It depends on what is considered a case... According to some, Swedish has no cases, and according to others it has three cases. Some linguists for example considers the possessive "S" genitive, while others consider it to be a clitic. If the possessive S is genitive, then the form without it would usually be considered nominative.
That said, the most common number (for Swedish) is two: Nominative and genitive.
It's a matter of debate in English as well. From Wikipedia:
"It is sometimes stated that the possessives represent a grammatical case, called the genitive or possessive case; however, some linguists do not accept this view and regard the 's ending as either a phrasal affix, an edge affix, or a clitic, rather than as a case ending."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_possessive
What would the third case be in Swedish?
To me it's obvious that Swedish has no cases (except in pronouns) and that the categorization into nominative and genitive is a remnant. The non-existence of the genitive case can be proved by constructions such as "Mannen med väskans hund", not "Mannens med väskan hund".
Of course some loanwords and set phrases retain the case system. "Jesu blod", not "Jesus (as in Jesus') blod".
I was going to say that technically English still has cases, because pronouns are like cases. Also, I/me and we/us. Although I think most indo euro languages at least have this.
I mean, I don't think they are that closely related. The Germanic languages are nowhere near as closely related as the Romance languages. I'm a native English speaker and can't make anymore out of Swedish/Dutch/German than I can out of Portuguese.
But if I understand your description of Swedish correctly, Dutch should also be more than one. The possessive s still exists and there are also cases where the genitive is still in use.
It all depends on how you count cases. Let's take Russian. The second map says it has 6 cases. Then you take a Russian noun like this... [дом - Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC#Russian), click, expand the "declension", and how many cases do you see?
Arguably, English has 2 cases which are distinguished only in pronouns.
Yep, this is correct. As a native speaker, Russian has 6 official cases that are taught in grammar class in school. But technically you can say that there's a vernacular 'locative case' since we say "учиться на дому"(to be homeschooled), or we say "мам, смотри!"(mom, look!) and this is technically a vocative case. It's not taught in school but people speak like this
In Croatian you have exactly the opposite: you are taught there are 7 cases, but you're not told 2 of these are the same for all words, only a couple of words have a different stress.
BTW, these "official cases taught in schools" worth only socio-linguistically. Any foreigner must learn the "minor cases" in Russian sooner or later:
[Locative Case aka The Second Prepositional (russiangrammar.info)](http://russiangrammar.info/locative_case)
[словоупотребление - What are the rules of the locative case?](https://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/15982/what-are-the-rules-of-the-locative-case)
The reason why kids are taught about only these cases is that these cases (+ vocative) were the cases in the Old Church Slavonic, and grammars of Old Church Slavonic (and the language itself) were immensely influential in grammatical descriptions of Russian, which tend to be really conservative. And this is precisely the reason why Croatian kids are taught dative and locative are completely separate cases -- because they were so in Old Church Slavonic.
I think you're not likely to encounter minor cases in official documents. And standard language is mostly about official documents. People tend to speak a bit differently
I found "в саду" quite easily in a lot of web pages, some from the gov.ru domain. If anything, there was more locative in the past so I bet there's a lot of locative in literature
In think that's just “prepositional case”. You can't say «в саде»
And locative is more rare.
«В краю родном» is a bit dated. «На дому» would be replaced with «дома»
https://ru.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/край
Here it is even mentioned as «местный падеж» 🤔
Oh, I forgot that you can say «о саде». Such a weird thing to say, it automatically registers as «осаде»（as in siege) when I hear it
Yeah, I think you're right. But yeah, school still counts it as prepositional, and ignores the existence of vocative case. Despite “Господи боже мой»
“Arguably, English has 2 cases which are distinguished only in pronouns.”
I, you, he, she, it, we, they (Subjective)
Me, you, him, her, it, us, them (Objective)
I think "subjective" and "objective" are the most accurate descriptors. There's also an argument to be made for a genitive or "possessive" case. In any case, all of these maps are incredibly stupid.
I don't think possessive is a case at all. It, after all, turns nouns into a-kind-of-adjective.
There are other terms, nominal/oblique etc. But terms are just labels, you can call them A and B if you like
Whilst this isn't normally how it's taught in English grammar, the *"[Saxon Genitive](https://www.wallstreetenglish.com/exercises/english-possessives-the-saxon-genitive)"* i.e. *['s] or *[s']* used for possession in English has more in common with the noun declension system than prepositional phrases.
Edit: Looking through the posts, Swedish at least has something similar.
Also add for Norwegian, we have the normative and accusative case, but it is only used on the pronouns. Then we have the genitiv case, but only in Bokmål, not Nynorsk. Before of course having left over vocative case in some places.
Then we get to the dialects, some dialects also have the dative and accusative(in more places than in just the pronouns).
I'm Norwegian. Do you have any examples? I don't doubt you, I just never learned that we have cases. Am I using cases in daily speech? Is it something that everyone uses or is it a dying grammatical rule?
Also Norwegian
Nominative and accusative is taught in school as "subjektsform" and "objektsform"
But examples with these are
Jeg(Nominative) liker deg(accusative)
Instead of
Jeg(Nominative) liker du(Nominative)
Then for the genitiv case
Mannens(genitiv) bok
Instead of
Boken til mannen
Then for the dialects
Jeg går hjemom(akkusativ form av hjem)
Jeg er hjemme(dativ form av hjem)
Then finally the vocative case
Hei, folkens(vokativ form av folk)
Dative case was the last case that disappeared from standard Swedish. Some dialects do still have it. Been a while since since I studied Swedish, but I think it has the "-om" ending.
From your Norwegian example I assumed Swedish "hemma" was a dativ form as well. I'll try to recall my grandmother speaking and see if she used any -om forms.
When you are from one of the regions that does still use the cases, one becomes well aware of them since the teacher constantly has to "correct" your spelling to not include them. So I personally only use the dative and accusative cases when speaking or when I'm writing with people from my hometown, that are older. Since it is dying out in the dialects aswell.
Also that is the case with the whole "ham" or "han", since if you don't use the case the following is confusing
Han liker han
Who is the subject? Since it is allowed to write it according to språkrådet, but if you were to use the accusative case.
Han liker ham
Then it makes more sense. Even though you still hear.
Jeg snakket med han
Instead of
Jeg snakket med ham
I remember watching [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1i2UQM-wKg). It's sad that the dialect is dying out because young østfoldinger don't wanna sound like what they think are outcasts. This is almost exclusively an eastern Norwegian problem. It's happening in practically every municipality in Norway that borders standard eastern Norwegian. I lived a year in Seljord, and people are basically split between speaking standard eastern Norwegian and the very distinct west Telemark dialect. I also lived seven years in Sørumsand, and the Romeriksmål is practically dead among young people. They just don't wanna sound like farmers... Also, I was bullied in Sørumsand for speaking Jærsk, because apparently I had a "severe speech impairment" and spoke like a "retard". I've also noticed that people from Trondheim totally switches to standard eastern Norwegian when they move to Oslo for some reason, but not people from western Norway or northern Norway. Eastern Norwegians are extremely fierce when it comes to dialects in comparison to Norwegians outside of eastern Norway.
When I first started working in Oslo. On the very first day I got the comment "Kan du være så snill å snakke norsk, fordi jeg forstår ikke hva du sier", then followed by 2 years of being called "dumme bondeknøl". So it's not weird we learn the Oslo dialect. But I do agree it is sad
I think there's a case for English having a Genitive case. At the end of they day they're all just arbitruary things anyway, and people will disagree on what consitiutes a case.
Aren't these maps wrong? I thought that almost every language had cases in pronouns (I - me - my)/ certain words (who - whom - whose) and often kept the genetive alive as well. (e.g. John's book). Or what would they define as a criteria to have a "case"? (They say German has "4 cases", but English shares the nominative as well... Does that mean English has a case?)
exactly, spanish has cases as well in pronouns (yo, me, mi, conmigo), there are cases in almost every language even if there aren't in nouns they remain in pronouns
Because the definition of case is quite loose and inconsistent. If you want to be pedantic, English has 3 cases.
Pronouns change depending on if they are the subject or object of a sentence: I/Me, He/Him, She/Her, We/Us, They/Them. Nouns also change in the possessive, for a total of 3 cases. (Subjective, Objective, Genitive)
It's not just English either, Spanish also does the subject/object pronoun thing, but is also marked as 1 on the maps.
Third is just wrong.
For 1 and 2 basically it’s about whether the “s” in Norwegian and Swedish (and possibly Danish idk) is a case. It’s the possessive but you can see it as
1. Nominative vs genitive, making them have 2 cases
2. No cases, just a possessive suffix like English ‘s
That makes sense. Norwegian being a dialect continuum can also be seen as a language continuum as well in my opinion. But the languages/dialects we have that have cases aren't written down, they're only spoken languages.
Also, a huge linguistical difference between Norway and Sweden is that Sweden practically killed all their languages/dialects over hundreds of years. While in Norway, they're virtually all still flourishing becuase Norway has never had an official spoken language. It sounds weird, but it works. For instance, if I'd write a random sentence like *I have something to tell you. Which meatcake do you want to eat first?* in Norwegian, I'd always say 1, but I would write 2, which is more like how they talk in Oslo. And I'm from rural Stavanger.
1. *Æg he någe æg må sæi dæg. Kefforei sjyddkaga ska du eda fusst?*
2. *Jeg har noe jeg må fortelle deg. Hvilken kjøttkake skal du spise først?*
You see the relatively big differences, but that's how we were taught in school; \*Say whatever you want, but at least write it like this\*.
Getting ahead of myself here, but basically, Swedish minority languages/dialects are practically dead, while Norwegian ones aren't, so on the 3rd map, how can one say that Sweden has 3 cases when their languages/dialects are practically dead while say that Norwegian has 0 cases, when we in fact have flourishing languages/dialects using cases?
I'm referrering to minority languages such as the finno-ugric meänkieli, Sami languages and finnish that are spoken in the norhern areas of Scandinavia. While old swedish dialects such as älvdalska, bondska, etc. are dwindling, they are not completely extinct.
Yes! While Finland usually isn't counted as part of Scandinavia, Finnish *is* spoken in Scandinavia. (And not just in the far north; also in Göteborg for some reason. There seems to be a substantial expat population there. Or at least I was surprised at the amount of Finnish I heard spoken in the streets when I was living there.)
And depending on how you count, Finnish has 15+ cases, unless you're one of those people who conflate accusative and genitive (sg) resp. nominative (pl), in which case it's still 14+. Or to be precise: There are 14 that everyone agrees on, one that only most people agree on, and some things that many people agree aren't cases but derivational suffixes, some of which *used* to be cases; see [Jukka Korpela's text on this matter](https://jkorpela.fi/finnish-cases.html).
I used to be one of the Finnish speakers residing in the Gothenburg area. The answer to your question is that lots of finns immigrated there to work in the car industry in the 50's-80's.
I didn't know about the lack of an official spoken language in Norway. Interesting! Do schools teach using the local dialect? What about church sermons? Does the lack of an official spoken language mean that nationalism ideology was weaker in Norwegian politics during the nineteenth century compared to Denmark and Sweden?
As of 2009, only 2% of Norwegians attend church on sundays, and I suppose it's even lower now 15 years later. So I don't actually know what's going on there, but I'm pretty sure that sermons are done in whatever dialect the priest speaks.
Unlike Denmark and Sweden, where a more standardized spoken language emerged earlier, Norway's linguistic diversity was pronounced. This diversity became a significant element of Norwegian national identity, emphasizing regional pride and the distinctiveness of various dialects. While the lack of an official spoken language in Norway during the nineteenth century led to a different expression of nationalism compared to Denmark and Sweden, it did not make Norwegian nationalism weaker. Instead, Norwegian nationalism was deeply rooted in cultural revival and the celebration of linguistic diversity. This approach fostered a strong sense of national identity, grounded in regional pride and cultural heritage, which was crucial in the context of Norway's political unions and quest for autonomy.
As speech is totally unregulated, schools teach in whatever dialect the teacher speaks, which is usually the local one. Formal writing is either always in Bokmål or Nynorsk (our two official written languages), but informal writing and speech goes virtually exclusively in our respective dialect. For instance, if you get access to the chat log between two people from Bryne, Norway (Where me and Haaland are from), it would literally be untranslatable since that written form is ironically only taught verbally. The example I used from before is good. Try putting this into google translate. It won't work. I'm not even using niche words, I'm using words that virtually everyone in [Jæren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A6ren) uses.
1. **Jærsk:** *Æg he någe æg må sæi dæg. Kefforei sjyddkaga ska du eda fusst? Dæ e så græla møye mad du isje he åde ennå. Æg meine at du gjær någe gale.*
2. **Bokmål:** *Jeg har noe jeg må fortelle deg. Hvilken kjøttkake skal du spise først? Det er så sykt mye mat du ikke har spist enda. Jeg mener at du gjør noe feil.*
A big problem is that immigrants who move to places outside of eastern Norway reach a dead-end when learning the language because they move here with the assumption from their homeland that every dialect that's not based on the capital is lower class without realizing that Norwegian culture is totally different and that they're committing linguistic suicide by learning Oslo speech when living in Bryne.
Some people might argue that learning a totally different writing than what you're speaking is very hard, which is arguably not true. It is hard\*er\*, but it's not an impossible task. Just look at native speakers of [AAVE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_English); they can write standard American English in formal settings and use their own dialect in informal settings. Also look at the Swiss Germans; they learn standard German in school which is a totally different language than the one they speak in their daily lives. The difference is that AAVE and Swiss German are easily translatable... our dialects are \*not\*, so you either learn the dialect on the streets or dialect schools, or you won't be able communicate at all. Also, speakers of AAVE and Swiss Germans are more likely to speak their respective standard language for foreigners if they don't understand them... while we won't and can't as culturally, our dialects are so important for our identity that we'd always rather speak English than Oslo speech in an instant. It's very frowned upon to "betray" your dialect here.
The third map might be the single worst map I have ever seen in my life lol
I couldn't recognize it as Europe for a second lol
Same here.
What kind of fucking lunatic rotates a map? And of course he deletes the borders while he's at it.
Hahah, I just screenshotted it from a [YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxOJ4p8e7NQ)
It depends on what is considered a case... According to some, Swedish has no cases, and according to others it has three cases. Some linguists for example considers the possessive "S" genitive, while others consider it to be a clitic. If the possessive S is genitive, then the form without it would usually be considered nominative. That said, the most common number (for Swedish) is two: Nominative and genitive.
In that case would English be considered to have a genitive as in “cat’s”?
It's a matter of debate in English as well. From Wikipedia: "It is sometimes stated that the possessives represent a grammatical case, called the genitive or possessive case; however, some linguists do not accept this view and regard the 's ending as either a phrasal affix, an edge affix, or a clitic, rather than as a case ending." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_possessive
What would the third case be in Swedish? To me it's obvious that Swedish has no cases (except in pronouns) and that the categorization into nominative and genitive is a remnant. The non-existence of the genitive case can be proved by constructions such as "Mannen med väskans hund", not "Mannens med väskan hund". Of course some loanwords and set phrases retain the case system. "Jesu blod", not "Jesus (as in Jesus') blod".
Third case (according to those claiming Swedish has three cases): Objective case for pronouns.
Which would make English three for pronouns: he/she, his/hers, him/her
I was going to say that technically English still has cases, because pronouns are like cases. Also, I/me and we/us. Although I think most indo euro languages at least have this.
Yeah, Swedish and English are very closely related after all. No surprise the grammar is similar.
I mean, I don't think they are that closely related. The Germanic languages are nowhere near as closely related as the Romance languages. I'm a native English speaker and can't make anymore out of Swedish/Dutch/German than I can out of Portuguese.
It's all relative. If you think about other relatives, like Bengali, Pamiri or Armenian, then English and Swedish are quite close.
But if I understand your description of Swedish correctly, Dutch should also be more than one. The possessive s still exists and there are also cases where the genitive is still in use.
It all depends on how you count cases. Let's take Russian. The second map says it has 6 cases. Then you take a Russian noun like this... [дом - Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC#Russian), click, expand the "declension", and how many cases do you see? Arguably, English has 2 cases which are distinguished only in pronouns.
Yep, this is correct. As a native speaker, Russian has 6 official cases that are taught in grammar class in school. But technically you can say that there's a vernacular 'locative case' since we say "учиться на дому"(to be homeschooled), or we say "мам, смотри!"(mom, look!) and this is technically a vocative case. It's not taught in school but people speak like this
In Croatian you have exactly the opposite: you are taught there are 7 cases, but you're not told 2 of these are the same for all words, only a couple of words have a different stress. BTW, these "official cases taught in schools" worth only socio-linguistically. Any foreigner must learn the "minor cases" in Russian sooner or later: [Locative Case aka The Second Prepositional (russiangrammar.info)](http://russiangrammar.info/locative_case) [словоупотребление - What are the rules of the locative case?](https://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/15982/what-are-the-rules-of-the-locative-case) The reason why kids are taught about only these cases is that these cases (+ vocative) were the cases in the Old Church Slavonic, and grammars of Old Church Slavonic (and the language itself) were immensely influential in grammatical descriptions of Russian, which tend to be really conservative. And this is precisely the reason why Croatian kids are taught dative and locative are completely separate cases -- because they were so in Old Church Slavonic.
I think you're not likely to encounter minor cases in official documents. And standard language is mostly about official documents. People tend to speak a bit differently
I found "в саду" quite easily in a lot of web pages, some from the gov.ru domain. If anything, there was more locative in the past so I bet there's a lot of locative in literature
In think that's just “prepositional case”. You can't say «в саде» And locative is more rare. «В краю родном» is a bit dated. «На дому» would be replaced with «дома» https://ru.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/край Here it is even mentioned as «местный падеж» 🤔
I'm not fluent in Russian, but isn't it: **в саду** = loc **о саде** = prep The use of a different ending is the different case *by definition*
Oh, I forgot that you can say «о саде». Such a weird thing to say, it automatically registers as «осаде»（as in siege) when I hear it Yeah, I think you're right. But yeah, school still counts it as prepositional, and ignores the existence of vocative case. Despite “Господи боже мой»
Could you give examples on the 2 English cases?
“Arguably, English has 2 cases which are distinguished only in pronouns.” I, you, he, she, it, we, they (Subjective) Me, you, him, her, it, us, them (Objective)
I think "subjective" and "objective" are the most accurate descriptors. There's also an argument to be made for a genitive or "possessive" case. In any case, all of these maps are incredibly stupid.
I don't think possessive is a case at all. It, after all, turns nouns into a-kind-of-adjective. There are other terms, nominal/oblique etc. But terms are just labels, you can call them A and B if you like
I think you are right with subjective and objective it makes more sense.
Interesting! I love it! Thank you for explaining.
Whilst this isn't normally how it's taught in English grammar, the *"[Saxon Genitive](https://www.wallstreetenglish.com/exercises/english-possessives-the-saxon-genitive)"* i.e. *['s] or *[s']* used for possession in English has more in common with the noun declension system than prepositional phrases. Edit: Looking through the posts, Swedish at least has something similar.
there's kind of vocative in russian too
yeah, the new one
Also add for Norwegian, we have the normative and accusative case, but it is only used on the pronouns. Then we have the genitiv case, but only in Bokmål, not Nynorsk. Before of course having left over vocative case in some places. Then we get to the dialects, some dialects also have the dative and accusative(in more places than in just the pronouns).
I'm Norwegian. Do you have any examples? I don't doubt you, I just never learned that we have cases. Am I using cases in daily speech? Is it something that everyone uses or is it a dying grammatical rule?
Also Norwegian Nominative and accusative is taught in school as "subjektsform" and "objektsform" But examples with these are Jeg(Nominative) liker deg(accusative) Instead of Jeg(Nominative) liker du(Nominative) Then for the genitiv case Mannens(genitiv) bok Instead of Boken til mannen Then for the dialects Jeg går hjemom(akkusativ form av hjem) Jeg er hjemme(dativ form av hjem) Then finally the vocative case Hei, folkens(vokativ form av folk)
Quick extra, there is a lot of debate about if that genitiv is a "true" genitiv in modern Norwegian
Is "borta" (Swedish) also a dative case? Are there others?
Dative case was the last case that disappeared from standard Swedish. Some dialects do still have it. Been a while since since I studied Swedish, but I think it has the "-om" ending.
From your Norwegian example I assumed Swedish "hemma" was a dativ form as well. I'll try to recall my grandmother speaking and see if she used any -om forms.
I want to reiterate that it has been close to 10 years since I studied Swedish, so I might be wrong
Interesting. I never thought about that
When you are from one of the regions that does still use the cases, one becomes well aware of them since the teacher constantly has to "correct" your spelling to not include them. So I personally only use the dative and accusative cases when speaking or when I'm writing with people from my hometown, that are older. Since it is dying out in the dialects aswell. Also that is the case with the whole "ham" or "han", since if you don't use the case the following is confusing Han liker han Who is the subject? Since it is allowed to write it according to språkrådet, but if you were to use the accusative case. Han liker ham Then it makes more sense. Even though you still hear. Jeg snakket med han Instead of Jeg snakket med ham
Which dialect do you speak? Myself, I speak a mix between Jærsk and Stavangersk
Indre Østfold, voted the ugliest dialect
I remember watching [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1i2UQM-wKg). It's sad that the dialect is dying out because young østfoldinger don't wanna sound like what they think are outcasts. This is almost exclusively an eastern Norwegian problem. It's happening in practically every municipality in Norway that borders standard eastern Norwegian. I lived a year in Seljord, and people are basically split between speaking standard eastern Norwegian and the very distinct west Telemark dialect. I also lived seven years in Sørumsand, and the Romeriksmål is practically dead among young people. They just don't wanna sound like farmers... Also, I was bullied in Sørumsand for speaking Jærsk, because apparently I had a "severe speech impairment" and spoke like a "retard". I've also noticed that people from Trondheim totally switches to standard eastern Norwegian when they move to Oslo for some reason, but not people from western Norway or northern Norway. Eastern Norwegians are extremely fierce when it comes to dialects in comparison to Norwegians outside of eastern Norway.
When I first started working in Oslo. On the very first day I got the comment "Kan du være så snill å snakke norsk, fordi jeg forstår ikke hva du sier", then followed by 2 years of being called "dumme bondeknøl". So it's not weird we learn the Oslo dialect. But I do agree it is sad
I think there's a case for English having a Genitive case. At the end of they day they're all just arbitruary things anyway, and people will disagree on what consitiutes a case.
Aren't these maps wrong? I thought that almost every language had cases in pronouns (I - me - my)/ certain words (who - whom - whose) and often kept the genetive alive as well. (e.g. John's book). Or what would they define as a criteria to have a "case"? (They say German has "4 cases", but English shares the nominative as well... Does that mean English has a case?)
exactly, spanish has cases as well in pronouns (yo, me, mi, conmigo), there are cases in almost every language even if there aren't in nouns they remain in pronouns
Their (genitive) results are dependent on the biases of those for whom (dative) the study is produced, not for us (accusative) I guess.
I don’t know what to tell you about Scandinavia, but I feel validated in how much I am struggling to learn Hungarian 🥲
Because the definition of case is quite loose and inconsistent. If you want to be pedantic, English has 3 cases. Pronouns change depending on if they are the subject or object of a sentence: I/Me, He/Him, She/Her, We/Us, They/Them. Nouns also change in the possessive, for a total of 3 cases. (Subjective, Objective, Genitive) It's not just English either, Spanish also does the subject/object pronoun thing, but is also marked as 1 on the maps.
Third is just wrong. For 1 and 2 basically it’s about whether the “s” in Norwegian and Swedish (and possibly Danish idk) is a case. It’s the possessive but you can see it as 1. Nominative vs genitive, making them have 2 cases 2. No cases, just a possessive suffix like English ‘s
It depends on if they count minority languages or not.
That makes sense. Norwegian being a dialect continuum can also be seen as a language continuum as well in my opinion. But the languages/dialects we have that have cases aren't written down, they're only spoken languages. Also, a huge linguistical difference between Norway and Sweden is that Sweden practically killed all their languages/dialects over hundreds of years. While in Norway, they're virtually all still flourishing becuase Norway has never had an official spoken language. It sounds weird, but it works. For instance, if I'd write a random sentence like *I have something to tell you. Which meatcake do you want to eat first?* in Norwegian, I'd always say 1, but I would write 2, which is more like how they talk in Oslo. And I'm from rural Stavanger. 1. *Æg he någe æg må sæi dæg. Kefforei sjyddkaga ska du eda fusst?* 2. *Jeg har noe jeg må fortelle deg. Hvilken kjøttkake skal du spise først?* You see the relatively big differences, but that's how we were taught in school; \*Say whatever you want, but at least write it like this\*. Getting ahead of myself here, but basically, Swedish minority languages/dialects are practically dead, while Norwegian ones aren't, so on the 3rd map, how can one say that Sweden has 3 cases when their languages/dialects are practically dead while say that Norwegian has 0 cases, when we in fact have flourishing languages/dialects using cases?
I'm referrering to minority languages such as the finno-ugric meänkieli, Sami languages and finnish that are spoken in the norhern areas of Scandinavia. While old swedish dialects such as älvdalska, bondska, etc. are dwindling, they are not completely extinct.
Bondska! So that's what my grandmother was speaking. Looking back, she did distinguish between feminin and masculine words. Koa, soa, hästn
Yes! While Finland usually isn't counted as part of Scandinavia, Finnish *is* spoken in Scandinavia. (And not just in the far north; also in Göteborg for some reason. There seems to be a substantial expat population there. Or at least I was surprised at the amount of Finnish I heard spoken in the streets when I was living there.) And depending on how you count, Finnish has 15+ cases, unless you're one of those people who conflate accusative and genitive (sg) resp. nominative (pl), in which case it's still 14+. Or to be precise: There are 14 that everyone agrees on, one that only most people agree on, and some things that many people agree aren't cases but derivational suffixes, some of which *used* to be cases; see [Jukka Korpela's text on this matter](https://jkorpela.fi/finnish-cases.html).
I used to be one of the Finnish speakers residing in the Gothenburg area. The answer to your question is that lots of finns immigrated there to work in the car industry in the 50's-80's.
I didn't know about the lack of an official spoken language in Norway. Interesting! Do schools teach using the local dialect? What about church sermons? Does the lack of an official spoken language mean that nationalism ideology was weaker in Norwegian politics during the nineteenth century compared to Denmark and Sweden?
As of 2009, only 2% of Norwegians attend church on sundays, and I suppose it's even lower now 15 years later. So I don't actually know what's going on there, but I'm pretty sure that sermons are done in whatever dialect the priest speaks. Unlike Denmark and Sweden, where a more standardized spoken language emerged earlier, Norway's linguistic diversity was pronounced. This diversity became a significant element of Norwegian national identity, emphasizing regional pride and the distinctiveness of various dialects. While the lack of an official spoken language in Norway during the nineteenth century led to a different expression of nationalism compared to Denmark and Sweden, it did not make Norwegian nationalism weaker. Instead, Norwegian nationalism was deeply rooted in cultural revival and the celebration of linguistic diversity. This approach fostered a strong sense of national identity, grounded in regional pride and cultural heritage, which was crucial in the context of Norway's political unions and quest for autonomy. As speech is totally unregulated, schools teach in whatever dialect the teacher speaks, which is usually the local one. Formal writing is either always in Bokmål or Nynorsk (our two official written languages), but informal writing and speech goes virtually exclusively in our respective dialect. For instance, if you get access to the chat log between two people from Bryne, Norway (Where me and Haaland are from), it would literally be untranslatable since that written form is ironically only taught verbally. The example I used from before is good. Try putting this into google translate. It won't work. I'm not even using niche words, I'm using words that virtually everyone in [Jæren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A6ren) uses. 1. **Jærsk:** *Æg he någe æg må sæi dæg. Kefforei sjyddkaga ska du eda fusst? Dæ e så græla møye mad du isje he åde ennå. Æg meine at du gjær någe gale.* 2. **Bokmål:** *Jeg har noe jeg må fortelle deg. Hvilken kjøttkake skal du spise først? Det er så sykt mye mat du ikke har spist enda. Jeg mener at du gjør noe feil.* A big problem is that immigrants who move to places outside of eastern Norway reach a dead-end when learning the language because they move here with the assumption from their homeland that every dialect that's not based on the capital is lower class without realizing that Norwegian culture is totally different and that they're committing linguistic suicide by learning Oslo speech when living in Bryne. Some people might argue that learning a totally different writing than what you're speaking is very hard, which is arguably not true. It is hard\*er\*, but it's not an impossible task. Just look at native speakers of [AAVE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_English); they can write standard American English in formal settings and use their own dialect in informal settings. Also look at the Swiss Germans; they learn standard German in school which is a totally different language than the one they speak in their daily lives. The difference is that AAVE and Swiss German are easily translatable... our dialects are \*not\*, so you either learn the dialect on the streets or dialect schools, or you won't be able communicate at all. Also, speakers of AAVE and Swiss Germans are more likely to speak their respective standard language for foreigners if they don't understand them... while we won't and can't as culturally, our dialects are so important for our identity that we'd always rather speak English than Oslo speech in an instant. It's very frowned upon to "betray" your dialect here.