Norwegian

Norwegian belongs to the North (Scandinavian) group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is closely related to Swedish and Danish.

Written Danish and Norwegian are particularly close, though the pronunciation of all three languages differs significantly. The three languages developed from Old Norse which was spoken in the areas of Scandinavia that are now Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

Inscriptions on stone tablets suggest that Norwegian started to diverge from Danish and Swedish around the 9th-10th centuries AD. From 1397 to 1814, Norway was united with Denmark, and Danish was the dominant language spoken by Norway's educated population. After Norway gained independence from Denmark in 1814, there was a push to develop an independent literary Norwegian language. Two approaches were attempted. The first one was to modify the Danish spoken by Norway's elite. The second one was to standardise the language spoken by Norway's general population.

Norwegian is the official language of Norway. It is also spoken in the U.S., Canada, and Sweden. It is estimated that there are around 5 million speakers of Norwegian worldwide.

Dialects
Norwegian has many local dialects which are usually divided into four major groups:

•   Northern Norwegian (Nordnorsk)
•   Central Norwegian (Trøndsk)
•   West Norwegian (Vestnorsk)
•   East Norwegian (Østnorsk)

The standard dialect is based on East Norwegian spoken in and around the capital city of Oslo where half of the country's population lives.

Today, there are two official written forms of Norwegian: Bokmål (literally "book language," drawing on East and West varieties of Norwegian) used by most of the population (up to 90%), and Nynorsk (literally "New Norwegian," drawing on rural varieties of Norwegian) used by a minority of Norwegians (about 10%). About 85% of Norwegian schoolchildren are taught in Bokmål, and about 15% receive their education in Nynorsk. The two written norms have undergone a number of reforms throughout the 20th century. A movement to merge the two norms into one standard (Samnorsk) was not successful.

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 of vocabulary and accent. 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) (Wikipedia).

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