Gutnish, Gotlandic, or rarely Gutnic, refers to the original languagespoken on parts of the islands of Gotland and Fårö. The different dialects of Gutnish, while stemming from the Old Gutnish variety of Old Norse, are sometimes considered part of modern Swedish. Gutnish exists in two variants, Mainland Gotlandic, mostly spoken in the southern portion of Gotland, and Faroymal, spoken on parts of the island of Fårö. UNESCO defines Gutnish as a "definitely endangered language" as of 2010. Some features of Gutnish include the preservation of Old Norse diphthongs like ai in for instance stain and oy in for example doy. There is also a triphthong that exists in no other Norse languages: iau as in skiaute/skiauta. Most Gotlanders do not understand Gutnish, and speak Swedish, as contemporary Gutnish, due to long mutual exposure, is much closer to Swedish than Old Swedish and Old Gutnish were to each other. There are major efforts to revive the traditional version of Modern Gutnish, and Gutamålsgillet is organizing classes and meetings for speakers of traditional Gutnish. According to the guild's webpage, there are now 1,500 people using Gutnish on Facebook.
Lexicon
Gotlandic has many words of its own that make it different from Swedish. Here is a small selection of Gotlandic's everyday vocabulary:
Like most dialects of Swedish, Gotlandic is under great influence of the Swedish standard language, both through speaker contact and through media and written language. As a result, Gotlandic has become much closer to the Swedish standard language. There are also many Gotlanders who do not learn the dialect, but speak a regionally colored variant of the standard Swedish. This is characterized mainly by its intonation, but also by diphthongs and triphthongs, some lexical peculiarities as well as the infinitive ending -ä. The Gutamålsgillet association, which has been working for the preservation and revitalization of Gotlandic since 1945, estimates that Gotlandic is spoken today by 2,000 to 5,000 people. How many are still passive, is not specified. However, an interest in Gotlandic seems to be present: From 1989 to 2011, the radio showGutamål ran in Radio Gotland, which regularly reached about 15,000 to 20,000 listeners, and in 2008 Gotland University offered their first course in Gotlandic. Gutamålsgillet collects writings of authors and poets who write their texts in Gotlandic, and maintains a Swedish-Gotlandic dictionary and an ever-growing list of Gotlandic neologisms.
