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Gutnish
Gutnish (US: /ˈɡuːtnɪʃ/ GOOT-nish), or rarely Gutnic (Swedish: gutniska or gutamål), is a North Germanic language spoken sporadically on the islands of Gotland and Fårö. The different dialects of Gutnish, while stemming from the Old Gutnish (Swedish: Forngutniska) variety of Old Norse, are sometimes considered part of modern Swedish. Gutnish exists in two variants, Mainland Gutnish (Storlandsgutamål or Storlandsmål), mostly spoken in the southern and southeastern portion of Gotland, where the dialect of Lau became the standard form on the Main Island (Lau Gutnish → Laumål), and Fårö Gutnish (Gutnish: Faroymal; Swedish: Fårömål), spoken on the island of Fårö. UNESCO defines Gutnish as a "definitely endangered language" as of 2010.
Some features of Gutnish include the preservation of Old Norse diphthongs like ai in for instance stain (Swedish: sten; English: stone) and oy in for example doy (Swedish: dö; English: die). There is also a triphthong that exists in no other Norse languages: iau as in skiaute/skiauta (Swedish: skjuta; English: shoot).
Many Gotlanders do not understand Gutnish, and speak Gotlandic (Swedish: gotländska), a Gutnish-influenced Swedish dialect.
There are major efforts to revive the traditional version of Modern Gutnish and Gutamålsgillet, the Gutnish Language Guild, organizes classes and meetings for speakers of traditional Gutnish. According to the guild's webpage, there are now 1,500 people using Gutnish on Facebook.
The contrastive vowels in Modern Gutnish are /ɪ/, /ʏ/, /e/, /œ/, /a/, /ɔ/, /u/. Of these, all but /u/ have a short and a long version. What is etymologically a long /uː/ has been broken into the sequence [ʉu].
A distinctive feature of Gutnish is the existence of a large number of sequences of vowel plus [ɪ] or [u] which form vocalic phonemes of their own. These sequences are the following: /eɪ/, /ɛɪ/, /œʏ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /ʉu/, /eu/, /au/, /ɔu/.
Some of these sequences alternate with short vowels between different morphological forms of the same lexeme, cf. such pairs as "veit" /vɛɪt̪ʰ/ 'white' (f.) ~ /vɪt̪ʰː/ 'white' (n).
Gutnish has many words of its own that make it different from Swedish. The following is a small selection of Gutnish's everyday vocabulary:
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Gutnish
Gutnish (US: /ˈɡuːtnɪʃ/ GOOT-nish), or rarely Gutnic (Swedish: gutniska or gutamål), is a North Germanic language spoken sporadically on the islands of Gotland and Fårö. The different dialects of Gutnish, while stemming from the Old Gutnish (Swedish: Forngutniska) variety of Old Norse, are sometimes considered part of modern Swedish. Gutnish exists in two variants, Mainland Gutnish (Storlandsgutamål or Storlandsmål), mostly spoken in the southern and southeastern portion of Gotland, where the dialect of Lau became the standard form on the Main Island (Lau Gutnish → Laumål), and Fårö Gutnish (Gutnish: Faroymal; Swedish: Fårömål), spoken on the island of Fårö. UNESCO defines Gutnish as a "definitely endangered language" as of 2010.
Some features of Gutnish include the preservation of Old Norse diphthongs like ai in for instance stain (Swedish: sten; English: stone) and oy in for example doy (Swedish: dö; English: die). There is also a triphthong that exists in no other Norse languages: iau as in skiaute/skiauta (Swedish: skjuta; English: shoot).
Many Gotlanders do not understand Gutnish, and speak Gotlandic (Swedish: gotländska), a Gutnish-influenced Swedish dialect.
There are major efforts to revive the traditional version of Modern Gutnish and Gutamålsgillet, the Gutnish Language Guild, organizes classes and meetings for speakers of traditional Gutnish. According to the guild's webpage, there are now 1,500 people using Gutnish on Facebook.
The contrastive vowels in Modern Gutnish are /ɪ/, /ʏ/, /e/, /œ/, /a/, /ɔ/, /u/. Of these, all but /u/ have a short and a long version. What is etymologically a long /uː/ has been broken into the sequence [ʉu].
A distinctive feature of Gutnish is the existence of a large number of sequences of vowel plus [ɪ] or [u] which form vocalic phonemes of their own. These sequences are the following: /eɪ/, /ɛɪ/, /œʏ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /ʉu/, /eu/, /au/, /ɔu/.
Some of these sequences alternate with short vowels between different morphological forms of the same lexeme, cf. such pairs as "veit" /vɛɪt̪ʰ/ 'white' (f.) ~ /vɪt̪ʰː/ 'white' (n).
Gutnish has many words of its own that make it different from Swedish. The following is a small selection of Gutnish's everyday vocabulary: