| Another important factor is density of population. Over 500 years ago, the people in Sweden and Denmark spoke East Scandinavian, which was one language, but that had a "dialect continuum" from south to north. But in the 1500s, Sweden gained independence, and both countries adopted protestantism, which meant both countries translated the bible. And with that action the languages actually split with Danish gravitating towards how it was spoken and spelled in Copenhagen, and Swedish gravitating towards how it was spoken and spelled in Stockholm. So Swedish and Danish are almost the same language, they've only been split for 500 years. But since Denmark is a more densely populated country, it means that Danish has changed faster. Swedish has been going through similar transformations as Danish, except slower. For example, Danish has gone further in vowelshifting y to ö, compare the word for key: "nyckel" in Swedish, "nøgel" in Danish. In some Swedish dialects people say "nöckel", but it hasn't made it to standard Swedish. Both languages have done consonant softening of g to j and k to g or ch, but Danish has also softened t to d, v to u, and p to b. And the sole reason for this is that Denmark has a six times higher population density than Sweden, with roughly the same population. Although the other theory on Danish language, namely that they've all stuffed their mouths full of potatoes before speaking, is still somewhat plausible. :-) |