Excerpt from Trubner's Collection of Simplified Grammars: Of the Principal Asiatic and European Languages Scriptures, may therefore be fairly accepted as a true representative of the highest literary standpoint of the lan guage in the earlier half of the sixteenth century. Indeed it may be said that Olaus Petri's work marks the turning point between the Older and more rugged form of the lan guage, and that later development from which has resulted the spoken Swedish of our own times. The latter has naturally undergone various modifications, but it has retained far more of the characteristic vigour of the Old Northern than its sister-speech of Norway and Denmark, where even the best preserved provincial dialects betray the Germanizing influences to which both the spoken and the written language of the people have been subjected. From this vitia'tion of their northern mother-tongue the Swedes have been saved through their early severance from their political union with Denmark, and still more, perhaps, through their geographical position, which, while it has aided them in maintaining, almost unassailed, the indepen dence which the first of the Vasas secured for them, has not been without powerful influence on the preservation of the genuine northern character of their language. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.