User:23ratcma/Hoffish

Hoffish
Hoffish is a dialect of swedish mostly spoken in the north of scandinavia. It is often called hoffish or hope language, although locals call it by hoseff. It is one of the most least spoken languages with 1,023 speakers world wide. Since hoffish became known to the public in 1998, little has been done on the internet to make the language know, except for a few books, and interviews made with the natives who speak it.

Hoffish is a language taught in few swedish villages.

History
Hoffish started as a dialect of norsk(a scandinavian language) in 990 ad. The scandinavian countries spoke it for trade throughout europe. The language was originally something called Nora's Norse, but died out quickly to a village called utsjoki in 1266. During this time, the language was a plain north germanic language.

Later in 1301, new trade routes were being built in europe. This trade deal went from britain to northern scandinavia to the white sea, then back. The trading mostly included wood, and building materials. During this time Hoffish grew back as a lingua franca between norse, english, and german(dominent during these times). It was then importantly used for trading between the different countries, and was a easy and simple language. This was also the time its first modern word was made for hello(hreat).

Next over hundreds of years, the language grew to become a trade language for northern scandinavia villages, and went from 500 speakers to over 1000 in modern day. The main reason this lingua franca did not grow as fast as it should, is because the natives who speak it seperate themselves from other people, so the language can't ever spread. A interview was done in the 90's by a Russian man, and a Norweigan man, and that was when the language was brought to the public.

Type of Language
According to research on what type of language it is, it has some germanic/norse qualities, plus some uralic qualities from its finnish development. The modern version of the language has mostly swedish or swedish-esk nouns, so it can be classified as a scandinavian language. The full name of the language is a type of a North Uralicest Germanic Langauge.

Famous Developments
Here is a list of people who have contributed in making this language public:


 * Borat Kikowachi(1997): Interviewed a norweigan man about language
 * Mina Napoi(2001): Made book about hoffish, and its history
 * Jake Chepman(2004): Made essay on hoffish, and its structure
 * Chris Zetchlin(2010): Learned the language from the natives
 * Finn Newman(2016): Learned the language from Chris and published dictionary
 * Savanna Chia(2019): Founded learn hoffish in 2019
 * Andrew Hunter(2020): Published hoffish book to english speakers in 2020

Countries that use it

 * Sweden
 * Norway
 * Iceland
 * Finland

Citations

Resources provided byl:

https://learnhoffish.len4.repl.co/

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hoffish-the-forgotten-language