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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Swedish
Following
Martin Luther’s German translation,
the first complete Swedish Bible translation
was
published
under Gustav
Vasa (1496–1560)
in 1540–1541 and is
a monument in
Early Modern Swedish.
Language information:
Swedish is the native language of the vast majority of Swedish citizens and
ethnic Swedes throughout the world. In Sweden, Swedish is the national language
and also serves as the second language of all people that grow up with minority
languages, not only Finns, Saami (“Lapps”), Roma (“Gypsies”) and immigrants
but also speakers of Darlecarlian (Dalska, Dalmål), Jamtlandisch (Jamska), Scanian (Skånska) and Gothlandic (Gutniska, Gutamål), groups of varieties that used to be considered parts of Swedish but lately
have been asserting themselves as separate languages. Swedish varieties are
also used in Finland, especially on Finland’s west coast and on the Islands
of Åland/Ahvenanmaa. Furthermore, there are sizeable Swedish-speaking communities
in Estonia, Norway, Canada and the United States of America. Like all other
Scandinavian languages, Swedish underwent massive direct and indirect influences
from medieval Saxon (often erroneously referred to as “German influences”),
the language of the Hanseatic Trading League. Old Swedish influenced Russian
and Ukrainian during the era of the Rus Vikings’ reign over parts of Eastern
Europe. There are also a few traces of Swedish influences in certain Low Saxon
dialects of the Baltic Sea coast, hailing from the time of Swedish rule over
those areas in the 17th century.
Like Norwegian, Swedish is a tonal language,
with a phonemic inventory of two tones that are not represented in writing.
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