Unintelligible Great North?

The North Germanic (or Nordic) languages seem to promote Scandinavianism: their proximity highlights a closely related origin and provides one of the most famous examples of dialect continuum in linguistics. But, as far as can be described and quantified, how alike are the Scandinavian languages? Are they mutually intelligible? What strategies can be devised to learn North Germanic languages while foreign to all of them, or to progress from one to the other?

Dissuaded by the complexity of measuring proximity between languages - an exercise the scientific literature has confronted many times before - we shall begin with the question of inter-intelligibility. First, let's listen to and read some of the three majority Scandinavian languages - Norwegian (Bokmål), Swedish and Danish. The following text is taken from the introduction to a survey report on the ability of modern-day societies in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to understand and communicate in neighboring Scandinavian languages. [1]

De har mycket stora likheter i ordförråd, ljudsystem, böjning och grammatik. Danska, svenska och norska skiljer sig emellertid också åt på flera punkter. Då det gäller ordförrådet är danskan och norskan väldigt lika, medan ljudsystemet är mycket likt i svenska och norska, och där avviker då danskan. De tre språken är i stort sett inbördes begripliga, men ibland försvåras kommunikationen av inomspråkliga eller utomspråkliga faktorer. Vår undersökning vill lämna ett bidrag till hur denna språkförståelse ser ut idag.

Listen to the Swedish version above here.⏵

And to the Norwegian version below.⏵

De har svært store likheter i ordforråd, lydsystem, bøyning og grammatikk. Men også dansk, svensk og norsk skiller seg på flere punkter. Når det kommer til ordforråd er dansk og norsk veldig like, mens lydsystemet er veldig likt på svensk og norsk, og det er der dansk skiller seg. De tre språkene er stort sett gjensidig forståelige, men noen ganger blir kommunikasjonen hindret av intra-språklige eller ekstraspråklige faktorer. Vår undersøkelse ønsker å gi et bidrag til hvordan denne språkforståelsen ser ut i dag.

And now the Danish equivalent (Google Translate).⏵

De har meget store ligheder i ordforråd, lydsystem, bøjning og grammatik. Dansk, svensk og norsk adskiller sig dog også på flere punkter. Når det kommer til ordforråd, er dansk og norsk meget ens, mens lydsystemet minder meget om svensk og norsk, og det er der, dansk adskiller sig. De tre sprog er stort set indbyrdes forståelige, men nogle gange er kommunikation hindret af intra-sprogede eller ekstra-sprogede faktorer. Vores undersøgelse ønsker at give et bidrag til, hvordan denne sprogforståelse ser ud i dag.

Let's look more closely at the third sentence.

Swedish -

Då det gäller ordförrådet är danskan och norskan väldigt lika, medan ljudsystemet är mycket likt i svenska och norska, och där avviker då danskan.

Norwegian -

Når det kommer til ordforråd er dansk og norsk veldig like, mens lydsystemet er veldig likt på svensk og norsk, og det er der dansk skiller seg.

Danish -

Når det kommer til ordforråd, er dansk og norsk meget ens, mens lydsystemet minder meget om svensk og norsk, og det er der, det danske afviger.

The closer lexical and "constitutive" proximity of Norwegian and Danish - and their greater respective distance from Swedish - is immediately obvious.

då det gäller ordförrådet in Swedish corresponds to når det kommer til ordforråd in both Norwegian and Danish!
Swedish är danskan och norskan gives er dansk og norsk in both neighboring languages.
medan ljudsystemet är makes mens lydsystemet er in Danish and Norwegian alike.

Certain words and turns of phrase make an exception.

väldigt lika in Swedish makes veldig like in Norwegian but meget ens in Danish
the verb avviker in och där avviker då danskan looks more like Danish afviger than Norwegian skiller seg.

The findings of our comparative exercise should be viewed in perspective: we have only considered one possible translation in Norwegian and Danish respectively, but we could stop at each word and explore synonymies to note that there is often an (even) closer equivalent in two or all three of the Scandinavian languages.

..., och där avviker då danskan can also translate into ..., og det er her dansk avviker in Norwegian and ..., og det er her, dansk adskiller sig in Danish, where the latter features something similar to skiller seg of the first Norwegian version.
In Swedish, är danskan och norskan väldigt lika can also be said är danska och norska mycket lika varandra, with the Danish equivalent er dansk og norsk meget lig hinanden.

Precisely, our text talks about distances. Let's understand step-by-step.

Då det gäller ordförrådet är danskan och norskan väldigt lika, medan ljudsystemet är mycket likt i svenska och norska, och där avviker då danskan.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, Danish and Norwegian are very similar, while the sound system is very similar in Swedish and Norwegian, where Danish differs.

We note that in ordförrådet (vocabulary) ord means word and förråd, storage, we have something similar in German (Wortschatz, literaly word-treasure) and in Dutch (woordenschat, same as in German).

Då det gäller ordförrådet är danskan och norskan väldigt lika, medan ljudsystemet är mycket likt i svenska och norska, och där avviker då danskan.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, Danish and Norwegian are very similar, while the sound system is very similar in Swedish and Norwegian, where Danish differs.

Very is supposed to derive from Proto-Indo-European *weh₁- (true, benevolent), väldig derives from a borrowing from Middle Low German weldich - a common origin, at least Proto-Indo-European, seems to make sense. The Proto-Germanic *līkāną gave lika and like alike.

Då det gäller ordförrådet är danskan och norskan väldigt lika, medan ljudsystemet är mycket likt i svenska och norska, och där avviker då danskan.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, Danish and Norwegian are very similar, while the sound system is very similar in Swedish and Norwegian, where Danish differs.

The proto-Indo-European *ḱlew- yielded the proto-Germanic *hleuþą, which differentiated into Old English hleoð and Old Norse hljóð. The former gave loud or listening in English, the latter Swedish ljud (here, ljudsystemet), Norwegian or Danish lyd, Icelandic hljóð. Swedish mycket and English much come from the same Proto-Germanic ancestor, *mikilaz.

Då det gäller ordförrådet är danskan och norskan väldigt lika, medan ljudsystemet är mycket likt i svenska och norska, och där avviker då danskan.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, Danish and Norwegian are very similar, while the sound system is very similar in Swedish and Norwegian, where Danish differs.

We can clearly detect the kinship between Swedish avvike and German weichen (to move further away, to yield, to disappear). Proto-Germanic *wīkwaną produced West-Proto-Germanic *wīkwan and Old Norse víkja. The former produced German weichen and Dutch (meaning similar to the German counterpart) wijken. More precisely, avvike is to be compared with German abweichen and Dutch afwijken, verbs formed from the above-mentioned radicals, with the addition of the prefix ab-/af-. The prefixes ab- (German), af- (Dutch) and av- (Swedish) instill more or less the same notion into the word they complement: notion of separation, removal, translatable as off or away. This is an interesting parallel: for a learner of Swedish from German, trying to replace ab- with av- seems like a good reflex. We might wonder how such a learner's brain stores newly learned Swedish in memory. To minimize the memory footprint and for greater efficiency, keeping only the ab- -> av- transformation seems best. Conquering the whole vocabulary, simple to guess unknown Swedish words based on the same transformation, e.g. avbilda from abbilden.

We found many similarities, not only between North Germanic languages, but also with close West Germanic cousins. The last sentence of our study text substantiates the investigation's importance:

De tre språken är i stort sett inbördes begripliga, men ibland försvåras kommunikationen av inomspråkliga eller utomspråkliga faktorer. Vår undersökning vill lämna ett bidrag till hur denna språkförståelse ser ut idag.

The three languages are largely mutually intelligible, but sometimes communication is hindered by intra-lingual or extra-lingual factors. Our investigation wants to make a contribution to what this language understanding looks like today.

But before exploring further the results of this study, we shall examine some of the phonological specificities of the three languages and appreciate, very approximately, the closeness of their soundscapes - according to the earlier passage, greater between Swedish and Norwegian than with Danish. In this regard, it is important to point out that we have limited ourselves in the foregoing, and will limit ourselves in what follows, to the written standards of Bokmål as far as Norwegian is concerned, and as far as spoken language is concerned, to certain widely spread dialects: Central Swedish (Rikssvenska), Rigsdansk, Standard Eastern Norwegian (Østnorsk standard) - which temporarily rules out the rich dialectal diversity that gives the North Germanic language landscape its beauty.

Let's consider veldig and väldigt in Norwegian and Swedish respectively.⏵

For the following analysis we use the Forvo pronunciation platform and the amazing open-source phonetics software Praat, created by Paul Boersma and David Weenink from the Phonetic Sciences department of the University of Amsterdam. (See using Praat for linguistic research).

Below is the waveform for veldig,

and here for the Swedish counterpart, väldigt.

(abscissa: time in seconds, ordinate: amplitude in arbitrary units.)

The Norwegian waveform shows less variation in amplitude, suggesting a more even distribution of stress, which is characteristic of the sound of Norwegian. The Swedish waveform exhibits a greater difference in intensity between syllables, indicating a stronger emphasis on the first syllable - typical of Swedish prosody, which has a sing-song rhythm and a characteristic stress pattern we shall further explore Let's clarify some concepts in phonology, before we apply them to the phonology of Scandinavian languages.

Pitch of the voice (Hz) corresponds to the fundamental frequency of vibration of the vocal folds, accent refers to the pitch contour on syllables, and stress refers to the emphasis or prominence of syllables. Word accent is the tonal melody of individual words, while sentence accent refers to the prominence given to words in a sentence, and both can affect meaning, in the sense that they can give a different meaning to two sequences whose pronunciation is otherwise (without their accents) identical.

A two-type pitch system, defining word tone, characterizes the language spoken in most of Norway and Sweden (including the standards of Oslo and Stockholm), as well as a few scattered Danish dialects. This is a heritage of Old Norse, and in all places old monosyllabic words have one type of pitch (accent I), while old polysyllabic words have another (accent II). (This means that some Norwegian or Swedish disyllabic words derived from an Old Norse monosyllabic word haven't got rid of their phonological "accent I" character.) Accent I is generally acute or grave on the stressed syllable, while accent II is more complex and varies from region to region. In Danish, accent I has been replaced by glottalization, which we'll talk about shortly.

Accent I (also called acute accent) is generally characterized by a single pitch, low (Norwegian, Oslo) or high (Swedish, Stockholm), on the (single or) stressed syllable. In Norwegian (Oslo), accent I thus follows a low-rising tone pattern, as in bønder (farmers, IPA phonetics /¹bœnːər/⏵). Accent II, or grave accent, is more complex and is realized differently in different dialects. In Eastern Norwegian, it begins with a high, sharply falling tone on the first syllable, followed by a low, rising tone on the second syllable (falling-rising tone in Oslo, as in bønner (beans), /²bœnər/⏵). In Central Swedish, accent II begins the stressed syllable with a high tone, drops, and rises again on the next syllable, which is why Stockholm is said to speak a two-peak dialect. See [2]. A brief word about diversity. [3] presents a synthesis of Swedish dialects and includes an earlier representation of the respective accents I and II.

We see here the five Swedish word accent types according to Gårding (1977) and approximate geographical distribution of the seven main regional varieties of Swedish. Rikssvenska is filed under 2A. The two peaks for accent II are clearly visible.

Similarly, if we return to veldig/väldigt and the rudimentary signal analysis begun earlier, we can clearly see in the pitch profile of väldigt below (in Central Swedish, again using Praat software) the double-peak characteristic of accent II.

The tonal realization of accents constitutes the subject of a prolix science. It differs not only according to the geography of dialect, but also as a function of word position and sentence stress. For a full treatment of Swedish prosodic patterns, interested readers may refer to [4]. And while excessive erudition might only fuel curiosity, a solid understanding of phonology might significantly speed up the process of learning a Scandinavian language. In fact, we hypothesize, and shall seek to demonstrate, that knowledge of a language's phonology improves not only the quality of produced spoken language and the probability of being understood by native speakers, but also the ability and speed of reading (even for oneself) and oral comprehension.

Danish (Rigsdansk spoken in Copenhagen) lacks the two-type pitch system of Norwegian and Swedish, and features distinctive prosodic characteristics:

Danish presents a so-called stød, ⟨◌ˀ⟩ in non-standard IPA, realized either as a laryngealization, a kind of creaky voice, or a glottal stop. Despite debated origins, Danish words derived from Old Norse monosyllables - those that, as we saw, give the standard Norwegian or Swedish word tone 'accent I' - seem to be systematically endowed with stød, while words derived from polysyllables lack it. Let's have a short listen.⏵

[soːˀl] sol (sun) - stød

[ˈkʰʌmˀɐ̯] kommer (comes) - stød, but

[ˈlʌmʌ] lommer (pockets) - no stød

[ˈtʌmˀ] tom (empty) - stød, but

[ˈtʌmˌheðˀ] tomhed (emptyness) - no stød after /m/, final stød

A glottal stop, stød is not, according to acoustic studies, a total but only partial closure of the airflow, rather

described as a creaky voice phenomenon, which alters the phonation of a syllable dividing it into two: a first

phase of high intensity and high pitch followed by a second phase of low intensity and low pitch. Its precise

realization depends on the accentuation.

Danish intonation is also very particular, known as switching melody (omlæggermelodi): the first unstressed syllable after a strong syllable is higher than this one. The pitch of a stressed group reaches its lowest peak on the stressed syllable, followed by its highest peak on the unstressed syllable immediately following, after which it gradually declines to the next stressed group. The opposite occurs in Norwegian, Swedish and many other languages (retliggermelodi).

Stress in Danish has three levels, hovedtryk (main stress), bitryk (secondary stress) og svagtryk (weak stress). Stress can distinguish the meaning of two words of otherwise equal pronunciation. The noun kæmpehøj (stor gravhøj fra oldtiden) has main stress on the first syllable and secondary stress on the third, while the adjective kæmpehøj (huge) has main stress on both the first and third syllables.

We shall refer the reader to the fascinating encyclopedic lexicon Den Store Dansk [6] for further interesting details.

So, we have collected a few elements to explain the sound proximity of Norwegian and Swedish, and their greater distance from Danish. An exhaustive phonological study should also look at the vowel and consonant system of the three standards, their derivation from a common Germanic or Old Norse ancestor, and the respective features of their differentiations. We reserve this exercise for the near future, and shall now read what the study has to say about the mutual intelligibility of Scandinavian languages in 2015 [1].

Here are the main findings.

1/ Norrmän är klart bättre än svenskar och danskar på grannspråksförståelse. 2/ Danskarna är något bättre på grannspråksförståelse än svenskar. 3/ Bokmål är i läsförståelsetestet lättare än nynorska för danskar, medan det för svenskarna snarast är tvärtom.

That is to say,

1/ Norwegians are clearly better than Swedes and Danes at understanding neighboring languages. 2/ Danes are somewhat better at understanding neighboring languages than Swedes. 3/ In the reading comprehension test, Bokmål is easier than Nynorsk for Danes, while for Swedes it is almost the opposite.

Norwegians, especially in Oslo and Bergen, do significantly better than anywhere else in Scandinavia at understanding their Scandinavian neighbors, and one reason for this is the linguistic advantage of the Norwegian practiced there, close in written form to Danish, and whose ljudsystem has many similarities with that of Swedish.

Den första förklaringen är inomspråklig; den tar fasta på det faktum att norskan rent språkligt intar en mellanställning mellan danska och svenska. Som nämndes redan i kapitel 1 har norskan och danskan stora likheter i ordförrådet, medan norskan delar stora delar av ljudsystemet med svenskan. Det innebär att norrmän har en fördel framför svenskarna då det gäller danskt ordförråd och en fördel framför danskarna då det gäller svenskt uttal. Danskar och svenskar har problem i båda dessa avseenden då de ska förstå varandras språk.

The Norwegian occupies an intermediate position, mellanställning, between Danish and Swedish, mellan danska och svenska. Let's entertain ourselves further by observing this same first phrase in the three Scandinavian languages.

Swedish -⏵

Den första förklaringen är inomspråklig; den tar fasta på det faktum att norskan rent språkligt intar en mellanställning mellan danska och svenska.

Norwegian -⏵

Den første forklaringen er intra-språklig; den tar til etterretning at norsk rent språklig inntar en mellomposisjon mellom dansk og svensk.

Danish -⏵

Den første forklaring er intra-lingvistisk; den tager til efterretning, at norsk rent sprogligt indtager en mellemstilling mellem dansk og svensk.

And listening to the three versions, we can convince ourselves of the closeness and sonic differences of the three versions, which are very similar indeed.

A second reason for the Norwegians' higher success is, according to the study, their greater interest in their neighbors.

Det norska intresset för grannländerna har till viss del sin förklaring i att Norge har något mindre befolkning än Sverige och Danmark, även om denna skillnad inte ska överdrivas. Det finns exempelvis en rad specialtidskrifter i Sverige och Danmark som saknas i Norge, och det finns eller har funnits större utbud av kultur och populärkultur i Sverige och delvis också i Danmark än vad det gör i Norge. Vår undersökning visar att skandinaviska ungdomar sällan läser tidningar (dags eller veckotidningar) eller ser på TV från grannländerna, men norrmännen har en högre konsumtion av danska och svenska massmedier än omvänt.

Greater interest, presumably also, because Swedes and Danes are slightly more numerous, produce a greater and more varied cultural or media offering, and Norwegians are more inclined to consume Swedish and Danish media than vice-versa.

The third reason mentioned is obviously just as plausible: Norway's dialect landscape is richer and more varied than that of its neighbors, so Norwegians are more likely to tune in to understand what is being said from one region or dialect to another. This multilingualism doesn't just apply to the spoken language, as there are two official written standards of Norwegian, namely Bokmål and Nynorsk. Following the great defeat of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway was dissolved, and the Constitution of Norway, now independent and allied to Sweden, was signed in Eidsvoll (near Oslo) on May 17, 1814. A variety of dialects were spoken in Norway at the time, while the written language was Danish, and debates began over the establishment of a national language. The two present-day standards are outlined along two competing approaches. Norwegian Bokmål derives from a "Norwegianization" of Danish to accommodate indigenous linguistic usage, while Ivar Aasen's Nynorsk was built taking Norwegian dialects as a starting point. [7] (Earlier, we examined some obvious discrepancies between Bokmål and Nynorsk.)

A brain accustomed to converting from Bokmål to a better acquaintance with Nynorsk, or vice versa, will probably find the transition from Swedish or Danish to Norwegian less complex than a brain less trained in these Nordic adaptations. A similar hypothesis, relating to the impact of exposure to several spoken dialects on language acquisition or subsequent linguistic fluency, is the subject of abundant literature. The Norwegian Dialect Corpus Treebank [8] presented in 2022 and compiling 4587 speech segments sampled across Norway between 2006 and 2012, reports 17 dialects, the epicenters of which are shown on the map shown here.

An interesting study recently verified contrasting performance in word comprehension and recognition in 12-month-olds, depending on whether they were exposed to parents of the same or different dialects. [9]

As the title of the study indicates, the aim is to understand how children "cope" with a multidialectal environment. The study shows that children from monodialectal families score higher than those from multidialectal families in both word recognition and word comprehension, and that results in both exercises correlate - words recognized (as existing in the mother tongue) are also understood (the corresponding material object is identified). The researchers came to the conclusion that word comprehension and recognition in a dialect environment takes place differently, or later. In any case, a difference in acquisition is noted, which is of interest to our Scandinavian topic. Incidentally, another important element of this study concerns the experiment, and the distinction between word recognition - toddlers are shown words and non-words on a screen, their gaze is recorded, assuming that a more insistent gaze reveals lexical recognition - and word comprehension - one says ball or bowl and the child points to the ball or bowl. In another context, for the acquisition of a second language far from any known language, reading large quantities of text without the slightest translation, i.e. without a frame of reference, undoubtedly provides excellent training in word recognition, even if comprehension lags behind. We can hypothesize, to be confirmed in the laboratory, that such assimilation of forms prior to meaning catalyzes subsequent mastery of language, form and meaning.

A second study by the same authors [10] appears to confirm what common sense would suggest: greater plasticity and adaptability in learning new words in a variety of dialects, when children grow up in a multi-dialect environment. Here, two-and-a-half-year-olds are exposed for a week to an audio story in Norwegian in three different accents, followed by a test to recognize new words. A country with a rich variety of dialects probably trains better in the intelligibility of neighboring languages.

So how do you learn Norwegian when you start from Swedish, or Danish when you know Norwegian, etc.? We stay true to our analogical observation: just like machines, just like artificial intelligence, we must confront ourselves with massive target-language data, thereby training recognition and comprehension at word, clause and sentence level. The task is particularly straightforward when moving from one Scandinavian language to another: monolingual data suffice, since we manage - perhaps with an infinitesimally longer delay - to decipher meaning most of the time without recourse to translation. So, simply reading a lot of Nynorsk while knowing only Bokmål, or Swedish while just knowing Danish.

By dint of data, the brain necessarily observes and records a few language facts. For example, those catalogued in a very interesting study published in 2012 on the comparative syntax of Scandinavian. [11] Firstly, similarities - like all Germanic languages except English, Scandinavian languages are verb-second languages. A referential subject must be overt, that is, clearly stated, even if it is easily deduced from the context.

I går kjøpte Johan en ny syklus. Han lagret det på kjøkkenet. (Norwegian)

Igår köpte Johan en ny cykel. Han förvarade den i köket. (Swedish)

Yesterday Johan bought a new cycle. He stored it in the kitchen.

Estonian, for example, as demonstrated here [12], doesn't hesitate to omit the third person singular pronoun short form (ta for he/she) in the precise case of a secondary clause or coordination structure, when the antecedent is in the same grammatical case and no ambiguity slips into the sentence.

Scandinavian languages are also prone to Object Shift, where a weak pronominal object may appear to the left of an sentential adverbials that otherwise precede the object.

Han köpte inte boken. Han köpte den inte. (Swedish)

He didn't buy the book. He didn't buy it.

And differences too - in the case of a verb with a separable particle, and a pronoun object complement, the particle tends to be close to the verb in Swedish, and separated by the pronoun in Norwegian or Danish (or Icelandic).

Hon har hängt upp den. (Swedish)

Hun har hengt den opp. (Norwegian)

She has hung it up.

Our Scandinavian brain learns, from massive data, which rules extend across the entire Scandinavian spectrum, and which differ from neighbor to neighbor. And he also learns, by example, how and in what systematic patterns morphology changes from one language to another. Such patterns, from one Scandinavian language to another, are highly systematic and easy to spot, thanks to the close proximity. A little plasticity, and a lot of attention.

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[1] Delsing, L.-O. and K. Lundin Åkesson 2005. Håller språket ihop Norden? En forskningsrapport om ungdomars förståelse av danska, svenska och norska. [Does the language keep together the Nordic countries? A research report of mutual comprehension between young speakers of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian.] Copenhagen: Nordiska ministerrådet. https://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:700762/FULLTEXT01.pdf

[2] wiktionary.org, Pronunciation by language https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Pronunciation_by_language

[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262262676_Regional_Varieties_of_Swedish_Models_and_synthesis Schötz, Susanne & Bruce, Gösta & Segerup, My & Beskow, Jonas & Gustafson, Joakim & Granström, Björn. (2012). Regional Varieties of Swedish: Models and synthesis. 10.1515/9783110301465.119.

[4] Bruce, Gösta. (1977). Swedish Word Accents in Sentence Perspective. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/208033017_Swedish_Word_Accents_in_Sentence_Perspective

[5] Kempas, Ilpo. (2013). Vår fonetiska geografi. Om svenskans accenter, melodi och uttal. Gösta Bruce (2010) Lund: Studentlitteratur. Pp. 239. ISBN 9144050534. Sociolinguistic Studies. 6. 10.1558/sols.v6i2.383.

[6] Den Store Dansk, Dansk udtale, Lars Brink, https://denstoredanske.lex.dk/dansk_-_udtale#-Intonation,_tryk_og_st%C3%B8d

[7] Språkrådet, Språka våre, Nynorsk https://www.sprakradet.no/Spraka-vare/Norsk/Nynorsk/ (About Norwegian Nynorsk, in Nynorsk)

[8] Kåsen, Andre & Hagen, Kristin & Nøklestad, Anders & Priestley, Joel & Solberg, Per Erik & Haug, Dag. (2022). The Norwegian Dialect Corpus Treebank. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370769545_The_Norwegian_Dialect_Corpus_Treebank

[9] Kartushina, Natalia & Mayor, Julien. (2022). Coping with dialects from birth: Role of variability on infants’ early language development. Insights from Norwegian dialects. Developmental Science. 26. 10.1111/desc.13264. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359850290_Coping_with_dialects_from_birth_Role_of_variability_on_infants'_early_language_development_Insights_from_Norwegian_dialects

[10] Kartushina, Natalia & Rosslund, Audun & Mayor, Julien. (2021). Toddlers raised in multi-dialectal families learn words better in accented speech than those raised in monodialectal families. Journal of Child Language. 49. 1-26. 10.1017/S0305000921000520. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353222440_Toddlers_raised_in_multi-dialectal_families_learn_words_better_in_accented_speech_than_those_raised_in_monodialectal_families

[11] Holmberg, Anders & Platzack, C.. (2012). The Scandinavian Languages. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax. 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195136517.013.0010. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288206435_The_Scandinavian_Languages

[12] Hint, Helen & Reile, Maria & Kaiser, Elsi. (2023). Third-person overt pronoun and zero reference in Estonian. Insights from two experiments. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics. 14. 10.12697/jeful.2023.14.2.04 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375565797_Third-person_overt_pronoun_and_zero_reference_in_Estonian_Insights_from_two_experiments