Norwegian language

Norwegian is a Germanic language spoken in Norway. Speakers of Norwegian often find spoken Swedish and Danish mutually intelligible, though differences in dialects in all countries create significant differences. Together with these two languages as well as Faroese and Icelandic, Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages). Faroese and Icelandic, although the same language 800 years ago, are no longer mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form. 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.

As established by law and governmental policy, there are currently two official forms of written Norwegian – Bokmål (literally "book language") and Nynorsk (literally "new Norwegian"). The Norwegian Language Council recommends the terms "Norwegian Bokmål" and "Norwegian Nynorsk" in English, but these are seldom used. The language question in Norway has been subject to much controversy during the past generations. Though not reflective of the political landscape in general, written Norwegian is often described as a spectrum ranging from the conservative to the radical. The reason is that successive spelling reforms have resulted in an increased number of optional forms in spelling and grammar, allowing for greater possibility of combining elements from both written forms, particularly in the Bokmål variant. The current forms of Bokmål and Nynorsk are considered moderate forms of conservative and radical versions of written Norwegian, respectively.

The unofficial written form known as Riksmål is considered more conservative than Bokmål, and the unofficial Høgnorsk more conservative than Nynorsk. Those forms became popular among enthusiastic conservative people due to the reforms in the 1920s and 30s when the two official languages were brought closer together. Although Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, around 86-90% use Bokmål as their daily written language, and 10%-12% use Nynorsk, although many of the spoken dialects resemble Nynorsk more closely than Bokmål, mostly in terms of vocabulary and accent. Broadly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are more commonly seen in urban and suburban areas; Nynorsk in rural areas, particularly in Western Norway. 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). According to the Norwegian Language Council, "It may be reasonably realistic to assume that about 10-12% use Nynorsk, i.e. somewhat less than half a million people." ^* In spite of concern that Norwegian dialects would eventually give way to a common, spoken, Norwegian language close to Bokmål, dialects find significant support in local environments, popular opinion, and public policy.

History

Old norse, ca 900.PNG|right|250px|thumb|This is the approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century. The red area is the distribution of the dialect Old West Norse; the orange area is the spread of the dialect Old East Norse. The pink area is Old Gutnish and the green area is the extent of the other Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility]] 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 (including its overseas settlements in Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Shetland Islands), while Eastern Norse developed in Denmark and south-central Sweden. The languages of Iceland and Norway remained very similar until about the year 1300, when they became what are now known as Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian.

In the period traditionally dated to 1350-1525, Norwegian went through a Middle Norwegian transition toward Modern Norwegian. The major changes were simplification of the morphology, a more fixed syntax, and a considerable adoption of Middle Saxon vocabulary. Similar development happened in Swedish and Danish, keeping the dialect continuum in continental Scandinavia intact. This did however not happen in Faroese and Icelandic so these languages lost mutual intelligibility with continental Scandinavia.

In 1397, Norway entered a personal union with Denmark, and from 1536 Norway was subordinated under the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway. Danish became the commonly written language among Norway's literate class. Spoken Danish was gradually adopted by the urban elite, first at formal occasions, and gradually a more relaxed variety was adopted in everyday speech. The everyday speech went through a koineization process, involving grammatical simplification and Norwegianized pronunciation. When the union ended in 1814 the Dano-Norwegian koine had become the mother tongue of a substantial part of the Norwegian elite, but the more Danish-sounding solemn variety was still used on formal occasions.

Norway was forced to enter a new personal union shortly after the liberation from Denmark, this time with Sweden. 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 to 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), Norwegianize the Danish language, or build a new national language based on Modern Norwegian dialects. All three approaches were attempted.

From Danish to Norwegian

From the 1840s, some writers experimented with a Norwegianized Danish by incorporating words that were descriptive of Norwegian scenery and folk life, and adopting a more Norwegian syntax. Knud Knudsen proposed to change spelling and inflection in accordance with the Dano-Norwegian koine, known as "cultivated everyday speech". A small adjustment in this direction was implemented in the first official reform of Danish language in Norway in 1862 and more extensively after his death in two official reforms in 1907 and 1917.

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 meant that the Danish character of the language should not be concealed. In 1899 the neutral name Riksmål was adopted, meaning national language like Landsmål. The name "Riksmål" is sometimes interpreted as "state language", but this meaning is secondary at best, refer 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") — the names Dano-Norwegian and Norwegian lost in parliament by one single vote.

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 50's, 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.

Sound system

The sound system of Norwegian is similar to Swedish and Danish, though no official spoken standard exists. The variant generally taught to foreign students is East Norwegian as it is spoken in and around the capital Oslo.

Consonants

caption | Consonant phonemes of Eastern Norwegian
	Bilabial/ Labiodental		Dental/ Alveolar		Retroflex/ Postalveolar		Palatal	Velar		Glottal
Plosives	p	b	t	d	ʈ	ɖ		k	g
Nasals	m		n		ɳ			ŋ
Fricatives	f		s		ʃ		ç			h
Liquids			ɾ, l		ɽ, ɭ
Approximants	ʋ						j

Most of the retroflex (and postalveolar) consonants are mutations of or +any other alveolar/dental consonant; rn > , rt > , rl > , rs > , etc. across word boundaries (“sandhi”), in loanwords and in a group of primarily literary words may be pronounced , e.g., verden , but it may also be pronounced in some dialects. The most exotic of the retroflex consonants is the retroflex flap which is only found in a few languages worldwide. Most of the dialects in eastern and central Norway use the retroflex consonants. Most western and northern dialects do not have these retroflex sounds.

In Western Norwegian more guttural realizations of the /r/-phoneme are very common. Depending on phonetic context voiceless, , or voiced uvular fricatives ., are used.

The unvoiced stops are regularly aspirated.

Vowels

caption | Vowel phonemes of Norwegian
Orthography	IPA	Description
a		Open back unrounded
ai
au
e (short)		open mid front unrounded
e (long)		close-mid front unrounded
e (weak)		schwa (mid central unrounded)
ei	,
i (short)		close front unrounded
i (long)		close front unrounded
o		close back rounded
oi
u		close central rounded (close front extra rounded)
y (short)		close front rounded (close front less rounded)
y (long)		close front rounded (close front less rounded)
æ		near open front unrounded
ø		close-mid front rounded
øy
å		open-mid back rounded

There are, of course, many variations in vowel pronunciation in different dialects and idiolects of Norwegian, as in any language. The above vowel chart is meant to be fairly representative of Bokmål.

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 the Oslo dialects, the word "bønder" (farmers) is pronounced using tone 1, while "bønner" (beans or prayers) uses tone 2. Though the difference 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 Oslo Norwegian (and most eastern, so-called 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 pure intonation languages. 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.

Tonal accents and morphology

In morphology, especially in Nynorsk and Radical Bokmål, the accents take on a central role in marking grammatical categories. Thus, the ending (T1)-en implies determinate form of a masculine monosyllabic noun (båten, bilen, (den store) skjelven), whereas (T2)-en denotes either determinate form of a masculine bisyllabic noun or an adjectivised noun/verb ((han var) skjelven, moden). Similarly, the ending (T1)-a denotes feminine singular determinate monosyllabic nouns (boka, rota) or neutrum plural determinate nouns (husa, lysa), whereas the ending (T2)-a denotes preteritum of weak verbs (rota, husa), feminine singular determinate bisyllabic nouns (bøtta, ruta, jenta).

Monosyllabic tonal accents

In some dialects of Norwegian, mainly those from Nordmøre and Trøndelag to Lofoten, there may also be tonal opposition in monosyllables, as in (‘car’) vs. (‘axe’). In a few dialects, mainly in and near Nordmøre, the monosyllabic tonal opposition is also represented in final syllables with secondary stress, as well as double tone designated to single syllables of primary stress in polysyllabic words. In practice, this means that one gets minimal pairs like: (‘the rooster’) vs. (‘get him inside’); (‘in the well’) vs. (‘her well’); (‘sheriff’) vs. (‘the sheriff’). Amongst the various views on how to interpret this situation, the most promising one may be that the words displaying these complex tones have an extra mora. This mora may have little or no effect on duration and dynamic stress, but is represented as a tonal dip.

Other dialects with tonal opposition in monosyllabic words have done away with vowel length opposition. Thus, the words (‘dare’) vs. (‘cradle’) have merged into in the dialect of Oppdal.

Loss of tonal accents

Some forms of Norwegian have lost the tonal accent opposition. This includes mainly parts of the area around (but not including) Bergen; the Brønnøysund area; to some extent, the dialect of Bodø; and, also to various degrees, many dialects between Tromsø and the Russian border. Faroese and Icelandic, which have their main historical origin in Old Norse, also show no tonal opposition. It is, however, not clear whether these languages lost the tonal accent or whether the tonal accent was not yet there when these languages started their separate development.

Written language

The Alphabet

The Norwegian alphabet is as follows:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Ø Å (29 letters)

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z æ ø å

Bokmål and Nynorsk

Like some other European countries, Norway has an official "advisory board" – Språkrådet (Norwegian Language Council) – that determines, after approval from the Ministry of Culture, official spelling, grammar, and vocabulary for the Norwegian language. The board's work has been subject to considerable controversy through the years, and much work lies ahead.

Both Nynorsk and Bokmål have a great variety of optional forms, particularly Bokmål. 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

Opponents of the spelling reforms aimed at bringing Bokmål closer to Nynorsk have retained the name Riksmål and employ spelling and grammar that predate the Samnorsk movement. Riksmål and conservative versions of Bokmål have been the de facto standard written language of Norway for most of the 20th century, being used by large newspapers, encyclopedias, and a significant proportion of the population of the capital Oslo, surrounding areas, and other urban areas, as well as much of the literary tradition. Since the reforms of 1981 and 2003 (effective in 2005), the official Bokmål can be adapted to be almost identical with modern Riksmål. The differences between written Riksmål and Bokmål are today comparable to Commonwealth English vs American English.

Riksmål is regulated by the Norwegian Academy, which determines acceptable spelling, grammar, and vocabulary.

Høgnorsk

There is also an unofficial form of Nynorsk, called Høgnorsk, discarding the post-1917 reforms, and thus close to Ivar Aasen's original Landsmål. It is supported by Ivar Aasen-sambandet, but has found no widespread use.

Current usage

About 85.3% of the pupils in the primary and lower secondary schools in Norway receive education in Bokmål, while about 14.5% receive education in Nynorsk. From the eighth grade onwards pupils are required to learn both. Out of the 433 municipalities in Norway, 161 have declared that they wish to communicate with the central authorities in Bokmål, 116 (representing 12% of the population) in Nynorsk, while 156 are neutral. Of 4,549 Norwegian publications in 2000 8% were in Nynorsk, and 92% in Bokmål. The large national newspapers (Aftenposten, Dagbladet and VG) are published in Bokmål. Aftenposten is published in the more conservative Riksmål. Some major regional newspapers (including Bergens Tidende and Stavanger Aftenblad), many political journals, and many local newspapers use both Bokmål and Nynorsk.

Dialects

Main article: Norwegian dialects

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; but there is renewed interest in preserving distinct dialects.

Examples

Below are a few sentences giving an indication of the differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk, compared to the conservative (nearer to Danish) form Riksmål, Danish, as well as Old Norse and Icelandic, the living language closest to Old Norse:

B=Bokmål
R=Riksmål
D=Danish
N=Nynorsk
H=Høgnorsk
O=Old norse
I =Icelandic
E=English

B/R/D: Jeg kommer fra Norge
N/H: Eg kjem frå Noreg.
O: Ek kem frá Noregi.
I: Ég kem frá Noregi.
E: I come from Norway.

B/R: Hva heter han?
D: Hvad hedder han?
N/H: Kva heiter han?
O: Hvat heitir hann?
I: Hvað heitir hann?
E: What is his name?

B/R/D: Dette er en hest.
N/H: Dette er ein hest.
O: Þetta er hross/Þetta er hestr.
I: Þetta er hross/hestur.
E: This is a horse.

B: Regnbuen har mange farger.
R/D: Regnbuen har mange farver.
N: Regnbogen har mange fargar.
H: Regnbogen hev mange fargar. (Or better: Regnbogen er manglìta).
O: Regnboginn er marglitr.
I: Regnboginn er marglitur.
E: The rainbow has many colours.

Grammar

The number of grammatical genders in Norwegian is somewhat disputed, but the official view is that Norwegian nouns fall into three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The inflection of the nouns depends on the gender.

Bokmål
m.	en gutt (a boy)	gutten (the boy)	gutter (boys)	guttene (the boys)
f.	en/ei dør (a door)	døren/døra (the door)	dører (doors)	dørene (the doors)
n.	et hus (a house)	huset (the house)	hus (houses)	husene/husa (the houses)

Note that all feminine nouns can be inflected like masculine nouns in Bokmål, with a handful exceptions. Riksmål rejects the feminine gender and merges it with the masculine into a common gender (utrum), like in Danish and Swedish. Among the spoken dialects, the dialect of the city of Bergen is the only one with only two genders.

Nynorsk
m.	ein gut (a boy)	guten (the boy)	gutar (boys)	gutane (the boys)
f.	ei sol (a sun)	sola/soli (the sun)	soler (suns)	solene (the suns)
f.	ei kyrkje/kyrkja (a church)	kyrkja (the church)	kyrkjer/kyrkjor (churches)	kyrkjene/kyrkjone (the churches)
n.	eit hus (a house)	huset (the house)	hus (houses)	husa/husi (the houses)

Vocabulary

By far the largest part of the modern vocabulary of Norwegian dates back to Old Norse. The largest source of loanwords is Middle Saxon, which had a huge influence on Norwegian vocabulary from the late middle ages onwards partially even influencing grammatical structures, such as genitive constructions. At present, the main source of new loanwords is English e.g. rapper, e-mail, catering, juice, bag (originally a loan word to English from Old Norse). 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 revange) 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.

Compound words are written together in Norwegian (see Nominal compositum), which can cause words to become very long; for example sannsynlighetsmaksimeringsestimator (maximum likelihood estimator). Another example is the title høyesterettsjustitiarius (originally a combination of supreme court and the actual title, justitiarius). However, because of the increasing influence the English language is having on Norwegian, and inadequate computer spell checkers, this is often forgotten, sometimes with humorous results. Instead of writing, for example, lammekoteletter (lamb chops), people make the mistake of writing lamme koteletter (paralyzed, or lame, chops). The original message can even be reversed, as when røykfritt (no smoking) becomes røyk fritt (smoke freely).

Other examples include:

Terrasse dør ("Terrace dies") instead of Terrassedør ("Terrace door")
Tunfisk biter ("Tuna bites", verb) instead of Tunfiskbiter ("Tuna bits", noun)
Smult ringer ("Lard rings", verb) instead of Smultringer ("Doughnuts")
Tyveri sikret ("Theft guaranteed") instead of Tyverisikret ("Theft proof")
Stekt kylling lever ("Fried chicken lives", verb) instead of Stekt kyllinglever ("Fried chicken liver", noun)
Pult ost ("Fucked cheese") instead of Pultost ("Soft cheese")

These misunderstandings occur because most nouns can be interpreted as verbs or other types of words. Similar misunderstandings can be achieved in English too. The following are examples of phrases that both in Norwegian and English mean one thing as a compound word, and something different when regarded as separate words:

stavekontroll (spellchecker) or stave kontroll (spell "checker")
kokebok (cookbook) or koke bok (cook book)
ekte håndlagde vafler (real handmade waffles) or Ekte hånd lagde vafler. (Real hand made waffles.)

References

Kristoffersen, Gjert (2000) The Phonology of Norwegian ISBN 0-19-823765-0
Rolf Theil Endresen, Hanne Gram Simonsen, Andreas Sveen, Innføring i lingvistikk (2002), ISBN 82-00-45273-5

External links

All free Norwegian dictionaries
Ethnologue report for Norwegian, bokmål
Ethnologue report for Norwegian, nynorsk
Norway: Small country with two written languages - article from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Norwegian-English Dictionary
Norwegian-English Dictionary (2)
Tritrans: translations between English, Spanish and Norwegian
Bokmålsordboken and Norsk Riksmålsordbok – Norwegian dictionary
Bokmålsordboka og Nynorskordboka – Norwegian dictionary
nynorsk.no - News about Nynorsk (in Norwegian)
Forskrift om målvedtak i kommunar og fylkeskommunar – Legal document in Norwegian listing which counties and municipalities have declared their official written standard to be specifically Bokmål, Nynorsk or undeclared. (Note that six municipalities have declared Northern Sami co-official in addition with Norwegian).
ALBIS Vocabulary tool with Norwegian (bokmål)

Norwegian language | Languages of Norway | North Germanic languages

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