Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken on Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. After the islands were returned to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, its use was discouraged by the Scottish government and the Church of Scotland (the national church), and it was gradually replaced by Scots over time.

It is not known exactly when Norn became extinct. The last reports of Norn speakers are claimed to be from the early 19th century, but it is more likely that the language died out sometime during the 18th century at the latest. Fragments of the language and loan-words adopted into the local Lowland Scots and Scottish English survived the death of the main language and remain to this day.

Dialects of Norse had also been spoken on mainland Scotland — for example, in Caithness — but here they became extinct many centuries before Norn died on Orkney and Shetland. Hence, some scholars also speak about "Caithness Norn", but others avoid this. Even less is known about "Caithness Norn" than about Orkney and Shetland Norn. Relatively little written Norn has survived. What remains includes a version of the Lord's Prayer, ballads and official documents such as diplomas as well as several runic inscriptions.

This is the approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century.
RED area is the distribution of the dialect Old West Norse
ORANGE area is the spread of the dialect Old East Norse
PINK area is Old Gutnish and
GREEN area is the extent of the other Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility

Classification

Norn is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group consisting of Swedish and Danish. More recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into an Insular Scandinavian and Mainland Scandinavian languages, grouping Norwegian with Danish and Swedish based on mutual intelligibility and the fact that Norwegian has been heavily influenced in particular by Danish during the last millennium and has diverged from Faroese and Icelandic. Norn is generally considered to have been fairly similar to Faroese, sharing many phonological and grammatical traits with this language, and might even have been mutually intelligible with it.

Sounds
The phonology of Norn can never be determined with much precision due to the lack of source material, but the general aspects can be extrapolated from the few written sources that do exist. Norn shared many traits with the dialects of south-west Norway. This includes a voicing of /p, t, k/ to [b, d, g] before or between vowels and a conversion of /θ/ and /ð/ ("thing" and "that" respectively) to [t] and [d] respectively.

Grammar
The features of Norn grammar were very similar to the other Scandinavian languages. There were two numbers, three genders and four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative). The two main conjugations of verbs in present and past tense were also present and like all other North Germanic languages, it used a suffix instead of a propositioned article to indicate definiteness as in Danish/Norwegian/Swedish today: man(n) ("man"); mannen ("the man"). Though it is difficult to be certain of much of the aspects of Norn grammar, documents indicate that it may have featured subjectless clauses, which were common in the West Scandinavian languages.

Sample text
The following are Norn and old Norse versions of the Lord's Prayer, a Christian prayer:

Orkney Norn:
Favor i ir i chimrie, / Helleur ir i nam thite,
gilla cosdum thite cumma, / veya thine mota vara gort
o yurn sinna gort i chimrie, / ga vus da on da dalight brow vora
Firgive vus sinna vora / sin vee Firgive sindara mutha vus,
lyv vus ye i tumtation, / min delivera vus fro olt ilt, Amen.

Shetland Norn:
Fy vor or er i Chimeri. / Halaght vara nam dit.
La Konungdum din cumma. / La vill din vera guerde
i vrildin sindaeri chimeri. / Gav vus dagh u dagloght brau.
Forgive sindorwara / sin vi forgiva gem ao sinda gainst wus.
Lia wus ikè o vera tempa, / but delivra wus fro adlu idlu.
For do i ir Kongungdum, u puri, u glori, Amen

Nordic countries Old Norse:
Faþer vár es ert í himenríki, verði nafn þitt hæilagt
Til kome ríke þitt, værði vili þin
sva a iarðu sem í himnum.
Gef oss í dag brauð vort dagligt
Ok fyr gefþu oss synþer órar,
sem vér fyr gefom þeim er viþ oss hafa misgert
Leiðd oss eigi í freistni, heldr leys þv oss frá ollu illu.

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