Övdalian or Elfdalian ( or , ; or ) is a North Germanic language spoken by around 3,000 people who live or have grown up in the locality of Älvdalen (), in the southeast of Älvdalen Municipality in northern Dalarna, Sweden.
Like all other modern North Germanic languages, Övdalian developed from Old Norse, a North Germanic language spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements during the Viking Age until about 1350. Övdalian developed in relative isolation since the Middle Ages and is considered to have remained closer to Old Norse than the other Dalecarlian dialects.
Traditionally regarded as a Swedish dialect, but by several criteria closer to West Scandinavian dialects, Övdalian is a separate language by the standard of mutual intelligibility. There is low mutual intelligibility between Swedish and Övdalian, but, since education and public administration in Älvdalen are conducted in Swedish, native speakers are bilingual and speak Swedish at a native level. People who speak Swedish as their sole native language, neither speaking nor understanding Övdalian, are also common in the area.
Classification Övdalian belongs to the Northern branch/Upper Siljan branch of the Dalecarlian dialects or vernaculars, which in their turn evolved from Old Norse, from which Dalecarlian vernaculars might have split as early as in the eighth or ninth century,Levander, Lars, Dalmålet, vol. 1, 1925, pp. 37–38. i.e., approximately when the North Germanic languages split into Western and Eastern branches. Övdalian (and other Dalecarlian language varieties) is traditionally placed among the East Scandinavian languages, together with Swedish and Danish, based on a number of featuresGarbacz, Piotr (2008). Älvdalska – ett mindre känt nordiskt språk . s. 1. Oslo universitet that Övdalian has in common with them. According to Lars Levander,Levander, Lars (1925), Dalmålet. Beskrivning och historia., "1", Uppsala some of the West Scandinavian features that simultaneously do occur in Övdalian are archaic traits that once were common in many Scandinavian dialects and have been preserved in the most conservative tongues east and west of Kölen. However, this is rebutted by Kroonen.
Characteristics Archaisms Lack of syllable lengthening. Retention of voiced fricatives , and . Retention of nominative, accusative and dative cases. Retention of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Norse and Old Norse nasal vowels. Retention of Proto-Germanic voiced labial-velar approximant : ('water'), ('wants'), ('knows'): compare English water, will, and wit and Standard Swedish , and . Retention of consonant clusters ld, nd, mb, rg, gd and ng (with audible ), as in ungg ('young'), kweld ('evening'), warg ('wolf') and lamb ('lamb') from Old Norse ungʀ, kveld, vargʀ (both with represented by 'v') and lamb.
Innovations and unique developments
More frequent assimilation of pre-Norse mp, nt, and nk to pp, tt, and kk, as in West Scandinavian dialects. Shift of a to o before Pre-Norse nk (but not kk). Shift of Old Norse ei, ey, and au to ie, ä, and o. Diphthongization of Old Norse long high vowels í, ý, ú to closing diphthongs ai, åy, au, and of long rounded mid vowels ó, œ to opening diphthongs uo, yö. Vowel harmony (present also in other dialects of Central Scandinavia). Loss of h: compare Övdalian with Swedish (or English house) and Övdalian with Swedish .
Status
As of 2009, Övdalian had around 2,000 speakers and was in danger of language death. However, it is possible that it will receive an official status as a minority language in Sweden, which would entail numerous protections and encourage its use in schools and by writers and artists. The Swedish Parliament was due to address the issue in 2007, but has not yet done so.Uppsala University, Second Conference on Elfdalian, Älvdalen 12–14 June 2008 The Council of Europe has urged the Swedish government to reconsider the status of Övdalian on a total of five occasions. The Committee of Experts now encourages the Swedish authorities to investigate the status of Övdalian through an independent scientific study. In 2020, the Committee of Experts concluded that Övdalian fulfils the criteria of a Part II language, and asked the Swedish authorities to include reporting on Övdalian in its next periodical report as the language covered by Part II of the Charter, which the Swedish Ministry of Culture has not done in its 8th periodical report to the Council of Europe.Eighth periodical report presented to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in accordance with Article 15 of the Charter. Council of Europe. Accessed 5 November 2023.
Preservation and standardization , The Organization for the Preservation of Övdalian, was established in 1984 with the aim of preserving and documenting the Övdalian language. In 2005, launched a process aimed at bringing about an official recognition of Övdalian as a language by the Swedish authorities.
, The Övdalian Language Committee was established in August 2004 within , its first task being to create a new standard orthography for Övdalian (to combine the Åsen, Blyberg and Evertsberg dialects). In March 2005, the new orthography created by was accepted by the at their annual meeting. consists of five permanent members: linguist Östen Dahl, dialectologist Gunnar Nyström, teacher Inga-Britt Petersson, linguist and coordinator of the committee Yair Sapir, and linguist Lars Steensland.
As an initiative from to encourage children to speak Övdalian, all school children in Älvdalen who finish the ninth grade and can prove that they can speak Övdalian receive a 6,000 Swedish krona stipend.
An online version of Lars Steensland's 2010 Övdalian dictionary was published in September 2015.Elfdalian–Swedish dictionary. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
In March 2016, Swedish Radio reported that the Älvdalen City Council had decided that, starting in autumn 2016, the local kindergarten would operate solely through the medium of Övdalian.
Phonology Övdalian is comparable to Swedish and Norwegian in the number and the quality of vowels but also has nasal vowels. It has retained the Old Norse dental, velar and labial voiced fricatives. Alveolo-palatal affricate consonants occur in all (Swedish , north of Siljan) dialects. The realization of is , an apical alveolar trill. Unlike many variants of Norwegian and Swedish, Övdalian does not assimilate into retroflex consonants. The stress is generally on the first syllable of a word.
Consonants LabialDental/AlveolarPost-alv./PalatalVelarPlosivevoicelessvoicedAffricatevoiceless ~ voiced ~ FricativevoicelessvoicedNasalTrill/Flap()Approximantvoicedvoiceless
The voiceless plosives , , and are aspirated word-initially unless following .Sapir and Lundgren (2024), p. 43. and are also commonly heard as allophones of and respectively in complementary distribution; the fricative allophones surface after vowels when short, and the plosive allophones surface elsewhere.Sapir and Lundgren (2024), p. 44. can surface word-initially in some pronouns and adverbs by sandhi. and are allophones of in complementary distribution; the former surfaces when long, when adjacent to or and, for many speakers, before , and the latter allophone surfaces elsewhere.Sapir and Lundgren (2024), p. 45. is also an allophone of in complementary distribution; the former surfaces after a tautomorphemic vowel, and the latter surfaces before a tautomorphemic vowel.Sapir and Lundgren (2024), p. 44. It is also sometimes realised as before . The fricative allophone was historically realised as . The sound is typically realised as apico-alveolar. The affricates are realised as alveolo-palatal in western villages and as in eastern ones.
Vowels FrontCentralBackNear-close Close-mid Open-mid Open
The sounds are heard as in some parts of Övdaln.
+Nasal vowelsFrontCentralBackNear-closeClose-midOpen-midOpen()
The sounds are heard primarily in Övdaln, whereas are heard in other parts nearby. The sounds are heard as or in some parts of Övdaln.
Unlike Central Swedish, there is no noticeable difference in quality between the long and the short realisations of the vowels.Sapir & Lundgren 2024, p. 39-40
Diphthongs FrontCentralBackNear-closeOpen-midOpen
The sounds can also be realised as , depending on the village. The back-vowel realisations are used in the area west of Dalälven. is realized in some village dialects . The combination may be analysed as a sequence of a glide and the diphthong .Sapir & Ludngren (2024), p. 41.
+Nasal diphthongsFrontCentralNear-closeOpen
The sounds can also be realised as , depending on the village (the back-vowel realisations being typical of the area west of Dalälven). The above are phonemically nasal diphthongs; all diphthongs may be nasalised allophonically in front of a nasal consonant.
Nasal vowel sounds Övdalian has nasal versions of most vowels. They have several origins, belonging to different layers of history, but most involve the loss of a nasal consonant, with lengthening and nasalisation of a preceding vowel. Late Proto-Germanic loss of *n before *h, which was lost in early Norse, but the nasalisation remained: "doorway" (Proto-Germanic ). Old Norse loss of nasal consonants before *s: "goose" (Proto-Germanic ), "lard" (). Old Norse loss of *n before *l and *r: "our" (Proto-Norse ). Old Norse loss of word-final *n but only monosyllables: "on" (Proto-Germanic ), "to see" (Proto-Germanic ), "two (accusative)" (Proto-Germanic ) and the prefix "un-" (Proto-Germanic ). Central Scandinavian loss of word-final -n if it had been preserved in Old Norse generally; The change affected neither Standard Swedish, nor final geminate -nn. The shift occurred in primarily the definite noun suffix of feminine nouns but also "she" and a few other words. Secondary post-Norse loss of n before s: "to wash" (), "left" (Old Norse with /w/-sound) Spontaneous (non-etymological) nasality: "to travel" (from ), "cheese" (, from ). Before nasal consonants. This case of nasalisation is allophonic and is not indicated in the orthography. Nasal vowels are quite rare in Nordic languages, and Övdalian and a few other neighbouring Dalecarlian dialects are the only ones that preserve nasal vowels from Proto-Norse; all other Nordic dialects with nasal vowels have developed them later as a result of the loss of a nasal consonant: compare Kalix dialect hąt and gås with Övdalian and and gą̊s.
Prosody
As in most Germanic languages, main stress is normally on the first syllable in words of native origin, but many loanwords have non-initial stress. The initial stress moves to the last syllable in phrase-final position in certain pronouns, prepositions and adverbs (noger "someone", yvyr "over", itjä "not", older "never") and in personal names and some kinship terms in vocative function. Non-initial compound elements have secondary stress, but if they are polsysyllabic and their lexically stressed syllable is short, the secondary stress falls on the next syllable after the lexically stressed one (e.g. ˈsåmår "summer", but ˈsiensåˌmår "late summer").Sapir and Lundgren (2024) , p. 55-56.