Scandinavian languages

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:

>Historically, we ought to expect Norwegian and Icelandic to form a single
>branch of the tree, but nobody draws it that way: every tree I've seen puts
>Norwegian in a branch with Danish and Swedish, while Icelandic (usually
>together with Faroese) is off on a separate branch by itself.

-- well, at the time Iceland was settled (10th century CE) Scandinavian was
only weakly differentiated.

In other words, Icelandic was a West Norwegian dialect, but West Norwegian
wasn't much different from what was spoken in Zealand or Uppalsa.

After this Icelandic remained much more isolated and conservative than the
other Scandinavian languages.

Effectively, then, Icelandic is a branch off the trunk of Common
Scandinavian, not Norwegian.