Borg

Borg may refer to:

People

Places

Companies

Fiction

Swedish language

Swedish ( svenska  [ˈsvɛnːˈska]) is a North Germanic language, spoken natively by about 9 million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish (see the section "Classification"). Along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is currently the largest of the North Germanic languages by number of speakers.

Standard Swedish, spoken by most Swedes, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from the older rural dialects still exist, the spoken and written language is uniform and standardized.

The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages, V2, which means that the finite verb appears in second position of a declarative main clause. Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections. There are two genders, no grammatical cases, and a distinction between plural and singular. Older analyses posit the cases nominative and genitive and there are some remains of distinct accusative and dative forms as well. Adjectives are compared as in English, and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness. The definiteness of nouns is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles. The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, a highly variable consonant phoneme.

Borg (castle)

A borg (Dutch pronunciation: [bɔrx]; Gronings: börg) is a former stronghold or villa in the province of Groningen, Netherlands. Borgs used to belong to noblemen or prominent citizens. A comparable building in the neighboring province of Friesland is called a stins.

History

A borg usually started as a brick building, a 'steenhuis' (literally meaning 'stone house'), built in the 13th or 14th century. A steenhuis was usually 11 meters long and eight meters wide. The walls were thick, often more than one meter in thickness. Most were originally made of wood because stone was expensive, but less flammable. A steenhuis was not used as a house, but offered protection in times of danger. There is one original steenhuis left in Groningen, the Iwema-steenhuis in Niebert. Some steenhuises were enlarged and became more like a castle; this would be considered a borg. A good example of a borg that originated from a steenhuis is the Fraeylemaborg. In the building itself you can still find a wide wall with embrasures. Many borgs are surrounded by a moat. Besides the borgs that originated from a steenhuis, there are also more recently built borgs that originate from veenborgen.