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Norwegians spend the late 1800s and early 1900s quarreling amongst themselves what should be the standard for written Norwegian. Should they take the heavily Da
by sampo 9y ago
Norwegians spend the late 1800s and early 1900s quarreling amongst themselves what should be the standard for written Norwegian. Should they take the heavily Danish-influenced written language common in cities, or should they use something closer to the dialects spoken in the rural areas?
Eventually, their parliament ruled that Norway shall have two official written languages and all government documents will be published in both.
For example here are their parliament websites in both Nynorsk ("New Norwegian") and Bokmål ("Book tongue")
https://www.stortinget.no/nn/ https://www.stortinget.no/nn/
https://www.stortinget.no/no/ https://www.stortinget.no/no/
Estimates vary, but maybe about 12% of Norwegians use Nynorsk as their primary language, and 88% are Bokmål users.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language_conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 9y agoThese are writing systems, not languages. As I understand it all Norwegian speakers _speak_ the same language, they just represent that language differently when writing it down. Interesting but not that similar.
- sampo 9y ago> As I understand it all Norwegian speakers _speak_ the same language I am not Norwegian so I might not get this entirely correct. The British have "BBC English" or "Oxford English" and the Americans have "Hollywood English", but Norway doesn't have such a unifying standard for the spoken language. People speak their own dialects, and the different dialects can vary quite a lot. There is no standard dialect for the Norwegian language as a whole, and all dialects are by now mutually intelligible. Hence, widely different dialects are used frequently and alongside each other, in almost every aspect of society. Criticism of a dialect may be considered criticism of someone's personal identity and place of upbringing, and is considered impolite. Not using one's proper dialect would be bordering on awkward in many situations, as it may signal a wish to take on an identity or a background which one does not have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_dialects
- drivingmenuts 9y agoOn a side note: for whatever reason I think I can read about 1 in 3 words in Norwegian (standard and book) with no prior training. Makes me wonder if an ancestor ate some lutefisk or something.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 9y agoI mean it is a Germanic language along with English. There are plenty of cognates.