Which northern germanic language ( apart from Islandic, of course) is more complex from a morphological point of view? Danish, Norwegian or Swedish?
Northern Germanic languages
Why are they called northern Germanic languages when there are not Southern ones?
The southern Germanic languages are extinct. The prominent languages of the Western Germanic branch of the Germanic language family are Dutch, English, and German. Brennus doesn't mind the northern Germanic languages for some odd reason; he only appears to have contempt for German and, to a lesser extent, Dutch.
<<The southern Germanic languages are extinct.>>
Did you mean eastern Germanic languages, Colette? I don't think there ever was a southern branch.
Did you mean eastern Germanic languages, Colette? I don't think there ever was a southern branch.
Maybe she refers to Gothic in Crimea, but Gothic belonged to the East Germanic branch.
<<Germanic tribes in the South like the Franks, Burgundians, Goths and Suevi were in close contact with the Roman Empire and rapidly adopted a superior language like Latin in detriment of their mother tongue . That is the reason why there is not a Southern German languages branch.>>
Close contact?! That is rather poor wording for what the Germanic tribes did. They beat the hell out of the Romans. The Germanic tribes didn't like the south so many migrated back north, the ones that stayed learned Latin for two reasons:
1.) They were magnanimous in their victory over the Latin peoples. They learned Latin as a gesture of friendship.
2.) The Germanic tribes soon realized that the local population wasn't smart enough to learn their tongue.
Close contact?! That is rather poor wording for what the Germanic tribes did. They beat the hell out of the Romans. The Germanic tribes didn't like the south so many migrated back north, the ones that stayed learned Latin for two reasons:
1.) They were magnanimous in their victory over the Latin peoples. They learned Latin as a gesture of friendship.
2.) The Germanic tribes soon realized that the local population wasn't smart enough to learn their tongue.
The Goths were looking for Western and Souther lands, some of them even reached Tunisia. Some of them reached a kind of a confederated agreement wth the Romans, like the Goths. Wether they challenged the Romans or not, they accepted Latin as a superior language and learned it in the case of the tribes which had the opportunity to trade with the Romans. Even English vocabulary is mostly Latin, specially sophisticated words. Nobody learns a language only because of friendship, it's a childish argument, very typical on you. The southern Germanic tribes were fascinated by the Latin language, it's the same as if an extraterrestrial civilization arrived to the Earth. Everyone would want to learn their language.
By the way, the Germanic tribes were pressing the Roman Empire's borders since the first century before Christ, and they only succeeded in unistabilizing the Roman Empire around the V century. The Romans expelled that savage people for six centuries without problems, but according to the scholars they constantly grew in population and eventually flooded the Roman Limes. They were the Romans who were not specially interested in conquering those archaic peoples and concentrated on the Mediterranean shores which had the richest lands and people were more refined.