Svorsk () or Svorska () is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordssvensk(a)'' 'Swedish' and '' norsk(a)'' 'Norwegian' to describe a mixture of the

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

and

Norwegian language Norwegian ( no, norsk, links=no ) is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regio ...

s. The term ''svorsk'' is used to describe the language of someone (almost exclusively a Swedish or Norwegian person) who mixes words from his or her native tongue with the other language. The phenomenon is common, especially in light of the close business and trade ties between the two countries and the

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

between the two languages, the latter in its turn being due to the common ancestry and parallel development of both Norwegian and Swedish from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

(see ''

North Germanic languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also ...

''). The term originates from the 1970s. Individual Swedish

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...

s and phrases that are assimilated into a language, including Norwegian, are called '' svecisms'' (). This trend has been ongoing in Norwegian since the dissolution of the Dano-Norwegian Union in 1814; however, it gained momentum substantially after the

dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905 The dissolution of the union ( nb, unionsoppløsningen; nn, unionsoppløysinga; Landsmål: ''unionsuppløysingi''; sv, unionsupplösningen) between the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden under the House of Bernadotte, was set in motion by a resolu ...

and has been an ongoing phenomenon of Norwegian linguistics, and still is. Indeed, the prominent Norwegian linguist Finn-Erik Vinje characterizes this influx since

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

as a breaking wave.«Der lå vi et folk bag, et andet berømmeligt rige» Om svesismer i unionstiden 1814–1905
by Finn-Erik Vinje of the

Norwegian Language Council The Language Council of Norway ( no, Språkrådet, ) is the consultative body of the Norwegian state on language issues. It was established in 2005 and replaced the Norwegian Language Council (, ) which existed from 1974 to 2005. It is a subsidiar ...

. ''Page visited December 19, 2007''

References

{{Swedish language Norwegian language Swedish language North Germanic languages Code-switching Macaronic language

See also

References