Danish belongs to the East
Scandinavian languages, together with Swedish. Though Norwegian is classified
as a West Scandinavian language together with Faroese and Icelandic, a
more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility places Icelandic
and Faroese in a separate
Insular Scandinavian branch while Norwegian
is considered to be a
Mainland Scandinavian language and grouped
with Danish and Swedish. Written Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are particularly
close, though the phonology and prosody of all three languages differ
somewhat. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand
the others, though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally
understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand
any of the other languages.
