The Scandinavian languages reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004
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Scandinavian languages

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The Scandinavian languages are any of the three mutually intelligible North Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. In some cases the differences between the languages are smaller than the differences between the dialects within one of the languages. They are related to, but not intelligible with, the other North Germanic languages spoken outside Scandinavia (like Icelandic).

All North Germanic languages diverged from Old Norse about a millennium ago, but the three Scandinavian languages were later strongly influenced by Low Saxon (German), from which they in fact have acquired most of their vocabulary.

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