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

Rh Scriptures, may therefore be fairly accepted as a true representative of the highest literary standpoint of the language in the earlier half of the sixteenth century. Indeed it may be said that Olaus Petri's work marks the turning point between the older and more rugged form of the language, and that later development from which has resulted the spoken Swedish of our times. The latter has naturally undergone various modifications, but it has retained far more of the characteristic vigour of the Old Northern than its sister-speech of Norway and Denmark, where even the best preserved provincial dialects betray the Germanizing influences to which both the spoken and the written language of the people have been subjected. From this vitiation of their northern mother-tongue the Swedes have been saved through their early severance from their political union with Denmark, and still more, perhaps, through their geographical position, which, while it has aided them in maintaining, almost unassailed, the independance which the first of the Vasas secured for them, has not been without powerful influence on the preservation of the genuine northern character of their language.

In modern Swedish, great dialectic differences of inflection and pronunciation are still to be met with even among the educated classes, although it cannot be denied that the present generation is showing a constantly increasing inclination to level provincialisms towards a more general