人权宣言 - Faroese

总发言人数

按國家使用（官方語言）

背景

The Faroe Islands are located about 250 miles north of Scotland, midway between Norway and Iceland. They were settled about a thousand years ago by Norwegian Vikings speaking the Old Norse language. Modern Faroese, like Icelandic, strongly resembles Old Norse.The Faroese language belongs to the Indo-European family, Germanic group, Scandinavian subgroup, and is spoken by 50,000 people. It resembles both Icelandic and Western Norwegian dialects. It is almost mutually intelligible with other North Germanic languages, at least in its written form, which was established in the 19th century by Venzel Hammershaimb and modelled after Icelandic with almost the same alphabet. Written Faroese appeared rather late and at a time when the language was under strong pressure from Danish, which had become the established language for the church and civil servants of the Faroes (especially after the reformation in 1540). But when written Faroese was established, it meant a big boost for the Faroese culture and language. Today the Faroes have one of the highest number of books published per capita.