to her family. When 226; also Lindstr6m 1993, 136f.), there is evi- their contemporary Johan Ekeblad penned dence of this form already in the late Middle letters from the court in Stockholm to his Ages, and it is quite common in the 16th and brother in Våstergiitland, he too used an in- 17th c. By Hof s day it was presumably on formal kind of Swedish, with quite a strong the decline. It was probably a hybrid form Stockholm ftavour, but its stylistic level is based on the -en of more elevated speech and markedly higher than that of the two noble- the usual dialectal form -a. Neuter plurals women. It may probably be assumed, then, 150. Sociolinguistic aspects 1335 that gender differences existed in such linguis- Lord's Prayer sounded different in Våsterg6t- tic usage at the time. land speech than in that of Stockholm. Excellent documentation of the speech of the more distinguished circles of Stockholm society towards the end of the 18th c. is pro- 1.4. Public speech/court language vided by a short divertissement by A. F. Risten, It is clear from Hors account that the impor- Några mil ifrån Stockholm [A few miles from tant stylistic variety he refers to as 'public Stockholm], performed in 1787. The author speech' (offentligt tal) was based essentially on was keen to ensure that the inexperienced ac- the written language. At the same time, he in- tors used realistic conversational language vokes this form of speech as a model for or- and therefore consistently wrote their lines in thography — a seemingly circular argument. that form. A detailed description of his speech- It should be noted, though, that Hof sees pub- imitating text is given by Grip (1901). To the lic speech primarily as a spoken language, modem reader, the upper-class speech which but points out that it has preserved word it reflects seems quite dialectal. Other sources forms which in everyday speech have been de- give a similar impression. See Hillman (1974), graded or changed in other ways. In other re- regarding the second half of the 18th c., and spects, too, it differs so much from private Widmark (1970), concerning the first half of speech that it can provide the basis for "cor- that c. Socially differentiated speech is also to rect speech". This normative variety is no be found in the school dramas of the 17th c. doubt the same one that is referred to else- Comedies like Carl Gyllenborg's Svenska where as 'court language' (hovspråk). Hof språtthliken [The Swedish dandy] and Olof himself does not use the latter term, but it was von Dalin' s Den avundsjuke [The j ealous man], employed by earlier writers of grammars both from the end of the 1730s, offer an insight (Tiållmann; Hiårne; Swedberg), along with into sociolinguistic rules which required con- the variants 'court Swedish' and 'court style'. siderable differentiation of the spoken lan- Other grammarians, too, mention the lan- guage. A striking illustration of this is the guage used at court as special in some way. varying use of second-person pronouns which Columbus, for example, points out that cour- we fuld in such texts. In the salons of the high- tiers do not use the flap I of everyday speech. est circles, the plural / is used between equals Petrus Lagerl6f (1691, 76) argues that correct and to address ladies. In the coffee-house, in spoken Swedish should be guided by the writ- all-male company, ni — a variant that had de- ten language, but makes an exception for the veloped in the spoken language — is used as language of the court, which he says can also a marker of everyday informality. Between in- be used in writing. Clearly, around 1700, timate female friends, / or du is used, depend- 'court language' was a variety that was re- ing on the setting. In an emotional utterance, garded as exemplary, and the term appears to a speaker may suddenly address someone as have been so familiar that it required no ex- du, the pronoun otherwise being mainly re- planation. Evidently, court speech had strict served for children and subordinates. Ser- rules of pronunciation — cf. Columbus' as- vants, in the presence of their masters, tend sessment of flap I. Swedberg asserts that to speak informally but correctly; in other omission of the au.xiliary verb har, hade 'have, contexts they are allowed to use their normal had' in subordinate clauses is a feature of this "low" language — which in the 19th c. at least speech style, but not of religious language. He could be referred to as "maid's language" (see thus makes it clear that the term 'court lan- Ståhle 1981). guage' refers to more than just pronunciation The conversational language of Stockholm but does not encompass written Swedish in in its pure form, then, was only spoken by a all its forms. Hiårne contrasts the language of relatively small group of people, but it was the court with what he calls bondska, `rustic this group who set the standard in and around speech', and it is mentioned as the antithesis the capital. Dalin, with roots in the province of Dalarna dialect as recently as the early 19th of Halland, appears to have used the same in- c. Evidently, what we are concerned with here formal style of speech in his comedy as the is a subdivision of the language into public Stockholmer Gyllenborg. However, at least as and private (see Widmark 2000 for further dis- far as pronunciation was concerned, Stock- cussion). The heavy emphasis placed on court holm Swedish seems to have had only a mod- language as the ultimate standard presumably est influence on other local conversational has something to do with the discussion, varieties. According to Hof (1772, 80f.) the above all in the 17th and 18th centuries, about 1336 XIV. The development of the Nordic languages
"the best language". A perception of what and viewed as superior to all forms of private constituted correct language and where it speech. The reason Hof makes no mention of could be found appears to have emerged at it may be that it had by then lost its specific an early date (see art. 166). In Sweden, the link to the court but retained a sense of "for- town of Nykiiping has for centuries been cited mal speech". Such a variety could still enjoy as the place where the best Swedish is spoken. high status in official contexts. Its uniform Its reputation in this regard can be traced back character enabled it to serve as a national to the 17th c. and hence linked to the court, standard and, for dialect speakers, it provided which at the beginning of that century often access to a larger speech community (see 1.5.). resided in the town and may be assumed to have more or less set its stamp on it (see Wid- mark 1992, 165.) 1.5. Sociolinguistic changes The court of the 16th c. has been described As has been indicated, the state of affairs de- as a large and distinctive institution, a society scribed by Hof was presumably established or within a society (Hellner 1966, 195 f.). It ac- at least becoming established in the 16th c., companied the king from one castle or palace and it subsequently persisted in all essential to another and had numerous functions, both into the 20th c. This apparent immutability, military and administrative. It attracted however, conceals a succession of major up- noblemen from different parts of the country. heavals. One change which, to some degree, Sons of noble families could complete their affected the whole of Sweden was that the pre- education there. Service at court could be con- dominant foreign infiuence since the Middle sidered necessary for anyone wishing to obtain Ages, of German, now gave way to French, special privileges or favours. It also provided a change that is clearly refiected in the lexicon. foreign contacts, since foreigners could form Ståhle (1984) provides a fuller picture of this part of the court and also visit it. On the oc- process. The generations around 1600 were casion of such visits, which would be sur- still brought up on a basic diet of German and rounded by much ceremonial, noblemen Latin. Sometimes the wave of French infiu- would be suramoned to assist in entertaining ence would later catch up with them, and the guest and securing trade. It is easy to see sometimes it would not. From court circles, how, in this special environment, a high degree French loanwords spread across the country of linguistic formality could also come to be (cf. Hall6n 2001). Those that had previously required. The public variety of speech confer- entered Swedish in a German guise would, in red status and may, for reasons of mutual more refined circles, often reassert their comprehensibility alone, have been a natural Frenchness, whereas in the dialect the old vehicle of communication. The private lan- German variants would survive. In syntax, a guage that must presumably have existed even Latin-German pattern was gradually super- among courtiers may have been restricted to seded by a French one (see Stenfors 1994). purely domestic settings. The careful pronun- Phonology was also affected: it has been sug- ciation which was such a strict requirement gested that a special /f/-sound, common in of court speech seems to have had its basis in Stockholm and especially among women, has the written language, though chiefiy in the French roots (see Widmark 1983 and the liter- guise it assumed when read aloud: in the ature cited there). The exercise of public office Middle Ages at least, this was how people presumably offered less scope for embracing most commonly encountered the written the latest linguistic fashions, which may ex- word. Even in medieval times, it would have plain why women appear to have made a been perfectly natural for reciters of texts to greater effort than men to adopt a refined avoid the slipshod pronunciation of everyday manner of speech. Among the highest eche- speech in favour of distinct, careful forms lons of society, French could take the place closely refiecting the speiling. What was new of Swedish in conversation, informal writing about the language of the court was primarily and cultural debate. A new salon culture had that careful speech variants began to be used evolved, with stringent rules of social inter- more widely, spreading into all forms of course. Thus, in the 18th c., upper-dass cul- speech bordering on the public, or at any rate ture appears to have made a radical break with those of a non-private character. For this to traditional values. happen, the court variety must presumably, This turning away from the old also had a to begin with at least, have been universally profound and complex impact on court lan- associated with considerable social prestige guage. The first indication that the latter was 150. Sociolinguistic aspects 1337 beginning to be held in less esteem came to- as his model (see Widmark 2001), while the wards the end of the 17th c., when the young much younger Dalin draws more on the rhe- noblemen of the capital attempted to substi- torical vigour of French in his serious passages tute their own conversational language for the of speech. court variety as the basis for the written lan- The old system of speech styles, as it had guage, thereby introducing a more phonetic developed or was developing at the beginning system of speiling. Probably it is a programme of the modern period, was thus still alive of this kind that we find in Samuel Columbus's around 1800, but its use had changed, and in En svensk ordeskbtsel [On the cultivation of some respects dramatically. Least affected was Swedish] from 1678, a work that was never the speech of the broad masses, who generally quite completed and that was not printed until found their natural geographic speech com- much later. It is written in a Swedish so co- munity in their parish and its immediate vi- loured by speech that it has been suggested cinity, sometimes resulting in a high deg,ree of that it is based on the local dialect of the local linguistic differentiation and the develop- author's childhood, but this seems unlikely, ment of mutually unintelligible dialects. The given Columbus' background as a well- increasingly important urban varieties emer- educated and fastidious poet (see Widmark ged from a dialectal substrate, which, accord- 1991). One reason why the new orthography ing to social class, was modified to varying of the later 17th c. in fact proved to be a blind degrees, primarily on the pattern of the court alley in the development of the language may language and, to a lesser extent, on that of be that a simple, oral style was perceived as the conversational language of higher Stock- alien in the polished, norm-bound culture of holm society. Most affected by the changes, the 18th c. Equally, though, the idea of ding- not least in terms of attitudes, was the highest ing to the old court language held little ap- stylistic variety, which in its original form of peal. Socially, it had declined and attitudes to a court language became outdated — though it had therefore changed. Paradoxically, the not without leaving enduring traces in reason for its devaluation was the fact that it Swedish. The feature which Jesper Svedberg had become a kind of national standard. In mentions as correct in court language, the a geographically and socially mobile society, omission of the finite auxiliary verb har, hade it was becoming increasingly important as an in subordinate clauses, is still alive and well auxiliary language, since the dialects were ill in written Swedish and sometimes, even now, suited to this purpose, being either socially occasions comment from the standpoint of stigmatized or incomprehensible. Because of good usage. this auxiliary function, the language of the court also began to be used as the language 2. Danish and Norwegian of polite conversation. Hof s verdict on this practice — a view he shared with other writers In Denmark-Norway the period from the Re- — was that it was unnatural: one of the basic formation to the Enlightenment and patriot- sociolinguistic rules of the time was that public ism presents a common story of literacy, and private should be kept apart. "Court lan- standardization of the written language and guage" thus came to be associated increasing- an embryonic spoken language, except that ly often with a lack of education, no doubt both Danes and Norwegians became literate also because many of those with only a little in Danish, and Danish was the only oral ver- leaming had a less than perfect command of nacular used for public affairs alongside Latin this style of speech. This new attitude persis- and German in both countries. ted, and what had once been the language of the court eventually became a despised "schoolmaster's Swedish" (see art. 166). The 2.1. The socio-cultural development of encounter between old and new is illustrated the period quite well by the two earlier-mentioned come- The Reformation led to a regionalization of dies by Carl Gyllenborg and Olof von Dalin Europe. The former Latin Christian unitary from the end of the 1730s. Both demonstrate culture of western Europe was split, and Den- very clearly how speech was differentiated on mark-Norway became part of the culturally the basis of sociolinguistic rules, but they differ German-dorainated Lutheran region. Being in their treatment of the highest stylistic var- Lutheran meant that great importance was at- iety. Gyllenborg seems to have used an un- tached to literacy, and reading skills in the ver- rhythmical chancery style of a German type nacular were common about 1700. Writing 1338 XIV. The development of the Nordic languages skills were more restricted and more related individuals bom within the realm of the Dan- to the market economy, i. e. more men than ish king had certain rights, irrespective of women could write, and more townspeople whether their mother tongue was Danish, than peasants; the oldest known Danish peas- Norwegian or German. ant diary is from an area in Schleswig where the market economy had already been intro- duced in the 16th c.; the Reformation also re- 2.2. Which domains were Danish? sulted in an orientation towards German and Danish gradually gained more domains from Germany, where the Lutheran universities Latin and German, as can be seen from the and scholars were situated. In other words: distribution of languages in different text types German language and culture had a great im- and genres from different periods. As an illus- pact throughout the whole period, especially tration of the perceived difficulties in using in Danish towns. Danish for scholarly writing, the grammarian With the Reformation, Norway was reduced Peder Syv, and enthusiastic advocate of Dan- from a kingdom in a personal union with Den- ish, wrote in the preface to his Danish gram- mark to a part of Denmark. Accordingly, only mar (1685): "In some places a whole clause one written language (Danish) was cultivated will be given in Latin to make it more intel- and standardized, and therefore the Reforma- ligible." tion led to domain expansion in Denmark but Towards the end of the period, all imagina- strengthened the ongoing development with tive literature in all genres was written in Dan- loss of domains and written language shift in ish, and the central administration of the king- Norway. dom was conducted in Danish (whereas the During the 17th c. the Danish kingdom con- duchies of Schlesvvig and Holstein were ad- tracted a great deal, but it was still a multi- ministered in German). national state unti11814, stretching from Hol- As regards spoken language, the language stein to the North Atlantic. Politically, the of command in the army changed from Ger- early modem period led to a stronger polity man to Danish 1773 (whereas it had always and more emphasis on education, and the last been Danish in the Navy), and Latin was re- part of the period was characterized by general placed by Danish as the language of instruc- standardizing efforts, from weights and mea- tion in secondary schools, but the last bastion, sures to law and language. the University of Copenhagen was not con- Demographically, Denmark changed from quered until 1830. a rather static country of villages and diminu- Among the elite we find extrovert, interna- tive market towns to a more mobile society tional language attitudes and a tendency for with many scattered freeholds and small- highly cultured individuals to demonstrate holdings and expanding towns at the end of their sophistication not by their Danish ac- the period. Copenhagen was the only large cent, but rather by mastering several foreign city, in 1801 10.8 per cent of the population languages and being able to switch to the ap- lived in the capital, where government and propriate language, be it Latin, French, Ger- administration, commerce and all institutions man or Italian, depending on the situation and of higher education were situated. interlocutor. At the Danish Court, for long Because of Danish hegemony and the cen- periods German was the rule more than the tralization of institutions and commerce in exception, and French was also in use, and Copenhagen, the Norwegian towns remained we know from autobiographies that German small. The vast majority of the Norwegian was used very much as the colloquial language population lived in the countryside, and the in many urban milieus, from the commercial peasants seem to have been more independent patrician class to plain artisans. Many ordi- and to have suffered fewer economic burdens nary citizens knew some German, especially than their Danish counterparts. Low German. Only the rural population Culturally, the period can be seen as a pro- tended to be monolingual, apart from Schles- cess of civilization, fmally resulting in a cul- wig, where many were bilingual and where the tural split into a high and a popular culture. border between spoken Danish and spoken During the whole period, there was a strong German gradually moved towards the north impact from German, to which must be added — a fact that passed rather unnoticed. some French infiuence from the last half of the 17th c. In 1776 a Danish right of citizen- ship was introduced, according to which all 150. Sociolinguistic aspects 1339
2.3. Written Danish, 1550-1800: tance of French rose during the 17th c., but a process of standardization the French impact was mostly an upper-class The basic standardization of orthography phenomenon and never strong, whereas Ger- took place in print during the 16th c., with man influence was felt very much at all societal the 1550 Bible as a first monument. The speil- levels. Many Danish equivalents of Latin or ing was not orthophonic, and some late me- French words have German paralleis, and it dieval changes were not expressed, for in- is impossible to decide whether they are Dan- stance the lowering of short voweis and weak- ish formations or calques. Puristic tendencies ening of final consonants. It was a conserva- were directed against Latin and especially tive or even restitutional orthography — an ad- French loans, not German ones; more com- vantage, we may suppose, for the Norwegian prehensive purism and anti-German language readers. attitudes belong to the 19th c. Variation in speiling, so common at the be- ginning of the period, decreased, the speiling of consonants was simplified, and regularity 2.5. Stylistic changes increased both in print and in written texts. Many lexical changes were caused by changes As a result the orthography was rather close in stylistic ideals from a broad and partly to modem orthographic norms by about 1700. Latin-influenced humanistic prose to a more Morphology lagged behind in the standard- gallant French-inspired style. ization process. Neither the plural of nouns The notion of "le bon usage" where "le lan- nor verbal inflexion were fixed until the end gage de la cour" was the standard, had al- of the period. Numeral inflexion was preserved ready been imported by the grammarians of in writing (but not in speech), whereas the the 17th c., but most of the realizations of distinction between masculine and feminine these ideas belong to the 18th c. This was sig- gender was dropped. This gender simplifica- nalled both in writing and in speech in the tion was registered by Copenhagen scribes emergence of a more sophisticated style where early in the period, and could probably be per- lucidity and brevity replaced the former prefer- ceived as a result of koineization processes in ence for redundancy, proverbs and popular the rapidly growing city. locutions, creating a style with shorter sentenc- Syntactically, several changes took place, es and a smaller, "purer" lexicon (cf. art. 192). from an old word order depending on topical- This sophisticated, pure style is known from ization or pragmatics to a new one with the written texts, but it is a matter of conjecture distinction between primary and subordinate how widespread it was in speech: the Danish clauses as the goveming principle. As a result milieus of this type of speech were few and we find a lot of syntactic variation, including small. verb-second and German type verb-final con- structions. At the end of the period, we fint' a topologically based distinction between 2.6. Spoken Danish, 1550-1800: Dialects main clauses and subordinate clauses in writ- and registers ten texts, like modern Scandinavian written language. The standardization of written Danish during this period can be followed in the extant texts. Our knowledge of the developments within spoken Danish is more fragmentary, but there 2.4. Lexical changes is every reason to believe that both conver- The largest changes took place within the lexi- gence and divergence occurred, and that the con. Early in the period there was an archa- variation within spoken Danish might have izing tendency to try to revitalize obsolete or become larger, since the extension of the do- dying words, and the grammarians of the 17th mains of spoken Danish is likely to have pro- c. encouraged linguistic cultivation and en- duced register differences to substitute for the richment to a large extent through expansion use of different languages for different pur- of the lexicon, primarily by introducing com- poses (Latin, French, High German and Low pounds. In practice, the Danish lexicon in- German). The contemporary grammarians creased very much through lexical transfers. distinguished between three ways of speaking: Throughout the whole period, transfer from that of the ordinary, illiterate man, the German took place (but High German had educated citizen's colloquial speech and public taken over from Low German). The impor- style. 1340 XIV. The development of the Nordic languages
The above-mentioned cultural development was in Danish, and from 1604 the old Nor- produced a more refined style within the elite wegian law was replaced by a Danish law. groups which diverged from the ordinary Teaching was in Danish or Latin, and since man's way of speaking. Throughout the peri- there was no university in Norway until 1811, od we find negative statements claiming that members of the civil services and the educa- the simple man's dialects were corrupted, but tional elite on the whole were Danish or had we cannot quote instances of tids leading to been educated in Denmark. The Danish writ- dialect convergence. The large majority of the ten language spread and expanded along a ver- population were urban or rural dialect speak- tical social axis in the Norwegian community, ers, and there was a radical differentiation as did spoken Danish (cf. art. 203). between geographic areas. The social condi- Tids banal colonial situation differs from tions for rural dialects were optimal, due to most others of tids type because of the inti- curtailed regional mobility of young peasants, mate genetic relationship between Danish and which helped to maintain local dialects. Add Norwegian, i. e. the Danish-Norwegian con- to tids the fact that many market towns had tact situation is one of dialect contact rather been founded and were self-contained and big than of language contact. Added to tids is the enough to establish their own dialects, and fact that the general usage pattern was the that as time went on, increasing social strat- same as in Denmark, with a distinct functional ification in these towns would allow for emer- differentiation between two codes, a public ging social dialects, too. The linguistic and versus a private colloquial one among socio-cultural distinction between town and educated people, with a vast majority of the countryside was very sharp, but social and lin- population being monolingual dialect speak- guistic differentiation was growing within the ers. towns, too. Public, formal Danish spoken by Norwe- The educated citizens' colloquial speech was gians was a Norwegian-based pronunciation not perceived as the "best" language by con- of written Danish. It seems to have been held temporaries. The best language was the ortho- in high esteem also in Denmark, in so far as graphic pronunciation that was used when contemporary Danish grammarians must speaking in public, in lectures, sermons and have had tids variety in mind when they men- orations. Syv (1663) commented that educated tioned Kristiania (now Oslo) among the towns Zealandic men spoke in a neat [Dan. sirlig, G where the best spoken Danish was found. zierlich] manner in public. There was a distinct A parallel line of development led to the functional differentiation between tids public emergence of an educated colloquial language style and the refined colloquial style used by ("den dannede dagligtale") that became the the same speakers in private. The refined col- mother tongue during the 18th c. for the loquial style was a forerunner of the modern educated and well-off citizens. Tids variety is spoken standard language, but it does not an amalgamation of Danish and Norwegian. meet the standard definition of "maximum It was influenced by (written) Danish, but its variation in use" (i. e. of being appropriate in specific Norwegian base was by far more a maximum of different domains). According prominent than within public language, and to the categorization by contemporary gram- varying degrees of dialectal substrata seem to marians, the situation in both the 17th and have represented a central component in the the 18th c. must be characterized as a sort of individual variants (cf. art. 206). diglossia, with one type of Danish used in pub- Apart from public domains such as the lic situations and another in private, parallel church and the courtroom, spoken Danish to the choice between Danish and some for- never gained ground outside towns. Tids eign language (Latin, German etc.). means that spoken Norwegian was main- tained in the shape of both rural and urban regional dialects during a period of nearly 400 2.7. Spoken language in Norway, years without a written Norwegian. 1550-1800 Towards the end of tids period, a Norwe- In writing, Norwegian was replaced by Danish gian national identity emerged among Norwe- about 1500, followed by the same shift within gian students in Copenhagen. They founded many public domains of spoken language. The Det norske Selskab [The Norwegian Associ- language of command in the army was Ger- ation], but their Norwegianness did not result man until 1773 (from then on it was Danish), in any efforts to create a Norwegian written in the navy it was Danish, in church everything language, which belongs to the next period. 150. Sociolinguistic aspects 1341
2.8. Copenhagen dialect and the prestige of the Copenhagen dialect indicated emergence of spoken Danish the basis of the future spoken standard. In Copenhagen was the only city by European Norway, the Danification of the public sphere standards; it was where educational and cul- was carried tlarough, and colloquial speech tural institutions were located and, as the seat among the educated was a compromise be- of the absolute monarch from the mid 17th tween Danish and Norwegian, but the com- c., it was also the location of central adminis- mon man had maintained his Norwegian dia- tration, the commercial aristocracy and no- lect. This gives an indication of the linguistic bility. The language of the Court cannot have battle of the 19th c. between Dano-Norwegian played any important role in the emergence and New Norwegian. of a spoken standard Danish, since the Court was German-speaking during the greater part of the period, but the concentration of pres- Icelandic and Faroese tigious elements present in Copenhagen pro- Icelandic vided the local colloquial speech with much prestige, and it might be characterized as an Linguistic status embryonic spoken standard. In morphology and syntax very few changes At times Copenhagen grew very fast, and have occurred since medieval times in Icelan- not surprisingly we find striking examples of dic, whereas several phonological changes simplifications like the reduction of genders took place especially during the 13th and 14th from three to two, common and neuter (as in centuries, cf. art. 202. The vowel mergers were modern standard Danish), during the 16th c., in part followed up in the spelling tradition, while the surrounding dialects maintained whereas the other phonological changes were three genders until the early 20th c. (Pedersen so systematic that they did not cause any need 1999). Regarding phonology, the Copenhagen for orthographic changes; their consequences dialect has a simpler vowel system than the were only some new (subconscious) reading Zealand dialects, which have many diphthong- rules (e. g. "rn always pronounced as dn" etc.). izations, as well as simplifications in the con- The written language could therefore retain sonant system, where n, nn and nd have merg- its conservative features without causing dif- ed in Copenhagen but only partly in the rural ficulties for the users. dialects. In these details standard Danish fol- lows the old Copenhagen dialect. In many other cases this is not true, e. g., the pronun- 3.1.2. The social situation ciation of V +
An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages
Edited by Oskar Bandle (main editor) - Kurt Braunmiiller Ernst Håkon Jahr - Allan Karker Hans-Peter Naumann • Ulf Teleman Consulting Editors: Lennart Elmevik - Gun Widmark
Volume 2
Offprint
Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York