These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language and Icelandic language, as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages). Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form, because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them.
As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of written Norwegian Bokmål (literally "book language") and Nynorsk (literally "new Norwegian"). The Norwegian Language Council is responsible for regulating the two forms, and recommends the terms "Norwegian Bokmål" and "Norwegian Nynorsk" in English. Two other written forms without official status also exist: Riksmål ("national language"), which is to a large extent the same language as Bokmål, but somewhat closer to the Danish language, is regulated by the Norwegian Academy, which translates it as "Standard Norwegian". Høgnorsk ("High Norwegian") is a more purist form of Nynorsk that rejects most spelling reforms from the 20th century, but is not widely used.
There is no officially sanctioned standard of spoken Norwegian, and most Norwegians speak their own dialect in all circumstances. The sociolect of the urban upper and middle class in East Norway can be regarded as a de facto spoken standard for Bokmål because it adopted many characteristics from Danish when Norway was under Danish rule. This so-called standard østnorsk ("Standard Eastern Norwegian") is the form generally taught to foreign students.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban discourse, and Norway's literary history. Historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianised variety of Danish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish. The now abandoned official policy to merge Bokmål and Nynorsk into one common language called Samnorsk through a series of spelling reforms has created a wide spectrum of varieties of both Bokmål and Nynorsk. The unofficial form known as Riksmål is considered more conservative than Bokmål, and the unofficial Høgnorsk more conservative than Nynorsk.
Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. A 2005 poll indicates that 86.3% use primarily Bokmål as their daily written language, 5.5% use both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and 7.5% use primarily Nynorsk. Thus 13% are frequently writing Nynorsk, though the majority speak dialects that resemble Nynorsk more closely than Bokmål. Broadly speaking, Nynorsk writing is widespread in Western Norway, though not in major urban areas, and also in the upper parts of mountain valleys in the southern and eastern parts of Norway. Examples are Setesdal, the western part of Telemark county (fylke) and several municipalities in Hallingdal, Valdres and Gudbrandsdalen. It is little used elsewhere, but 30–40 years ago it also had strongholds in many rural parts of Trøndelag (Mid-Norway) and the south part of Northern Norway (Nordland county). Today, not only is nynorsk the official language of 4 of the 19 Norwegian counties (fylker), but also of many municipalities in 5 other counties. The Norwegian broadcasting corporation (NRK) broadcasts in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and all governmental agencies are required to support both written languages. Bokmål is used in 92% of all written publications, Nynorsk in 8% (2000).
Norwegian is one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries who speak Norwegian have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs.
The languages now spoken in Scandinavia developed from the Old Norse language, which did not differ greatly between what are now Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish areas. In fact, Viking traders spread the language across Europe and into Russia, making Old Norse one of the most widespread languages for a time. According to tradition, King Harald Fairhair united Norway in 872. Around this time, a runic alphabet was used. According to writings found on stone tablets from this period of history, the language showed remarkably little deviation between different regions. Runes had been in limited use since at least the 3rd century. Around 1030, Christianity came to Norway, bringing with it the Latin alphabet. Norwegian manuscripts in the new alphabet began to appear about a century later. The Norwegian language began to deviate from its neighbors around this time as well.
Viking explorers had begun to settle Iceland in the 9th century, carrying with them the Old Norse language. Over time, Old Norse developed into "Western" and "Eastern" variants. Western Norse covered Norway and overseas settlements in Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Shetland Islands, while Eastern Norse developed in Denmark and south-central Sweden. The language of Iceland and Norway was practically the same up until the 14th century, when they started to deviate from each other.
The language phase traditionally dated to 1350–1525 is known as Middle Norwegian and is seen by many as a transitional period from Old Norwegian to Modern Norwegian. The reason for this is that although most languages are in a state of constant change, Norwegian phonology, morphology and syntax changed considerably during this time. The use of grammatical case, and a great portion of the conjugation of verbs was lost and replaced by a more fixed syntax, use of prepositions and a greater use of auxiliary based verb forms. During the late Old Norse period and this period there was also a considerable adoption of Middle Low German vocabulary. Similar development in grammar and phonology happened in Swedish and Danish, keeping the dialect continuum in continental Scandinavia intact, but with greater dialectal variation. This process did not, however, occur in the same way in Faroese and Icelandic. These languages remain conservative to this day, when it comes to grammar and vocabulary, so mutual intelligibility with continental Scandinavia was lost.
Norway was forced to enter a new personal union with Sweden, shortly after the end of the former one with Denmark. However, Norwegians began to push for true independence by embracing democracy and attempting to enforce the constitutional declaration of being a sovereign state. Part of this nationalist movement was directed towards the development of an independent Norwegian language. Three major paths were available: do nothing (Norwegian written language, i.e. Danish, was already different from Swedish), Norwegianise the Danish language, or build a new national language based on Modern Norwegian dialects. All three approaches were attempted.
Meanwhile, a nationalistic movement strove for the development of a new written Norwegian. Ivar Aasen, a self-taught linguist, began his work to create a new Norwegian language at the age of 22. He traveled around the country, comparing the dialects in different regions, and examined the development of Icelandic, which had largely escaped the influences Norwegian had come under. He called his work, which was published in several books from 1848 to 1873, Landsmål, meaning national language. The name "Landsmål" is sometimes interpreted as "rural language" or "country language," but this was clearly not Aasen's intended meaning.
The name of the Danish language in Norway was a topic of hot dispute through the 19th century. Its proponents claimed that it was a language common to Norway and Denmark, and no more Danish than Norwegian. The proponents of Landsmål thought that the Danish character of the language should not be concealed. In 1899, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson proposed the neutral name Riksmål, meaning national language like Landsmål, and this was officially adopted along with the 1907 spelling reform. The name "Riksmål" is sometimes interpreted as "state language," but this meaning is secondary at best, compare to Danish rigsmål from where the name was borrowed.
After the personal union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905, both languages were developed further and reached what is now considered their classic forms after a reform in 1917. Riksmål was in 1929 officially renamed Bokmål (literally "Book language"), and Landsmål to Nynorsk (literally "New Norwegian"). A proposition to substitute Dano-Norwegian for Bokmål lost in parliament by a single vote. The name Nynorsk, the linguistic term for Modern Norwegian, was chosen for contrast to Danish and emphasis on the historical connection to Old Norwegian. Today this meaning is often lost, and it is commonly mistaken as a "new" Norwegian in contrast to the "real" Norwegian Bokmål.
Bokmål and Nynorsk were made closer by a reform in 1938. This was a result of a state policy to merge Nynorsk and Bokmål into one language, called "Samnorsk" (Common Norwegian). A 1946 poll showed that this policy was supported by 79% of Norwegians at the time. However, opponents of the official policy still managed to create a massive protest movement against Samnorsk in the 1950s, fighting in particular the use of "radical" forms in Bokmål text books in schools. In the reform in 1959, the 1938 reform was partially reversed in Bokmål, but Nynorsk was changed further towards Bokmål. Since then Bokmål has reverted even further toward traditional Riksmål, while Nynorsk still adheres to the 1959 standard. Therefore a small minority of Nynorsk enthusiasts uses a more conservative standard called Høgnorsk. The Samnorsk policy had little influence after 1960, and was officially abandoned in 2002.
===Accent=== Norwegian is a pitch accent language with two distinct pitch patterns. They are used to differentiate two-syllable words with otherwise identical pronunciation. For example in many East Norwegian dialects, the word "" (farmers) is pronounced using tone 1, while "" (beans or prayers) uses tone 2, just like in Danish. Though the differences in spelling occasionally allow the words to be distinguished in written language, in most cases the minimal pairs are written alike, since written Norwegian has no explicit accent marks. In most eastern low-tone dialects, accent 1 uses a low flat pitch in the first syllable, while accent 2 uses a high, sharply falling pitch in the first syllable and a low pitch in the beginning of the second syllable. In both accents, these pitch movements are followed by a rise of intonational nature (phrase accent), the size (and presence) of which signals emphasis/focus and which corresponds in function to the normal accent in languages that lack lexical tone, such as English. That rise culminates in the final syllable of an accentual phrase, while the utterance-final fall that is so common in most languages is either very small or absent.
There are significant variations in pitch accent between dialects. Thus, in most of western and northern Norway (the so-called high-pitch dialects) accent 1 is falling, while accent 2 is rising in the first syllable and falling in the second syllable or somewhere around the syllable boundary. The pitch accents (as well as the peculiar phrase accent in the low-tone dialects) give the Norwegian language a "singing" quality which makes it fairly easy to distinguish from other languages. Interestingly, accent 1 generally occurs in words that were monosyllabic in Old Norse, and accent 2 in words that were polysyllabic.
The letters c, q, w, x and z are only used in loanwords. Some also spell their otherwise Norwegian family names using these letters.
Some letters may be modified by diacritics: é, è, ê, ó, ò, and ô. In Nynorsk, ì and ù and ỳ are occasionally seen as well. The diacritics are not compulsory, but may in a few cases distinguish between different meanings of the word, e.g.: for (for/to), fór (went), fòr (furrow) and fôr (fodder). Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notably ü, á and à.
Both Nynorsk and Bokmål have a great variety of optional forms. The Bokmål that uses the forms that are close to Riksmål is called moderate or conservative, depending on one's viewpoint, while the Bokmål that uses the forms that are close to Nynorsk is called radical. Nynorsk has forms that are close to the original Landsmål and forms that are close to Bokmål.
Riksmål is regulated by the Norwegian Academy, which determines acceptable spelling, grammar, and vocabulary.
There is general agreement that a wide range of differences makes it difficult to estimate the number of different Norwegian dialects. Variations in grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation cut across geographical boundaries and can create a distinct dialect at the level of farm clusters. Dialects are in some cases so dissimilar as to be unintelligible to unfamiliar listeners. Many linguists note a trend toward regionalization of dialects that diminishes the differences at such local levels; there is, however, a renewed interest in preserving distinct dialects.
{| class=wikitable
! width=100px rowspan=2 | Language
! colspan=5 | Phrase
|-
! I come from Norway || What is his name? || This is a horse || The rainbow has many colours
|-
| Bokmål ||rowspan=3 | Jeg kommer fra Norge || rowspan=2 | Hva heter han? || rowspan=3 | Dette er en hest || Regnbuen har mange farger
|-
| Riksmål || rowspan=2 | Regnbuen har mange farver
|-
| Danish || Hvad hedder han?
|-
| Nynorsk || rowspan=2 | Eg kjem frå Noreg || rowspan=2 | Kva heiter han? || rowspan=2 | Dette er ein hest || Regnbogen har mange fargar/leter
Regnbogen er mangleta
|-
| Høgnorsk || Regnbogen hev mange leter
Regnbogen er manglìta
|-
| Old Norse || Ek kem frá Noregi || Hvat heitir hann? || Þetta er hross/Þessi er hestr || Regnboginn er marglitr
|-
| Icelandic || Ég kem frá Noregi || Hvað heitir hann? || Þetta er hross/Þessi er hestur || Regnboginn er marglitur
|-
| Faroese || Eg komi frá Noreg/Norra || Hvussu eitur hann? || Hetta er eitt ross/ein hestur || Ælabogin hevur nógvar litir
|-
| Swedish || Jag kommer från Norge || Vad heter han? || Detta är en häst || Regnbågen har många färger
|-
| German || Ich komme aus Norwegen || Wie heißt er? || Dies ist ein Hengst/Ross/Pferd || Der Regenbogen hat viele Farben
|-
| Dutch || Ik kom uit Noorwegen || Hoe heet hij? || Dit is een hengst/ros/paard || De regenboog heeft veel kleuren
|-
| Afrikaans || Ek kom van Noorweë af || Hoe heet hy? || Dit is 'n perd || Die reënboog het baie kleure
|-
| West Frisian || Ik kom út Noarwegen || Hoe hjit er? || Dit is in hynder/happe || De reinbôge hat mannich kleuren
|-
|}
As in most Indo-European languages (English being one of a few exceptions), nouns are classified by gender, which has consequences for the declension of agreeing adjectives and determiners. Norwegian has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, except the Bergen dialect which has only two genders: common and neuter. Riksmål and conservative Bokmål traditionally have two genders like Danish, but more modern language has three genders, especially in its spoken form.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Noun forms
båt (boat) in Bokmål
|-
! colspan="2" | Singular
! colspan="2" | Plural
|-
! Indefinite
! Definite
! Indefinite
! Definite
|-
| en båt
| båten
| båter
| båtene
|}
The declension of regular nouns depends on gender. Some dialects and variants of Nynorsk furthermore have different declension of weak and strong feminines and neuters.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Bokmål
|-
! m.
| en gutt
(a boy)
| gutten
(the boy)
| gutter
(boys)
| guttene
(the boys)
|-
! f.
| ei/en dør
(a door)
| døra/døren
(the door)
| dører
(doors)
| dørene
(the doors)
|-
! n.
| et hus
(a house)
| huset
(the house)
| hus
(houses)
| husene/husa
(the houses)
|}
As of June 5, 2005, all feminine nouns can be written as masculine nouns (bokmål only).
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Nynorsk
|-
! m.
| ein gut
(a boy)
| guten
(the boy)
| gutar
(boys)
| gutane
(the boys)
|-
!rowspan="2"| f.
| ei sol
(a sun)
| sola/soli
(the sun)
| soler
(suns)
| solene
(the suns)
|-
| ei kyrkje/kyrkja
(a church)
| kyrkja
(the church)
| kyrkjer/kyrkjor
(churches)
| kyrkjene/kyrkjone
(the churches)
|-
!rowspan="2"| n.
| eit hus
(a house)
| huset
(the house)
| hus
(houses)
| husa/husi
(the houses)
|-
| eit hjarta/hjarte
(a heart)
| hjarta/hjartet
(the heart)
| hjarto/hjarte
(hearts)
| hjarto/hjarta
(the hearts)
|}
In Norwegian, a definite noun has a suffixed article (cf. above). Noteworthy, however, when a definitive noun is preceeded by an adjective (or a numeral), a definite article is placed in front of the adjective in addition to the suffixed article of the noun, double definiteness. (In Bokmål, though, the suffixed article may be dropped in these cases, due to its Danish origin.) Example in Nynorsk: huset - det grøne huset (the house - the green house).
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Weak adjective forms
grønn (green) in Bokmål
|-
! Positive
! Comparative
! Superlative
|-
| grønne
| grønnere
| grønneste
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Strong adjective forms
(grønn (green) in Bokmål)
|-
! colspan="4" | Positive
! rowspan="2" | Comparative
! rowspan="2" | Superlative
|-
! Masculine
! Feminine
! Neuter
! Plural
|-
| grønn
| grønn
| grønt
| grønne
| grønnere
| grønnest
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Weak adjective forms
grøn (green) in Nynorsk
|-
! Positive
! Comparative
! Superlative
|-
| grøne
| grønare
| grønaste
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Strong adjective forms
(grøn (green) in Nynorsk)
|-
! colspan="4" | Positive
! rowspan="2" | Comparative
! rowspan="2" | Superlative
|-
! Masculine
! Feminine
! Neuter
! Plural
|-
| grøn
| grøn
| grønt
| grøne
| grønare
| grønast
|}
There are four non-finite verb forms: infinitive, passive infinitive, and the two participles perfective/past participle and imperfective/present participle.
The participles are verbal adjectives. The imperfective participle has no further declension, but the perfective participle is declined in gender (not in Bokmål and Standard Østnorsk) and number like strong, positive adjectives. The definite form of the participle is identical to the plural form.
As with other Germanic languages, Norwegian verbs can be either weak or strong.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Verb forms in Nynorsk
leva (to live)
|-
! colspan="4" | Finite
! colspan="7" | Non-finite
|-
! colspan="2" | Indicative
! rowspan="3" | Subjunctive
! rowspan="3" | Imperative
! colspan="2" | Verbal nouns
! colspan="5" | Verbal adjectives (Participles)
|-
! rowspan="2" | Present
! rowspan="2" | Past
! colspan="2" | Infinitive
! rowspan="2" | Imperfective
! colspan="4" | Perfective
|-
! Active
! Passive
! Masculine
! Feminine
! Neuter
! Plural/Def
|-
| lever
| levde
| leve
| lev
| leva
| levast
| levande
| levd
| levd
| levt
| levde
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Verb forms in Bokmål
leve (to live)
|-
! colspan="5" | Finite
! colspan="5" | Non-finite
|-
! colspan="3" | Indicative
! rowspan="3" | Subjunctive
! rowspan="3" | Imperative
! colspan="2" | Verbal nouns
! colspan="3" | Verbal adjectives (Participles)
|-
! colspan="2" | Present
! rowspan="2" | Past
! colspan="2" | Infinitive
! rowspan="2" | Imperfective
! colspan="2" | Perfective
|-
! Active
! Passive
! Active
! Passive
! Singular
! Plural/Def
|-
| lever
| leves
| levde/ levet
| leve
| lev
| leve
| leves
| levende
| levd
| levde/ levet
|}
In the most comprehensive Norwegian grammar, Norsk referansegrammatikk, the categorization of personal pronouns by person, gender, and number is not regarded as inflection. As with nouns, adjectives must agree with the gender and number of pronoun arguments.
Other pronouns have no inflection.
The so called possessive, demonstrative and relative pronouns are no longer regarded to be pronouns.
Pronouns are a closed class.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Examples of pronouns in Bokmål
|-
! Nominative
! Accusative
! English equivalent
|-
| jeg
| meg
| I, me
|-
| du
| deg
| you (singular)
|-
| han
| ham/han
| he, him
|-
| hun
| henne
| she, her
|-
| den
| den
| it (masculine/feminine)
|-
| det
| det
| it (neuter)
|-
| vi
| oss
| we, us
|-
| dere
| dere
| you (plural)
|-
| de
| dem
| they, them
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Examples of pronouns in Nynorsk
|-
! Nominative
! Accusative
! English equivalent
|-
| eg
| meg
| I, me
|-
| du
| deg
| you (singular)
|-
| han
| han/honom
| he, him or it (masculine)
|-
| ho
| ho/henne
| she, her or it (feminine)
|-
| det
| det
| it (neuter)
|-
| me/vi
| oss
| we, us
|-
| de
| dykk
| you (plural)
|-
| dei
| dei
| they, them
|}
Bokmål, like English, has two sets of 3rd person pronouns. Han and hun refer to male and female individuals respectively, den and det refer to impersonal or inanimate nouns, of masculine/feminine or neutral gender respectively. In contrast, Nynorsk and most dialects use the same set of pronouns (han (m.), ho (f.) and det (n.)) for both personal and impersonal references. Det also has expletive and cataphoric uses like in the English examples it rains and it was known by everyone (that) he had travelled the world.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Determiner forms
egen (own) in Bokmål
|-
! Masculine
! Feminine
! Neuter
! Plural
|-
| egen
| egen
| eget
| egne
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Determiner forms
eigen (own) in Nynorsk
|-
! Masculine
! Feminine
! Neuter
! Plural
|-
| eigen
| eiga/eigi
| eige/eigi
| eigne
|}
Compound words are written together in Norwegian, which can cause words to become very long, for example sannsynlighetsmaksimeringsestimator (maximum likelihood estimator) and menneskerettighetsorganisasjoner (human rights organisations). Another example is the title høyesterettsjustitiarius (originally a combination of supreme court and the actual title, justiciar). Note also the translation En midtsommernattsdrøm (A Midsummer Night's Dream).
If they are not written together, each part will naturally be read with primary stress, and the meaning of the compound is lost. This is sometimes forgotten, occasionally with humorous results. Instead of writing, for example, lammekoteletter (lamb chops), people make the mistake of writing lamme koteletter (lame, or paralyzed, chops). The original message can even be reversed, as when røykfritt (no smoking, lit. "smoke free") becomes røyk fritt (smoke freely).
Other examples include:
Some loanwords have their spelling changed to reflect Norwegian pronunciation rules, but in general Norwegianised spellings of these words tend to take a long time to sink in: e.g. sjåfør (from French chauffeur) and revansj (from French revanche) are now the common Norwegian spellings, but juice is more often used than the Norwegianised form jus, catering more often than keitering, service more often than sørvis, etc.
Category:Languages of Norway Category:North Germanic languages Category:Scandinavia Category:Stress-timed languages
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
![Iron Age artifacts from a hoard from Kumna[22]](http://web.archive.org./web/20101203195520im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/d7/7d/8bfbd0e1305af60affac9c9534c8_grande.jpg "Iron Age artifacts from a hoard from Kumna[22]")
![Iron Age artifacts from a hoard from Kumna[22]](http://web.archive.org./web/20101203195520im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/d7/7d/8bfbd0e1305af60affac9c9534c8_thumb.jpg "Iron Age artifacts from a hoard from Kumna[22]")
