Jamtlandic or Jamtish is a well-defined group of dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s of Scandinavia. It is spoken in the [Swedish] province

Province

A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Etymology:The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province," which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia," which referred to...

 of Jämtland

Jämtland

Jämtland or Jamtland is a historical province or landskap in the center of Sweden in northern Europe. It borders to Härjedalen and Medelpad in the south, Ångermanland in the east, Lapland in the north and Trøndelag and Norway in the west...

. It is commonly used in the region between the modern Swedish-Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 border in the west and the pre-1645 Swedish-Norwegian border in the east, though Trøndersk

Trøndersk

Trøndersk is the Norwegian dialect spoken in the region Trøndelag, the district Nordmøre and the municipality Bindal in Norway as well as in Frostviken in northern Jämtland, Sweden, which was colonized in the 18th century by settlers from Nord-Trøndelag and transferred to Sweden as...

 is spoken in Frostviken in the northernmost part of Jämtland colonized in the 18th century by Norwegians, and Norrland

Norrland

Norrland is one of the three lands of Sweden , the northern part, consisting of nine provinces. The term Norrland is not used for any administrative purpose, but it is common in everyday language, e.g...

ic is spoken in Ragunda in the easternmost part of Jämtland which until 13th century was a part of Ångermanland

Ångermanland

' is a historical province or landskap in the north of Sweden. It borders to Medelpad, Jämtland, Lapland, Västerbotten and the Gulf of Bothnia. The name "Ångermanland" comes from the Old Norse "anger", which means "deep fjord" and refers to the deep mouth of the river Ångermanälven...

.

Jamtlandic shares many characteristics with both Trøndersk—the dialect spoken in Trøndelag

Trøndelag

Trøndelag is the name of a geographical region in the central part of Norway, consisting of the two counties Nord-Trøndelag and Sør-Trøndelag. The region is, together with Møre og Romsdal, part of a larger...

, Norway—and with the dialects spoken along the coast of Norrland, Sweden. Due to this ambiguous position, there has been a debate since the early 20th century whether Jamtlandic belongs to the West Norse or the East Norse language group. Jamtlandic cannot be uniquely defined belonging to either of these groups. Prior to, and around, the time of the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union

Union between Sweden and Norway

The Union between Sweden and Norway , officially the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, consisted of present-day Sweden and Norway between 1814 and 1905, when they were united under one monarch in a personal union....

, Jamtlandic was undisputedly considered a dialect of Norwegian. See, e.g., p. 112 in part one of Adolf Noreen's Vårt språk (translated from Swedish):

The Westnorthern Swedish ("Norwegian-Swedish"), originally Norwegian dialects in Särna and Idre (the northwesternmost Dalarna), Härjedalen and Jämtland (where, though, the language east of Östersund eventually passes into Medelpadian or Ångermanlandic).

Name

The local name for the dialects is jamska, which translates to English as "Jamtlandic". However, since there is no single established name for the dialects in English, the two forms Jamtlandic or Jamtish are commonly used. Jamska as such is a definite form; the original form is rarely used, besides as a verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

: te jaamsk or te jamske (depending on the dialect) — "to Jamtlandic/Jamtish". Jamska is sometimes spelled with a silent t

Silent letter

In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation...

 as jamtska.

History

According to the sagas

Norse saga

The sagas are stories about ancient Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking voyages, the battles that took place during the voyages, about migration to Iceland and of feuds between Icelandic families...

, the region called Jämtland was originally settled by fugitives from Trøndelag after Harald Fairhair

Harald I of Norway

Harald Fairhair or Harald Finehair , , son of Halfdan the Black, was the first king of Norway.-Background:Little is known of the historical Harald...

 united Norway in the 9th century. It became part of Norway during the reign of Haakon I

Haakon I of Norway

Haakon I , , given the byname the Good, was the third king of Norway and the youngest son of Harald Fairhair and Thora Mosterstang.-Early life:...

 in the 10th century and remained part of Norway until the 17th century. At that point it became part of Sweden. The history of the region accounts for many of the dialects features.

It is difficult to the trace the history of Jamtlandic dialects because written sources only exist from the early 18th century, if not including the early 11th century Frösö runestone

Frösö Runestone

Frösöstenen is the northern-most raised runestone in the World and Jämtland's only runestone. It originally stood at the tip of ferry terminal on the sound between the island of Frösön and Östersund.On it is inscribed:...

 or the 14th century legal documents which can not be confirmed to have been written in Old Jamtlandic, the assumed distinct Jamtlandic dialect of Old West Norse.

Orthography

There have been attempts to standardize the orthography of Jamtlandic, and the attempt which has been the most popular so far is Vägledning för stavning av jamska (1994 and 1995) which is the work of the committee Akademien för jamska consisting of Bodil Bergner, Berta Magnusson and Bo Oscarsson. The most prominent application of this orthography has so far been to prepare translations of parts of the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 into Jamtlandic resulting in the book Nagur Bibelteksta på jamska. An excerpt from the book:

Genesis 1:26–27:

²⁶Å Gud saa: ’Lätt oss gjära når mänish, nager som e lik oss. Å dom ske rå öve fishn derri havan å över foglan pyne himmela, å öve tamdjura öve heile jola, å öve all de djur som kravl å rör se på jorn.´

²⁷Å Gud skapa mänishan å gjool som n avbild ta se själv. Te kær å kviin skapa n dom.

It should be emphasized here that the book does not fully follow Vägledning för stavning av jamska. For example, using Vägledning för stavning av jamska one would spell gjæra v. 'do; make', not "gjära". Another spelling convention in Nagur Bibelteksta på jamska is the use of the digraph "sh", in e.g. "mänish" n. 'human being' and "fishn" n. 'the fish', with the same pronunciation as English 'sh' in 'shoe'. Properly using Vägledning för stavning av jamska, this would be spelled sch; see § 26 in the external link below.

External links

• Code for Jamtlandic (jmk)
• Jamska - the dictionary project
• Jemtsk og trøndersk – to nære slektningar by Arnold Dalen
• Vägledning för stavning av jamska by Akademien för jamska
• Publisher's webpage about Nagur Bibelteksta på jamska