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by veqz 1905 days ago
Wait, what? Norwegian is richer because of Danish?? (Also, what conquest?) I'd say it's the same language, just with lots of different dialects anyway.

What has enriched the Norwegian (and Danish and Swedish) language beyond the Germanic Scandinavian would be the importation of words from Latin, German, French, and English. All happening through trade and cultural influence, in roughly that order.

2 comments

And vice versa. What has enriched English is much of Scandinavian origin[1][2].

An recent example in Sweden involved a politician protesting about anglicanisation of the Swedish language. He wanted to replace some widely used English term with a Swedish equivalent. Tracing the origin easily revealed it was instead the English who are using a Scandinavian expression. Which Swedes are now finding convenient.

[1] English is a Scandinavian language (https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-history-languag...)

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old...

Conquest might indeed be too strong - occupation might fit better. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark%E2%80%93Norway#Langu...