| Norwegian | |
|---|---|
| norsk | |
| Pronunciation | [nɔʂk] |
| Spoken in | Norway (4.8 million), United States (80,000) Denmark (15,000) Canada (10,000) |
| Region | Kingdom of Norway, the Nordic countries, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin |
| Native speakers | 5 million Norwegians (date missing) |
| Language family |
Indo-European
|
| Standard forms |
Nynorsk (official) / Høgnorsk (unofficial)
|
| Writing system | Latin (Norwegian alphabet) |
| Official status | |
| Official language in | Norway Nordic Council |
| Regulated by | Norwegian Language Council (Bokmål and Nynorsk) Norwegian Academy (Riksmål) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | no – Norwegian nb – Bokmål nn – Nynorsk |
| ISO 639-2 | [[ISO639-3:nor – Norwegian nob – Bokmål nno – Nynorsk|nor – Norwegian nob – Bokmål nno – Nynorsk]] |
| ISO 639-3 | nor – Macrolanguage individual codes: nob – Bokmål nno – Nynorsk |
| Linguasphere | 52-AAA-ba to -be & 52-AAA-cf to -cg |
Nynorsk (pronounced [ˈnyːnɔʂk]), Neo Norwegian or New Norwegian[1] is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the time.
27% of the Norwegian municipalities have declared Nynorsk as their official language form, and these comprise about 12% of the Norwegian population. Nynorsk is the majority form of the four counties Rogaland, Hordaland, Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal, which together comprise the region of Western Norway.[2]
The Norwegian Language Council recommends the name Norwegian Nynorsk when referring to this language in English.
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Spoken Norwegian, Swedish and Danish form a continuum of mutually intelligible dialects and sociolects. Nynorsk is the smallest of the four major standard languages within this broad speech community alongside Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish and Danish. Nynorsk standard language is nevertheless used in broadcasting, on stage, and by a few individuals. Bokmål has a much larger basis in the middle-class urban speech, especially that found in the eastern part of Southern Norway.[3] However, most Norwegians do not speak this so-called Standard Østnorsk, but Norwegian dialects. The western and other traditional Norwegian dialects are the spoken basis for Nynorsk, and many Nynorsk supporters regard them as the standard way to speak Nynorsk, even if the majority of dialect speakers use Bokmål in writing. As such, Nynorsk is not a minority language, though it shares many of the problems that minority languages face.
Each municipality can declare one of the two languages as its official language, or it can remain "language neutral". 27% of the municipalities making up 12% of the population have declared Nynorsk as their official language while 40% have chosen Bokmål. The main language used in primary schools normally follows the official language of its municipality, and is decided by referendum within the local school district. The number of school districts and pupils using primarily Nynorsk has decreased since the top in the 1940s, even in Nynorsk municipalities. As of 2010[update], 13.0% of pupils in primary school are taught in Nynorsk.[2]
The prevailing regions for Nynorsk are the western counties of Rogaland, Hordaland, Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal, in addition to the western/northern parts of Oppland, Buskerud, Telemark, Aust- and Vest-Agder, where an estimated 50% of the population writes Nynorsk. The usage in the rest of Norway, including the major cities and urban areas in the above stated areas, is scarce.
In Sogn og Fjordane county and the Sunnmøre area of Møre og Romsdal, all municipalities have stated Nynorsk as the official language (except Ålesund, which remains neutral). In Hordaland, all municipalities except three have declared Nynorsk as the official language. There is a vast majority of municipalities that has chosen a Neutral or Nynorsk stance over the Bokmål language form (It should be noted, however, that many of these are major urban areas where pupils are taught in Bokmål).
The first systematic study of the Norwegian language was done by Ivar Aasen in the mid 19th century. In the 1840s he traveled the country and studied the dialects. In 1848 and 1850 he published the first Norwegian grammar and dictionary, respectively, which described a standard Aasen called Landsmål. New versions detailing the written standard were published in 1864 and 1873.
Aasen's work is based on the idea that the dialects had a common structure that made them a separate language alongside Danish and Swedish. The central point for Aasen therefore became to find and show the structural dependencies between the dialects. In order to abstract this structure from the variety of dialects, he developed basic criteria, which he called the most perfect form. He defined this form as the one that best showed the connection to related words, with similar words, and with the forms in Old Norse. No single dialect had all the perfect forms, each dialect had preserved different aspects and parts of the language. Through such a systematic approach, one could arrive at a uniting expression for all Norwegian dialects, what Aasen called the fundamental dialect, and Einar Haugen has called Proto-Norwegian.
The idea that the study should end up in a new written language marked his work from the beginning. A fundamental idea for Aasen was that the fundamental dialect should be Modern Norwegian, not Old Norse. Therefore he did not include grammatical categories which were extinct from the dialects. At the same time, the categories that were inherited from the old language and were still present in some dialects should be represented in the written standard. Haugen has used the word reconstruction rather than construction about this work.
From the outset, Nynorsk has been met with resistance. With the advent and growth of the mass media, the exposure to the standard languages has increased, and Bokmål's dominant position has come to define what is commonly regarded as "normal". This may explain why negative attitudes toward Nynorsk are common, as is seen with many minority languages. This is especially prominent in school, which is the place most Bokmål-using Norwegians first and most extensively need to relate to the language.
Some critics of Nynorsk have been quite outspoken about their views. For instance, during the 2005 election, the Norwegian Young Conservatives made an advertisement that included a scene where a copy of the Nynorsk dictionary was burned. After strong reactions to this book burning, they chose not to show it.[4]
Nynorsk is a North-Germanic language, close in form to the other form of written Norwegian (namely, Bokmål), and Icelandic. It thus has North-Germanic grammatical forms, and Nynorsk grammar may be compared to Bokmål Norwegian, but one can note that it is closer in grammar to Old West Norse than Bokmål, which was influenced by Danish much more heavily than Nynorsk.
With the exception of the Bergen dialect, standard Nynorsk and dialects have three grammatical genders; masculine, feminine and neuter. In contrast, there are effectively two genders in Bokmål; common and neuter, and the few remaining feminine nouns are barely distinct.
Genders are inherent categories of nouns, and each gender has its own forms of inflection.
In Nynorsk these are important distinctions, in contrast to Bokmål, in which all feminine words may also become masculine and inflect using its forms, and indeed a feminine word may be seen in both forms, for example boka or boken (the book).
In Nynorsk (unlike Bokmål), masculine and feminine nouns are differentiated in the singular definitive form (in which the noun takes a suffix to indicate "the") and also in the plural forms (which they would not be in Bokmål), for example:
| Singular | Definitive singular | Plural | Definitive plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| masculine: | |||
| rev | reven | revar | revane |
| fox | the fox | foxes | the foxes |
| feminine: | |||
| løve | løva | løver | løvene |
| lion | the lion | lions | the lions |
| neutrum: | |||
| hus | huset | hus | husa |
| house | the house | houses | the houses |
This differentiation is expressed in distinctive ways in the dialects, for example reva/revan(e) and løve/løven(e), revær/revane and løver/løvene or rever/reva and løver/løvene.
That which characterises a grammatical gender is though not noun inflection, for each gender can have more inflectional forms. The gender determines the inflection of other words which conjugate or inflect with the noun. This concerns determiners and adjectives. For example:
| Masculine example: | ein liten rev | min eigen rev | a small fox | my own fox |
| Feminine example: | ei lita løve | mi eiga løve | a small lion | my own lion |
Usage changes too from dialect to dialect, for example en liten rev, min egen rev men e lita løve, mi ega løve eller ein liten rev, min eigen rev men ei liti løve, mi eigi løve.
One of the past participle and the preterite verb ending in Bokmål is -et. Aasen originally included these t's in his Landsmål norms, but since these often are silent in the dialects, it was struck out in the first officially issued specification of Nynorsk of 1901.
Examples may compare the Bokmål forms skrevet ('written', past participle) and hoppet ('jumped', both past tense and past participle), which in written Nynorsk are skrive or skrivi (Landsmål skrivet) and hoppa (Landsmål hoppat). The form hoppa is also permitted in Bokmål.
Other examples from other classes of words include the neuter singular form anna of annan ('different', with more meanings) which was spelled annat in Landsmål, and the neuter singular form ope of open ('open') which originally was spelled opet. Bokmål, in comparison, still retains these t's through the equivalent forms annet and åpent.
Many words in Nynorsk are similar to their equivalents in Bokmål, with differing form, for example:
| Nynorsk | Bokmål | other dialectical forms | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| eg | jeg (pronounced jei) | e(g) , æ(g), æ(i) , (e)i , je(i) , jæ(i) | I |
| ikkje | ikke | ikkje , inte , ente, itt(e) | not |
The distinction between Bokmål and Nynorsk are that while Bokmål have for the most part derived their forms from the written Danish language or the common Danish-Norwegian speech, Nynorsk has its orthographical standards from Aasen's reconstructed "base dialect" and are intended to represent the distinctive dialectical forms.
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