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Faroese LanguageFaroese is a West Nordic or West Scandinavian language spoken by about 80,000 people in two main groups, about 48,000 in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 in Denmark. It is one of three insular Scandinavian languages descended from the Old Norse language spoken in Scandinavia in the Viking Age, the others being Icelandic and the extinct Norn. History Until the 15th century, Faroese had a similar orthography to Icelandic and Norwegian, but after the Reformation, the ruling Danes outlawed its use in schools, churches and official documents, which are the main places written languages survive in an essentially illiterate society. The Islanders continued to use the language in ballads, folktales, and everyday life. This maintained a rich spoken tradition, but for 300 years the language was not written down. As a written language, Modern Faroese has only existed since a standard was published in 1854 by Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb. Although this would have been an opportunity to create a phonetically true orthography, as in Welsh, he produced an orthography consistent with a continuous written tradition since the Old Norse. The letter , for example, has no phonemes attached to it. Also, although the letter 'm' corresponds to the bilabial nasal as it does in English, in the Dative ending -inum, it corresponds to the alveolar nasal 'n' due to phonological assimilation. Hammershaimb's orthography met with some opposition for its complexity, and a rival system was devised by Jakob Jakobsen. Jakobsen's orthography was closer to the spoken language, but was never taken up by the masses. In 1937, Faroese replaced Danish as the official language of the Faroe Islands. Alphabet The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters: - A, , B, D, , E, F, G, H, I, , J, K, L, M, N, O, , P, R, S, T, U, , V, Y, , ,
Further literature - W.B. Lockwood: An Introduction to Modern Faroese, Trshavn (Faroes) 1977 (no ISBN, 244 pages)
- Hskuldur rinson, Hjalmar P. Petersen, Jgvan Lon Jacobsen, Zakaris Svabo Hansen: Faroese. An Overview and Reference Grammar. Trshavn 2004 ISBN 99918-41-85-7 (500 pages, most comprehensive book about Faroese)
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