Fårömål dialect

Fårömål (Fårö Gutnish) is the dialect of Gutnish spoken on the Baltic island of Fårö north of Gotland. The name "Fårö" (in Gutnish, Fåre) is derived from the words ö, meaning island, and probably far-, which is a word stem associated with travel, as in the Swedish verb fara (to travel). The name Fårö probably means 'the island you have to travel to' or 'the traveler's island'. Mainland Swedes might misinterpret the name Fårö to be derived from får, the Standard Swedish word for 'sheep', due to the many sheep on the island. That word is absent from Modern Gutnish, which uses the word lamm (which in Swedish means 'lamb') instead.[1] Gotlanders describe Fårömål as sounding "coarse" and as characterized by "mumbling".[2]

Fårömål is the most archaic dialect of Gutnish in terms of morphology and phonetics. The dialect is closest to Old Gutnish and has retained, for example, the a-ending of the infinitive. There are also verb endings that no longer exist in the dialect of the main island (Storlandsmål) as in Swedish and Danish (e. g.: ja kimbur, däu kumbort, han kumbur). And while the unstressed endings are often dropped in the Main Island dialect, the Fårö Gutnish has preserved them (e. g. Han skudd' gleid' (gläid') ti Fol u kaup' skog on the main island → Han skudde gläida till Fola u kaupa skog in Farømål).[3]

In Fårömålet there are sentence constructions, where Swedish or Danish would normally insert a det (e.g. da bleir an mild vintor instead of då blir det en mild vinter in Swedish or der bliver det en mild vinter in Danish).[4] The dialect also shares similarities with Danish (e.g. inte rätt/rett stor instead of inte särskilt stor).[5] At the same time is the intonation (linguistics) a little closer to Swedish.[6]