Faroese
Language · official in 1 country
For about 300 years after the Reformation, Faroese was spoken and sung but not written. Føroyskt descends from Old West Norse, and its 1854 spelling follows Old Norse roots so closely that written Faroese resembles Icelandic far more than the spoken languages do. The Home Rule Act of 1948 made it the national language of the Faroe Islands.
The language on record
- Own name
- føroyskt
- ISO 639-1
- FO
- ISO 639-3
- FAO
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- North Germanic
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Faroese is official
A single territory, and not a sovereign state: the Faroe Islands, a self-governing part of the Danish realm, where Faroese replaced Danish as the national language in 1948.
Official beside Faroese
About Faroese
When Danish pushed it off the page
Norse settlers brought Old Norse to the islands in a settlement that began in 825. Many came by way of the Irish Sea region, often with wives from Ireland, the Norse-Gaelic Isles, Orkney and Shetland, and Middle Irish left words such as tarvur, bull, and lámur, hand; a distinct Faroese language grew apart between the 9th and 15th centuries.
After the Danish-Norwegian Reformation of the early 16th century, Danish took over administration and schooling, and Faroese survived in ballads, folktales and daily speech. The Danish Bible Society printed the Gospel of Matthew in 1823 with Faroese and Danish side by side.
Who drew up the written standard
Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb and the Icelandic grammarian Jón Sigurðsson published a standard for Modern Faroese in 1854, and it is still in use. They based the spelling on Old Norse so that it would favour no single dialect and would stay close to written Icelandic. Speech and spelling often part company as a result: the letter ð has no sound of its own. Jakob Jakobsen proposed a phonetic spelling instead, but speakers never took it up. The alphabet has 29 Latin letters.
Steps by which Faroese regained official use
It became the school language in 1937, the church language in 1938 and the national language in 1948, the year the first complete Bible translation appeared. Radio ran mainly in Norwegian and Danish until the 1980s. Now all radio and every local newspaper use Faroese. Danish and English are compulsory in primary and secondary school.
Is there a spoken standard
No. About 120 communities keep their own dialects, and the Tórshavn speech has gained little prestige. Hjalmar P. Petersen divides the language into four main varieties: North-Western, Central, Northern and Southern. The southern islands, cut off by the lack of undersea tunnels, have the most distinct speech.
Common questions
Questions about Faroese
Can Faroese speakers understand Icelandic?
On paper, fairly well, because both spellings follow Old Norse. In speech the two are not easily intelligible.
How many grammatical cases does Faroese have?
Four: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Nouns also carry one of three genders, a system close to modern Icelandic and to Old Norse.
Why is Faroese spelled so differently from how it sounds?
The 1854 standard was built on Old Norse forms so that speakers of every dialect could read it equally. The price is a gap between letters and sounds, most visible in ð, which is written but has no sound of its own. A phonetic rival by Jakob Jakobsen found no users.
What was Faroe Islands Translate?
A 2017 project of the tourist board Visit Faroe Islands. Text entered in one of thirteen languages went to a volunteer, who sent back a video translation, and the aim was to get Faroese onto Google Translate.