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Scanian (skånska or skånsk) is a closely related group of dialects which formed part of the old Scandinavian dialect continuum, spoken mainly in the province Scania in Southern Sweden. It is by most historical linguists considered to be an East-Danish dialect group, but due to the modern era influence from Standard Swedish in the region and due to the fact that traditional dialectology in the Scandinavian countries normally have not considered isoglosses that cut across state borders, the Scanian dialects have normally been treated as a South-Swedish dialect group in Swedish dialect research. However, many of the early Scandinavian linguists, including Adolf Noreen and G. Sjöstedt, classified it as "South-Scandinavian", and some linguists, such as Elias Wessén, also considered Old Scanian a separate language, classified apart from both Old Danish and Old Swedish.

Scanian was previously classified as a regional language by SIL International, but before the latest update, the Swedish representative to ISO/TC-37, the technical committee overseeing ISO 639, required that Scanian be removed from the ISO/DIS 639-3, the draft just prior to the final draft FDIS, or a positive vote from Sweden would not be forthcoming. The prior identifier ISO 639-3:scy, as used in the Ethnologue 15th edition, is reserved for Scanian, and may become active again if a request is submitted to have it reinstated during the annual review process. Within the previous SIL International classification of Scanian were the dialects in the province of Scania, some of the southern dialects of Halland (halländska in Swedish), the dialects of Blekinge (blekingska in Swedish) and the dialects of the Danish island of Bornholm (bornholmsk in Danish).