Gutnish ( ), or rarely Gutnic ( sv, gutniska or ), refers to the original language spoken on parts of the islands of

Gotland Gotland (, ; ''Gutland'' in Gutnish), also historically spelled Gottland or Gothland (), is Sweden's largest island. It is also a province, county, municipality, and diocese. The province includes the islands of Fårö and Gotska Sandön to th ...

and

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 langua ...

. The different dialects of Gutnish, while stemming from the

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 vas ...

( sv, Forngutniska) variety of

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

, are sometimes considered part of modern Swedish. Gutnish exists in two variants, Mainland Gutnish (''Storlandsgutamål'' or ''Storlandsmål''), mostly spoken in the southern and southeastern portion of Gotland, where the dialect of Lau became the standard form on the Main Island (''Lau Gutnish'' → ''Laumål''), and Fårö Gutnish (Gutnish: ''Faroymal''; sv, Fårömål), spoken on the island of

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. I ...

defines Gutnish as a " definitely endangered language" as of 2010. Some features of Gutnish include the preservation of Old Norse diphthongs like ''ai'' in for instance ( sv, sten; English: ''stone'') and ''oy'' in for example ( sv, dö; English: ''die''). There is also a

triphthong In 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 a ...

that exists in no other Norse languages: ''iau'' as in / ( sv, skjuta; English: ''shoot''). Many Gotlanders do not understand Gutnish, and speak Gotlandic ( sv, gotländska), a Gutnish-influenced Swedish dialect. There are major efforts to revive the traditional version of Modern Gutnish and , the Gutnish Language Guild, organizes classes and meetings for speakers of traditional Gutnish. According to the guild's webpage, there are now 1,500 people using Gutnish on Facebook.

Phonology

the following contrastive vowels in Modern Gutnish: /ɪ/, /ʏ/, /e/, /œ/, /a/, /ɔ/, /u/ Of these all but /u/ have a short and a long version. with /u/ which is expected since what is etymologically a long /uː/ has been broken into the sequence �u A distinctive feature of Gutnish is the existence of a large number of sequences of vowel plus �or which form vocalic phonemes of their own. These sequences are the following: /eɪ/, /ɛɪ/, /œʏ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /ʉu/, /eu/, /au/, /ɔu/ * Sounds /e, eː/ when preceding other vowels, /r/ or post-alveolar sounds have a tendency to be more open as �, æː * In Fårö Gutnish, sounds /a, aː/ are pronounced further back as �, ɑː * /ɔ, ɔː/ can also be realized as more close

, oː The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...

when preceding sonorant sounds. * /u/ can be heard as �when is unstressed position. Some of these sequences alternate with short vowels between different morphological forms of the same lexeme, cf. such pairs as "veit" /vɛɪt̪ʰ/ ‘white’(f.) ∼ /vɪt̪ʰ:/ ‘white’(n) BS. * Stops /p, t̪, k/ can also be heard as aspirated ʰ, t̪ʰ, kʰ

Lexicon

Gutnish has many words of its own that make it different from Swedish. The following is a small selection of Gutnish's everyday vocabulary:

Status

Gutnish is now under pressured influence of the Swedish standard language, both through speaker contact and through media and (perhaps most importantly) written language. As a result, Gutnish has become much closer to the Swedish standard language. Due to the island's Danish and Hanseatic period there were also influences from Danish and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

. There are also many Gotlanders who do not learn the language, but speak a regionally colored variant of the standard Swedish (Gotlandic). This is characterized mainly by its intonation, but also by diphthongs and triphthongs, some lexical peculiarities as well as the infinitive ending ''-ä.'' The ''Gutamålsgillet'' association, which has been working for the preservation and revitalization of Gutnish since 1945, estimates that Gutnish is spoken today by 2,000 to 5,000 people. How many are still passive, is not specified. However, an interest in Gutnish seems to be present: From 1989 to 2011, the radio show ''Gutamål'' ran in Radio Gotland, which regularly reached about 15,000 to 20,000 listeners, and in 2008

Gotland University Uppsala University – Campus Gotland ( sv, Uppsala universitet – Campus Gotland) is a campus of Uppsala University and a former university college (''högskola'') previously known in English as University of Gotland ( sv, Högskolan på Gotland ...

offered their first course in Gutnish. Gutamålsgillet collects writings of authors and poets who write their texts in Gutnish, and maintains a Swedish-Gutnish dictionary and an ever-growing list of Gotlandic neologisms.

Examples

Notes

References

External links

Official site of the Modern Gutnish Guild
{{Authority control Gotland North Germanic languages Endangered Germanic languages Languages of Sweden Scandinavian culture Germanic languages