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Until the 15th Century, Faeroese had a similar orthography to Icelandic and West Norwegian, but after the Reformation, the ruling Danes outlawed its use in schools, churches and official documents. i.e the main places where written languages survived in those days. The Islanders continued using the language in ballads, folktales, and everyday life. This maintained a rich spoken tradition, but for 300 years, there were no texts.
As a written language, Modern Faeroese has only existed since 1854, when V.U. Hammershaimb published his grammar. Although this would have been a great opportunity to create a perfect written language, free from silent letters and inconsistencies, he produced an orthography consistent with having a continuous written tradition. The letters ð and g, for example, have no phonemes attached to them. In intervocalic positions, they could be said to have sound, but in truth, the sound is a glide between the two vowels which would exist with or without the ð or g. Also, although the letter m corresponds to the bilabial nasal as it does in English, in the Dative ending -inum, it corresponds to the alveolar nasal 'n'.