( sv, Fårömål; Fårö Gutnish) is the dialect of

Gutnish Gutnish ( ), or rarely Gutnic ( sv, gutniska or ), refers to the original language spoken on parts of the islands of Gotland and Fårö. The different dialects of Gutnish, while stemming from the Old Gutnish ( sv, Forngutniska) variety of Old N ...

spoken on the

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages * Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...

island of

Fårö Fårö () or Fåre in Gutnish is a Baltic Sea island just north of the island of Gotland, itself off mainland Sweden's southeastern coast. It is the second-largest island in the province and it is a popular summer resort. It has its own language, ...

. The name "Fårö" (in

, ''Faroy'') is derived from the words , meaning island, and probably , which is a word stem associated with travel, as in the Swedish verb (to travel). The name Fårö probably means 'the island you have to travel to' or 'the traveler's island'. Mainland Swedes might misinterpret the name Fårö to be derived from , the

Standard Swedish Standard Swedish () denotes Swedish as a spoken and written standard language. While Swedish as a written language is uniform and standardized, the spoken standard may vary considerably from region to region. Several prestige dialects have develo ...

word for 'sheep', due to the many sheep on the island. That word is absent from Modern Gutnish, which uses the word (which in Swedish means 'lamb') instead. Gotlanders describe Faroymal as sounding "coarse" and as characterized by "mumbling". Fårömål is the most archaic dialect of Gutamal in terms of

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

and

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

. The dialect is closest to

Old Gutnish Old Gutnish or Old Gotlandic was a North Germanic language spoken on the Baltic island of Gotland. It shows sufficient differences from the Old West Norse and Old East Norse dialects that it is considered to be a separate branch. While vastly ...

and has retained, for example, the a-ending of the infinitive. There are also verb endings that no longer exist in the dialect of the main island (''Storlandsmål'') as in Swedish and Danish (e. g.: ja kimbur, däu kumbort, han kumbur). And while the unstressed endings are often dropped in the Main Island dialect, the Fårö Gutnish has preserved them (e. g. ''Han skudd' gleid' (gläid') ti Fol u kaup' skog'' on the main island → ''Han skudde gläida till Fola u kaupa skog'' in Farømål).Herbert Gustavson: ''Gutamålet - Indledning till studium'', Visby 2015, p. 19, ISBN 978-91-85803-88-0

Notes

References

External link

* {{Authority control Gotland North Germanic languages Endangered Germanic languages Languages of Sweden Scandinavian culture Germanic languages