Page:A simplified grammar of the Danish language.djvu/13



recently the Danes and Norwegians used no other characters in printing and writing but those known as the Gothic, or German. In the present day, however, the Latin Alphabet is being extensively employed by the best writers of Denmark and Norway, and a new and more rational system of spelling is gaining ground among the ablest cultivators of that special form of Northern speech known as Danish, or Dano-Norwegian (Dansk-Norsk). This compound term indicates the common use of this branch of Scandinavian by Danes and Norwegians, and in point of fact it has for centuries served both peoples as their common literary language, and mother-tongue, although each has spoken it with differences of accent, and each has preserved in its current speech modes of expression and construction peculiar to itself.

"Dansk-Norsk" and "Svensk" (Swedish) are twin-sister