The
North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the
Germanic languages, a sub-family of the
Indo-European languages, along with the
West Germanic languages and the extinct
East Germanic languages. The language group is sometimes referred to as the
Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among
Danish,
Swedish and
Norwegian scholars and laypeople. In
Scandinavia, the term
Scandinavian languages refers specifically to the mutually intelligible languages of the three Scandinavian countries and is thus used in a more narrow sense as a subset of the Nordic languages, leaving aside the insular subset of
Faroese and
Icelandic (and certainly the unrelated
Finnish and
Sami languages). The term
Scandinavian arose in the 18th century as a result of the early linguistic and cultural
Scandinavist movement, referring to the people, cultures, and languages of the three Scandinavian countries and stressing their common heritage.