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I have observed the same across a bunch of linguistically Germanic countries (DE, AT, CH, NL, DK, NO, haven't been to SE, didn't observe it in IS), and I thought of it as "cultural autism." Apparently "higher context" is the politically correct way to say it. Now I know!

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Danish and Norwegian are not linguistically Germanic. If anything, German has more old Norse influences. And dutch.. Well, dutch is the illegitimate child of england and germany.

>Danish and Norwegian are not linguistically Germanic

Where do you get that notion? My education (and some googling to refresh my memory) has Norwegian, Swedish and Danish classed as "North Germanic" according to comparative linguistics. That is one subset of the West Germanic languages which most of northern Europe speaks.

You are right, west germanic is what I had in mind. In my mind north germanic never made sense, but I guess I will leave that to the experts :)

Speaking as someone with an academic background in Germanic historical linguistics: this is thoroughly incorrect.

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