Elfdalian or Övdalian (Elfdalian: övdalsk or övdalską, pronounced [ˈœvdɐlskãː]; Swedish: älvdalska or älvdalsmål) is a North Germanic language spoken by around 3,000 people who live or have grown up in the locality of Älvdalen (Övdaln), in the south east of Älvdalen Municipality in northern Dalarna, Sweden.

Elfdalian belongs to the Northern branch/Upper Siljan branch of the Dalecarlian dialects or vernaculars, which in their turn evolved from Old Norse, from which Dalecarlian vernaculars might have split as early as in the eighth or ninth century,[8] i.e., approximately when the North Germanic languages split into Western and Eastern branches.

They have several origins, belonging to different layers of history, but most involve the loss of a nasal consonant, with lengthening and nasalisation of a preceding vowel.

The declension of warg, "wolf" (long-syllabic, strong masculine noun) was as follows in what is sometimes called "Classic Elfdalian" (as described by Levander 1909): Many speakers retain the distinct dative case, which is used especially after prepositions and also certain verbs (such as jåpa, "help").

[17] The distinction between nominative and accusative has been lost in indefinite nouns,[clarification needed] and the inherited genitive been replaced by new forms created by attaching -es to the dative (see Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2005), a trend that was well underway even in Classic Elfdalian.

In May–June 2007, a group of linguists from the pan-Scandinavian NORMS network[18] conducted fieldwork in Älvdalen especially aimed at investigating the syntactic properties of the language.

Other syntactic properties are negative concord, stylistic inversion, long distance reflexives, verb controlled datives, agent-verb word order in coordinated clauses with deleted subjects, etc.

Bengt Åkerberg elaborated it, and it was applied in some books and used in language courses[20] and is based on Loka dialect and is highly phonetic.

However, it is possible that it will receive an official status as a minority language in Sweden, which would entail numerous protections and encourage its use in schools and by writers and artists.

[23] The Committee of Experts now encourages the Swedish authorities to investigate the status of Elfdalian through an independent scientific study.

In 2005, Ulum Dalska launched a process aimed at bringing about an official recognition of Elfdalian as a language by the Swedish authorities.

[28] In March 2016, Swedish Radio reported that the Älvdalen City Council had decided that, starting in autumn 2016, the local kindergarten would operate solely through the medium of Elfdalian.