Norwegian language struggle
Encyclopedia
The Norwegian language struggle (målstriden, språkstriden or sprogstriden) is an ongoing controversy within Norwegian
culture and politics related to spoken and written Norwegian. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to Danish rule
. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to controversy related to nationalism
, rural versus urban, Norway's literary history, dialect
versus standard language
, spelling reform
, and orthography
.
In the United Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway
(1536–1814), the official language
was Danish. The urban Norwegian upper class spoke Dano-Norwegian
, a form of Danish with Norwegian pronunciation and other minor local differences. After the two countries separated in 1814, Dano-Norwegian remained the official language of Norway and evolved gradually to incorporate Norwegian forms. In the early 20th century, a more activist approach to written Norwegian was adopted in public policy, leading to reforms to reflect Norwegian urban and rural vernacular. Initially, the Norwegian successor to Dano-Norwegian was known as riksmål, but since 1929, this official written standard has been known as Bokmål. Later attempts to bring it closer to and eventually merge it with the other Norwegian written standard, Nynorsk, constructed on the basis of Norwegian dialects, have failed due to widespread resistance.
The Norwegian language is a North Germanic language
spoken primarily in Norway
, where it is an official language. As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of written Norwegian — Bokmål (literally "book language") and Nynorsk (literally "new Norwegian"). There is no officially sanctioned spoken standard of Norwegian, but there is a de facto spoken standard of Bokmål known as Standard Østnorsk (Standard East Norwegian). Historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianized 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. Danish
and Norwegian Bokmål are very similar language
s. Most speakers of the three Scandinavian languages
(Danish, Norwegian and Swedish
) can read each other's languages without great difficulty. The primary obstacles to mutual comprehension are differences in pronunciation. Spoken dialects vary throughout Scandinavia, but are broadly mutually intelligible throughout all three countries, including across national borders.
Norwegian (Bokmål): I 1877 forlot Brandes København og bosatte seg i Berlin. Hans politiske synspunkter gjorde imidlertid at det ble ubehagelig for ham å oppholde seg i Preussen, og i 1883 vendte han tilbake til København, der han ble møtt av en helt ny gruppe forfattere og tenkere, som var ivrige etter å motta ham som sin leder. Det viktigste av hans senere arbeider er hans verk om William Shakespeare, som ble oversatt til engelsk av William Archer, og som straks ble anerkjent.
Norwegian (Nynorsk): I 1877 forlét Brandes København og busette seg i Berlin. Dei politiske synspunkta hans gjorde det utriveleg for han å opphalda seg i Preussen, og han vende attende til København i 1883. Der vart han møtt av ei heilt ny gruppe forfattarar og tenkjarar, som var ivrige etter å ha han som leiar. Det viktigaste av dei seinare arbeida hans er verket hans om William Shakespeare, som vart omsett til engelsk av William Archer, og som straks vart godkjend.
English translation: In 1877 Brandes left Copenhagen and took up residence in Berlin. However, his political views made Prussia an uncomfortable place in which to live, and in 1883 he returned to Copenhagen. There he was met by a completely new group of writers and thinkers, who were eager to accept him as their leader. The most important of Brandes's later works is his writing on Shakespeare, which was translated to English by William Archer and received recognition immediately.
being the prime example. The language in use at this time is known as Old Norse
, and was widely used in writing in Norway and Iceland. The languages of Sweden and Denmark at this time were not very different from that of Norway, and are often also called Old Norse. Although some regional variations are apparent in written documents from this time, it is hard to know precisely the divisions between spoken dialects. This interim Norwegian is known as middle Norwegian (mellomnorsk).
With the Black Death
in 1349, Norway's economy and political independence collapsed, and the country came under Danish rule
. The Norwegian language also underwent rather significant changes, shedding complex grammatical forms and adopting a new vocabulary.
The Norwegian written language at this time gradually fell into disuse and was eventually abandoned altogether in favor of written Danish
, the culminating event being the translation in 1604 of Magnus the Lawmender's
code into Danish. The last example found of an original Middle Norwegian document is from 1583.
Norwegian dialects
, however, lived on and evolved within the general population as vernacular speech, even as the educated classes gradually adopted a Dano-Norwegian
koiné
in speech. Paradoxically, while the Norwegian-born writer Ludvig Holberg
became one of the leading exponents of standard written Danish, even as he retained a few distinctly Norwegian forms in his own writing.
In fact, Norwegian writers - even those who were purists of the Danish language - never fully relinquished their native vocabulary and usage in their writing. Examples include Petter Dass
, Johan Nordahl Brun
, Jens Zetlitz
, and Christian Tullin
. Although Danish was the official language of the realm, Norwegian writers experienced a disparity between the languages they spoke and wrote.
In 1814, Norway separated
from Denmark and adopted its own constitution
. It was forced into a new, but weaker, union
with Sweden
, and the situation evolved into what follows:
of Denmark–Norway occurred in the era of the emerging European nation states. In accordance with the principles of romantic nationalism
, legitimacy was given to the young and still-forming nation of Norway by way of its history and culture, including the Norwegian language. Norwegian writers gradually adopted distinctly Norwegian vocabulary in their work. Henrik Wergeland
may have been the first to do so; but it was the collected folk tales by Jørgen Moe
and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
that created a distinct Norwegian written style. This created some opposition from the conservatives, most notably from the poet Johan Sebastian Welhaven
. The influential playwright Henrik Ibsen
was inspired by the nationalistic movement, but in his later writings he wrote mostly in standard Danish, probably out of concern for his Danish audience.
By 1866, the Dane Andreas Listov found it necessary to publish a book of about 3,000 terms that needed translation from Norwegian to Danish. Though most of these terms were probably taken straight from Aasmund Olavsson Vinje
’s travel accounts, the publication reflected a widespread recognition that much written Norwegian no longer was pure Danish.
, autodidact
, polyglot
, and the founder of modern Norwegian linguistics
, started studying first his own dialect from Sunnmøre
, and then the structure of Norwegian dialects in general. He was one of the first to describe the evolution from Old Norse to Modern Norwegian
. From this he moved to advocate and design a distinctly Norwegian written language he termed landsmål
. His work was based on two important principles, in morphology
he chose forms which he regarded as common denominators from which contemporary varieties could be inferred, in lexicography
he applied puristic
principles and excluded words of Danish or Middle Low German
descent when at least some dialects had preserved synonyms inherited from Old Norse. In 1885, landsmål was adopted as an official written language alongside the Norwegian version of Danish.
Knud Knudsen, a teacher, worked instead to adapt the orthography
more closely to the spoken Dano-Norwegian koiné known as "cultivated daily speech" (dannet dagligtale). He argued that the cultivated daily speech was the best basis for a distinct Norwegian written language, because the educated classes did not belong to any specific region, they were numerous, and possessed cultural influence. Knudsen was also influenced by and a proponent of the common Dano-Norwegian movement for phonemic orthography
. The written form of Norwegian based on his work eventually became known as riksmål, a term introduced by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
in 1899.
As a result of Knudsen's work, the Parliament of Norway passed the first orthographical reforms in 1862, most of which also had its proponents in Denmark. Though modest by subsequent reforms, it nevertheless marked a legislative step toward a distinct written standard for Norway. Silent e's were eliminated from written Norwegian (faa rather than faae), double-vowels were no longer used to denote long vowels, k replaced the use of c, q, and ch in most words, and ph was eliminated in favor of f.
Such orthographic reforms continued in subsequent years, but in 1892 the Norwegian department of education approved the first set of optional forms in the publication of Nordahl Rolfsen
s Reader for the Primary School (Læsebog for Folkeskolen). Also, in 1892, national legislation let each local school board the right to decide whether to teach its children in riksmål and landsmål.
In 1907, linguistic reforms were extended to include not just orthography but also grammar. The characteristic Norwegian "hard" consonants (p, t, k) replaced Danish "soft" consonants (b, d, g) in writing; consonants were doubled to denote short vowels; words that in Norwegian were monosyllabic were spelled that way; and conjugations related to neutrum were adapted to common Norwegian usage in cultivated daily speech.
In 1913 Olaf Bull
's crime novel Mit navn er Knoph (My name is Knoph) became the first piece of Norwegian literature to be translated from Riksmål into Danish for Danish readers, thereby underlining the fact that Riksmål was by now a separate language.
; a year later, the corresponding organization to promote riksmål was founded, naming itself Riksmålsforbundet
. The formation of these organizations coincided with the rule that all incoming university students - those who passed examen artium
- had to demonstrate mastery of both for admission to university programs. They had to write a second additional essay in the Norwegian language that was not their primary language.
In 1911, the writer Gabriel Scott
's comedic play Tower of Babel had its premiere in Oslo. It is about a small town in eastern Norway that is overtaken by proponents of landsmål who take to executing all those who resist their language. The play culminates in the landsmål proponents killing each other over what to call their country: Noregr, Thule, Ultima, Ny-Norig, or Nyrig. The last line is spoken by a country peasant who, seeing the carnage, says: "Good thing I didn't take part in this!"
There was at least one brawl in the audience during the play's run, and the stage was set for a linguistic schism that would characterize Norwegian politics to this day.
To confuse matters further, Eivind Berggrav
, Halvdan Koht
, and Didrik Arup Seip
formed a third organization called Østlandsk reisning that sought to increase the representation, as it were, of Eastern Norwegian dialects in landsmål, since they felt Aasen's language as overly influenced by the dialects of Western Norway.
As it turned out, the reforms within riksmål themselves caused controversy - between those who held that the written language should closely approximate the formal language of the educated elite on the one hand, and those who held that it should reflect the quotidian language of commoners. A distinction was made between "conservative" and "radical" riksmål. This added a further political dimension to the debate that opened for a possible convergence between more liberal forms of landsmål and radical forms of riksmål. This was to form the basis for the notion of samnorsk, a synthesis - yet to be realized - of the two main streams of written Norwegian.
By 1921, school districts had made their choice in the growing controversy: 2,000 taught landsmål as the primary written language; 2,550 the radical form of riksmål, and 1,450 conservative riksmål. In 1920, national authorities decided that the issue of language should be put to voters in local referendums, which brought the dispute to a local level where it was no less contentious. In Eidsvoll
, for example, a local banker (Gudbrand Bræk, the father of Ola Skjåk Bræk
) was threatened with being run out of town over his support for samnorsk.
in Norway started changing, ideally to reflect what they were called by their residents. In 1917, 188 municipalities were renamed; all counties were given new names in 1918; and several of the largest cities were renamed in the 1920s; notably Kristiania
became "Oslo", Fredrikshald became "Halden", for example. Some of these changes were less popular. For example, some residents of Sandviken were none too pleased about the "radical" change to "Sandvika
," nor were many in nearby Fornebo
willing to accept "Fornebu." The greatest controversy erupted over the city of Trondheim
, which had until then been known as "Trondhjem," but in the Viking era had been called "Nidaros." After the authorities had decided - without consulting the population - that the city should be renamed "Nidaros," a compromise was eventually reached, with "Trondheim."
school board in circulated among its teachers a document that required that their oral instruction had to be in the same language as the district's written language, in this case riksmål. A teacher, Knut Grimstad, refused to accept this on the grounds that neither the school district nor the Norwegian national authorities had the right to impose a version of a spoken language as instruction. He found support in the 1878 resolution that required that all students - "as much as possible" - should receive instruction in a language close to their native tongue. This was subsequently clarified to mean that they were supposed to be taught in "the Norwegian language," a phrase also open to interpretation.
Grimstad was forced to apologize for the form of his protest, but the issue nevertheless came up in parliament in 1912. This became one of the first political challenges for the new Konow
cabinet, falling under the auspices of Edvard Appoloniussen Liljedahl, the minister of churches and education. Liljedahl was a respected and dyed-in-the-wool member of the landsmål camp, having actually addressed the parliament in his native dialect from Sogn
. For his rebuke of Grimstad's position, he was vilified by his own. Trying to find a compromise, his department confirmed the principle of teaching in the "local common spoken language" while also requires that they be "taught in the language decided for their written work." This now attracted the ire of the riksmål camp.
Parliament and the department hoped that this clarification would put the issue to rest; but in 1923, the school board in Bergen
decided that the spoken language in all its schools would be riksmål. Olav Andreas Eftestøl, the school director for this region - there were seven such appointees for the entire country of Norway - took this decision to the department in 1924, and another parliamentary debate ensued. Eftestøl's view was endorsed, and this put an end to the discussion about spoken language in schools; though it must be noted it took longer before native speakers of Sami
and Kven
got the same rights; and the issue has re-emerged recently with respect to immigrant children's native language.
The ascent of the Norwegian Labour Party
turned out to be decisive in passing the 1917 reforms, and one Labour politician - the illustrious Halvdan Koht
- was in the early 1920s asked to develop the party's political platform for the Norwegian language.
Koht was for some years both the chairperson in Noregs mållag and Østlandsk reisning and clearly deeply immersed on the issue of language. He published his findings in 1921, and framed them in a decidedly political context.
His view, which was to gain currency among his fellow Laborites, was that the urban working class and rural farming class had a convergence of interests in language, giving rise to the emergent "people's language" (folkemålet). He wrote that "The struggle for the people's language is the cultural side of the labor movement." This notion of convergence led the Labor Party to embrace the ideal of a synthesis of the two main languages into one language, built on the spoken forms of the "common person", or samnorsk.
Having already changed the names of the languages: riksmål became bokmål and landsmål nynorsk by parliamentary resolution of 1929, the Labor party made Koht their thought leaders and spokesperson on these issues, formalizing his views into their platform.
The 1938 reforms, proposed under the first durable Labor cabinet of Johan Nygaardsvold
, represented a radical departure from previous reforms.
The reforms clearly aspired to bring the two languages closer together and predictably angered advocates in either camp. In particular, the proponents of riksmål felt the reforms were a frontal assault on their written language and sensibilities, since many elements of their previous norm - dannet dagligtale - were deprecated. But also purists in the landsmål camp were unhappy, feeling that the reforms gutted their language.
from 1940 to 1945 took the language issue off the national political scene. The Quisling
government rescinded the 1938 reforms and made some changes on its own, but as with virtually everything Quisling did, this was rendered null and void by the post-war Norwegian government.
On the other side of the issue, the poet Arnulf Øverland
galvanized Riksmålsforbundet in opposition not to nynorsk, which he respected, but against the radical bokmål recommended by the 1938 reforms. Their efforts were particularly noted in Oslo, where the school board had decided to make radical forms of bokmål the norm in 1939 ("Oslo-vedtaket"). In 1951, concerned parents primarily from the affluent western neighborhoods of Oslo organized the "parents' campaign against samnorsk" (foreldreaksjonen mot samnorsk), which in 1953 included "correcting" textbooks.
In 1952, Øverland and Riksmålsforbundet published the so-called "blue list" that recommended more conservative orthography and forms than most of the 1938 reforms. This book established for the first time a real alternative standard in riksmål to legislated bokmål. It set the standard for two of the capital's main daily newspapers, Aftenposten
and Morgenbladet
. It also contributed to the reversal of the "Oslo decision" in 1954.
In 1951, the Norwegian parliament established by law Norsk språknemnd, which later was renamed Norsk språkråd
(Norwegian Language Council). Riksmålsforeningen disagreed with the premises of the council's mandate, namely that Norwegian was to be built on the basis of the "people's language." The council was convened with 30 representatives, 15 from each of the main languages. However, most of them supported samnorsk.
In 1952, a minor reform passed with little fanfare and controversy: in spoken official Norwegian, numbers over 20 were to be articulated with the tens first, e.g., "twenty-one" as is the Swedish and English practice rather than "one-and-twenty," the previous practice also found in Danish and German
.
The use of bokmål and nynorsk in the government-controlled Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) came under a particular scrutiny. As a government agency (and monopoly) that has traditionally been strongly associated with the Nynorsk-supporting Norwegian Labour Party
, NRK was required to include both languages in its broadcasts. According to their own measurements, well over 80% was in bokmål and less than 20% nynorsk. Still, the riksmål advocates were outraged, since they noted that some of the most popular programs (such as the 7 pm news) were broadcast in nynorsk, and the bokmål was too radical in following the 1938 norms.
This came to a head in the case of Sigurd Smebye, a meteorologist
who insisted on using highly conservative riksmål terms in reporting the weather. This ended up on the parliamentary floor, where the minister had to assure the public that anyone was entitled to use his/her own dialect on the air. However, Smebye was effectively disallowed from performing on television and ended up suing and prevailing over NRK in a supreme court case.
At the same time, one of the announcers for children's radio shows complained that her texts had been corrected from riksmål to 1938-bokmål, e.g., from Dukken lå i sengen sin på gulvet to Dokka lå i senga si på golvet. With the 1959 reforms, the issue seems to have been resolved - everyone in NRK could use their own natural spoken language.
As its first major work, the language council published in 1959 new standards for textbooks. The purpose of a unified standard was to avoid multiple versions of standard books to accommodate "moderate," "radical," and "conservative" versions of the languages. The standard was by its nature a continuation of the convergence movement toward the ever-elusive goal of samnorsk. Double consonants to denote short vowels are put in common use; the silent "h" is eliminated in a number of words; more "radical" forms in bokmål are made primary; while nynorsk actually offers more choices.
However, it appeared that the 1959 attempt was the last gasp of the samnorsk movement. After this, the Norwegian Labour Party decided to depoliticize language issues by commissioning expert panels on linguistic issues.
In January 1964, a committee was convened by Helge Sivertsen
, minister of education, with professor Hans Vogt
as its chair. It was variously known as the "Vogt committee" or "language peace committee" (språkfredskomitéen). Its purpose was to defuse the conflict about language in Norway and build an atmosphere of mutual respect.
The committee published its findings in 1966, pointing out that:
These findings were subject to hearings and discussions in coming years in a decidedly more deliberate form than before; and a significant outcome was the Norsk språknemnd became Norsk språkråd, responsible less for prescribing language than for cultivating it. Still, the Vogt committee promoted convergence as a virtue.
sought to disassociate itself from the conservative establishment in many ways, including language. At the universities, students were encouraged to "speak their dialect, write nynorsk," and radical forms of bokmål were adopted by urban left wing socialists.
The first debate about Norwegian EU membership leading to the 1972 referendum gave new meaning to rural culture and dialects. The nynorsk movement gained new momentum, putting rural districts and the dialects more in the center of Norwegian politics.
In 1973, Norsk språkråd instructed teachers to no longer correct students who used conservative riksmål in their writing, provided these forms were used consistently.
On December 13, 2002, the samnorsk ideal was finally officially abandoned when the Ministry of Culture and Church affairs sent out a press release to that effect. The primary motivation for this change in policy was the emerging recognition that government policy should not prohibit forms that are in active use and had a strong basis in the body of Norwegian literary work.
This was further formalized in the so-called "2005-reforms" that primarily affected orthography for bokmål. So-called "secondary forms" (sideformer) were abolished. These forms were variant spellings that would be tolerated by the general public, but disallowed among text book authors and public officials. The 2005 changes now made all allowable forms equal standing. These changes effectively recognize approximately full usage of riksmål forms.
As Norwegian society has integrated more with the global economy and European cosmopolitanism, the effect on both written and spoken Norwegian is evident. There is a greater prevalence of English loan words (låneord) in Norwegian, and some view this with great concern.
In 2004, the Norwegian Language Council issued Norwegian orthography for 25 originally English words, suggesting that for example "bacon" be spelled "beiken." This was in keeping with previous practices that made "stasjon" the Norwegian writing for "station," etc., but the so-called "beiken reforms" fell on hard ground, and "beiken" was one of the spelling changes that was voted down.
There is also a trend, which has been ongoing since the dissolution of the Dano-Norwegian Union
in 1814, to assimilate individual Swedish loan words into Norwegian. Although it lost momentum substantially after the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905 it has remained an ongoing phenomenon of Norwegian linguistics. Indeed, the prominent Norwegian linguist Finn-Erik Vinje
characterizes this influx since the second world war as a breaking wave.
There is further a concern in some quarters that poor grammar and usage is becoming more commonplace in the written press and broadcast media, and consequently among students and the general population. While the sociolinguistic view that language constantly evolves is duly noted among these critics, there is some call for more vigilance in written language. Broadcast programs such as Typisk Norsk
and Språkteigen are intended to raise the general awareness of the Norwegian language; the "language director" Sylfest Lomheim
is working to make language issues more visible.
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
culture and politics related to spoken and written Norwegian. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to Danish rule
Denmark–Norway
Denmark–Norway is the historiographical name for a former political entity consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the originally Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands...
. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to controversy related to nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, rural versus urban, Norway's literary history, dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
versus standard language
Standard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
, spelling reform
Spelling reform
Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....
, and orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
.
In the United Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway
Denmark–Norway
Denmark–Norway is the historiographical name for a former political entity consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the originally Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands...
(1536–1814), the official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
was Danish. The urban Norwegian upper class spoke Dano-Norwegian
Dano-Norwegian
Dano-Norwegian is a linguistic term for a koiné that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union between the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway . It is from this koiné that Riksmål and Bokmål developed...
, a form of Danish with Norwegian pronunciation and other minor local differences. After the two countries separated in 1814, Dano-Norwegian remained the official language of Norway and evolved gradually to incorporate Norwegian forms. In the early 20th century, a more activist approach to written Norwegian was adopted in public policy, leading to reforms to reflect Norwegian urban and rural vernacular. Initially, the Norwegian successor to Dano-Norwegian was known as riksmål, but since 1929, this official written standard has been known as Bokmål. Later attempts to bring it closer to and eventually merge it with the other Norwegian written standard, Nynorsk, constructed on the basis of Norwegian dialects, have failed due to widespread resistance.
The Norwegian language is a North Germanic language
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...
spoken primarily in Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, where it is an official language. As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of written Norwegian — Bokmål (literally "book language") and Nynorsk (literally "new Norwegian"). There is no officially sanctioned spoken standard of Norwegian, but there is a de facto spoken standard of Bokmål known as Standard Østnorsk (Standard East Norwegian). Historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianized variety of Danish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic
Linguistic purism
Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
opposition to Danish.
The now abandoned official policy to merge Bokmål and Nynorsk into one common language called Samnorsk
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
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
Conservative (language)
In linguistics, a conservative form, variety, or modality is one that has changed relatively little over its history, or which is relatively resistant to change...
than Bokmål, and the unofficial Høgnorsk
Høgnorsk
Høgnorsk, meaning "High Norwegian", is a term for varieties of the Norwegian language form Nynorsk that reject most of the official reforms that have been introduced since the creation of Landsmål...
more conservative than Nynorsk. Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
and Norwegian Bokmål are very similar language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s. Most speakers of the three Scandinavian languages
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...
(Danish, Norwegian and Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
) can read each other's languages without great difficulty. The primary obstacles to mutual comprehension are differences in pronunciation. Spoken dialects vary throughout Scandinavia, but are broadly mutually intelligible throughout all three countries, including across national borders.
Sample
Danish text: I 1877 forlod Brandes København og bosatte sig i Berlin. Hans politiske synspunkter gjorde dog, at Preussen blev ubehagelig for ham at opholde sig i, og han vendte i 1883 tilbage til København, hvor han blev mødt af en helt ny gruppe af forfattere og tænkere, der var ivrige efter at modtage ham som deres leder. Det vigtigste af hans senere arbejder har været hans værk om William Shakespeare, der blev oversat til engelsk af William Archer og med det samme blev anerkendt.Norwegian (Bokmål): I 1877 forlot Brandes København og bosatte seg i Berlin. Hans politiske synspunkter gjorde imidlertid at det ble ubehagelig for ham å oppholde seg i Preussen, og i 1883 vendte han tilbake til København, der han ble møtt av en helt ny gruppe forfattere og tenkere, som var ivrige etter å motta ham som sin leder. Det viktigste av hans senere arbeider er hans verk om William Shakespeare, som ble oversatt til engelsk av William Archer, og som straks ble anerkjent.
Norwegian (Nynorsk): I 1877 forlét Brandes København og busette seg i Berlin. Dei politiske synspunkta hans gjorde det utriveleg for han å opphalda seg i Preussen, og han vende attende til København i 1883. Der vart han møtt av ei heilt ny gruppe forfattarar og tenkjarar, som var ivrige etter å ha han som leiar. Det viktigaste av dei seinare arbeida hans er verket hans om William Shakespeare, som vart omsett til engelsk av William Archer, og som straks vart godkjend.
English translation: In 1877 Brandes left Copenhagen and took up residence in Berlin. However, his political views made Prussia an uncomfortable place in which to live, and in 1883 he returned to Copenhagen. There he was met by a completely new group of writers and thinkers, who were eager to accept him as their leader. The most important of Brandes's later works is his writing on Shakespeare, which was translated to English by William Archer and received recognition immediately.
- Excerpts from the articles about Danish critic Georg BrandesGeorg BrandesGeorg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...
from the Danish Wikipedia, version from May 19, 2006, 09:36 and Norwegian (bokmål) Wikipedia, version from April 4, 2006, 01:38.
Background
The earliest examples of non-Danish, Norwegian writing are from the 12th century, with Konungs skuggsjáKonungs skuggsjá
Konungs skuggsjá is a Norwegian educational text from around 1250, an example of speculum literature that deals with politics and morality...
being the prime example. The language in use at this time is known as Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
, and was widely used in writing in Norway and Iceland. The languages of Sweden and Denmark at this time were not very different from that of Norway, and are often also called Old Norse. Although some regional variations are apparent in written documents from this time, it is hard to know precisely the divisions between spoken dialects. This interim Norwegian is known as middle Norwegian (mellomnorsk).
With the Black Death
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
in 1349, Norway's economy and political independence collapsed, and the country came under Danish rule
Denmark–Norway
Denmark–Norway is the historiographical name for a former political entity consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the originally Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands...
. The Norwegian language also underwent rather significant changes, shedding complex grammatical forms and adopting a new vocabulary.
The Norwegian written language at this time gradually fell into disuse and was eventually abandoned altogether in favor of written Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, the culminating event being the translation in 1604 of Magnus the Lawmender's
Magnus VI of Norway
Magnus VI Lagabøte or Magnus Håkonsson , was king of Norway from 1263 until 1280.-Early life:...
code into Danish. The last example found of an original Middle Norwegian document is from 1583.
Norwegian dialects
Norwegian dialects
The Norwegian dialects are commonly divided into 4 main groups, North Norwegian , Trøndelag Norwegian , West Norwegian , and East Norwegian...
, however, lived on and evolved within the general population as vernacular speech, even as the educated classes gradually adopted a Dano-Norwegian
Dano-Norwegian
Dano-Norwegian is a linguistic term for a koiné that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union between the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway . It is from this koiné that Riksmål and Bokmål developed...
koiné
Koine language
In linguistics, a koiné language is a standard language or dialect that has arisen as a result of contact between two mutually intelligible varieties of the same language. Since the speakers have understood one another from before the advent of the koiné, the koineization process is not as rapid...
in speech. Paradoxically, while the Norwegian-born writer Ludvig Holberg
Ludvig Holberg
Ludvig Holberg, Baron of Holberg was a writer, essayist, philosopher, historian and playwright born in Bergen, Norway, during the time of the Dano-Norwegian double monarchy, who spent most of his adult life in Denmark. He was influenced by Humanism, the Enlightenment and the Baroque...
became one of the leading exponents of standard written Danish, even as he retained a few distinctly Norwegian forms in his own writing.
In fact, Norwegian writers - even those who were purists of the Danish language - never fully relinquished their native vocabulary and usage in their writing. Examples include Petter Dass
Petter Dass
Petter Dass was a Lutheran clergyman and the foremost Norwegian poet of his generation, writing both baroque hymns and topographical poetry. -Biography:He was born at Northern Herøy , Nordland, Norway...
, Johan Nordahl Brun
Johan Nordahl Brun
Johan Nordahl Brun was the poet, dramatist, bishop in Bergen , and politician who contributed significantly to the growth of National Romanticism in Norway, contributing to the growing national consciousness.He traveled to Copenhagen in 1767, where he passed his theological examinations...
, Jens Zetlitz
Jens Zetlitz
Jens Zetlitz was a Norwegian priest and poet.Born in Stavanger, at the close of the 18th century he traveled to Copenhagen to study theology. He became a member of Det Norske Selskab, and became well known for his entertaining songs and drinking songs...
, and Christian Tullin
Christian Tullin
Christian Braunmann Tullin was a Norwegian businessman and poet, born in Christiania. He was city manager for Christiania from 1763, and was also Chairman for the Board of Customs and Excise...
. Although Danish was the official language of the realm, Norwegian writers experienced a disparity between the languages they spoke and wrote.
In 1814, Norway separated
Norway in 1814
1814 was a pivotal year in the history of Norway. It started with Norway in a union with the Kingdom of Denmark subject to a naval blockade being ceded to the king of Sweden. In May a constitutional convention declared Norway an independent kingdom. By the end of the year the Norwegian parliament...
from Denmark and adopted its own constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
. It was forced into a new, but weaker, union
Personal union
A personal union is the combination by which two or more different states have the same monarch while their boundaries, their laws and their interests remain distinct. It should not be confused with a federation which is internationally considered a single state...
with Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, and the situation evolved into what follows:
- The written language was Danish, although the ruling class regarded it as Norwegian, which was important in order to mark Norway's independence from Sweden.
- The ruling class spoke Dano-Norwegian. They regarded it as the cultivated Norwegian language, as opposed to the common language of workers, craftspeople, and farmers.
- The rest of the population spoke Norwegian dialects. These were generally considered vulgar speech or a weak attempt at speaking 'standard' Norwegian, ignoring or not recognising the fact that they represented a separate evolution from a common ancestor, Old Norse.
Early 19th century beginnings
The dissolutionNorway in 1814
1814 was a pivotal year in the history of Norway. It started with Norway in a union with the Kingdom of Denmark subject to a naval blockade being ceded to the king of Sweden. In May a constitutional convention declared Norway an independent kingdom. By the end of the year the Norwegian parliament...
of Denmark–Norway occurred in the era of the emerging European nation states. In accordance with the principles of romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
, legitimacy was given to the young and still-forming nation of Norway by way of its history and culture, including the Norwegian language. Norwegian writers gradually adopted distinctly Norwegian vocabulary in their work. Henrik Wergeland
Henrik Wergeland
Henrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist...
may have been the first to do so; but it was the collected folk tales by Jørgen Moe
Jørgen Moe
right|thumb|Norske Folkeeventyr Asbjørnsen and Moe Jørgen Engebretsen Moe was a Norwegian bishop and author...
and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen was a Norwegian writer and scholar. He and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe were collectors of Norwegian folklore...
that created a distinct Norwegian written style. This created some opposition from the conservatives, most notably from the poet Johan Sebastian Welhaven
Johan Sebastian Welhaven
Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven was a Norwegian author, poet, critic and art theorist.-Background:...
. The influential playwright Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
was inspired by the nationalistic movement, but in his later writings he wrote mostly in standard Danish, probably out of concern for his Danish audience.
By 1866, the Dane Andreas Listov found it necessary to publish a book of about 3,000 terms that needed translation from Norwegian to Danish. Though most of these terms were probably taken straight from Aasmund Olavsson Vinje
Aasmund Olavsson Vinje
Aasmund Olavsson Vinje was a famous Norwegian poet and journalist who is remembered for poetry, travel writing, and his pioneering use of Landsmål .-Background:...
’s travel accounts, the publication reflected a widespread recognition that much written Norwegian no longer was pure Danish.
Initial reforms and advocacy
By the mid-19th century, two Norwegian linguistic pioneers had started the work that would influence the controversy to this day. Ivar AasenIvar Aasen
Ivar Andreas Aasen was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright and poet.-Background:...
, autodidact
Autodidacticism
Autodidacticism is self-education or self-directed learning. In a sense, autodidacticism is "learning on your own" or "by yourself", and an autodidact is a person who teaches him or herself something. The term has its roots in the Ancient Greek words αὐτός and διδακτικός...
, polyglot
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
, and the founder of modern Norwegian linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, started studying first his own dialect from Sunnmøre
Sunnmøre
Sunnmøre is the southernmost traditional district of the western Norwegian county of Møre og Romsdal. Its main city is Ålesund. The region comprises the municipalities of Giske, Hareid, Herøy, Norddal, Sande, Skodje, Haram, Stordal, Stranda, Sula, Sykkylven, Ulstein, Vanylven, Volda, Ørskog,...
, and then the structure of Norwegian dialects in general. He was one of the first to describe the evolution from Old Norse to Modern Norwegian
Modern Norwegian
Modern Norwegian is the Norwegian language that emerged after the Middle Norwegian transition period . The transition to Modern Norwegian is usually dated to 1525, or 1536, the year of the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway .The Norwegian linguistic term for...
. From this he moved to advocate and design a distinctly Norwegian written language he termed landsmål
Landsmål
Landsmål, meaning "language of the land/country", was the name Ivar Aasen gave the Norwegian orthography he created in the 19th century. In 1885 it was adopted as an official language in Norway alongside Danish. In 1929, Landsmål was renamed Nynorsk...
. His work was based on two important principles, in morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
he chose forms which he regarded as common denominators from which contemporary varieties could be inferred, in lexicography
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
he applied puristic
Linguistic purism
Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
principles and excluded words of Danish or Middle Low German
Middle Low German
Middle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League...
descent when at least some dialects had preserved synonyms inherited from Old Norse. In 1885, landsmål was adopted as an official written language alongside the Norwegian version of Danish.
Knud Knudsen, a teacher, worked instead to adapt the orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
more closely to the spoken Dano-Norwegian koiné known as "cultivated daily speech" (dannet dagligtale). He argued that the cultivated daily speech was the best basis for a distinct Norwegian written language, because the educated classes did not belong to any specific region, they were numerous, and possessed cultural influence. Knudsen was also influenced by and a proponent of the common Dano-Norwegian movement for phonemic orthography
Phonemic orthography
A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...
. The written form of Norwegian based on his work eventually became known as riksmål, a term introduced by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer and the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Bjørnson is considered as one of The Four Greats Norwegian writers; the others being Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland...
in 1899.
As a result of Knudsen's work, the Parliament of Norway passed the first orthographical reforms in 1862, most of which also had its proponents in Denmark. Though modest by subsequent reforms, it nevertheless marked a legislative step toward a distinct written standard for Norway. Silent e's were eliminated from written Norwegian (faa rather than faae), double-vowels were no longer used to denote long vowels, k replaced the use of c, q, and ch in most words, and ph was eliminated in favor of f.
Such orthographic reforms continued in subsequent years, but in 1892 the Norwegian department of education approved the first set of optional forms in the publication of Nordahl Rolfsen
Nordahl Rolfsen
Johan Nordahl Brun Rolfsen was a Norwegian writer, educationalist and teacher, journalist, translator and speaker. He is best known for the series of five readers for elementary school, Læsebog for folkeskolen , which became the most widespread schoolbook in Norway.-Family:Rolfsen was born in Bergen...
s Reader for the Primary School (Læsebog for Folkeskolen). Also, in 1892, national legislation let each local school board the right to decide whether to teach its children in riksmål and landsmål.
In 1907, linguistic reforms were extended to include not just orthography but also grammar. The characteristic Norwegian "hard" consonants (p, t, k) replaced Danish "soft" consonants (b, d, g) in writing; consonants were doubled to denote short vowels; words that in Norwegian were monosyllabic were spelled that way; and conjugations related to neutrum were adapted to common Norwegian usage in cultivated daily speech.
In 1913 Olaf Bull
Olaf Bull
Olaf Jacob Martin Luther Breda Bull or Olaf Bull was a Norwegian poet. He was born on November 10, 1883 in Kristiania , Norway, and died on June 29, 1933.-His life:...
's crime novel Mit navn er Knoph (My name is Knoph) became the first piece of Norwegian literature to be translated from Riksmål into Danish for Danish readers, thereby underlining the fact that Riksmål was by now a separate language.
Controversy erupts
In 1906, prominent writers of landsmål formed an association to promote their version of written Norwegian, calling themselves Noregs MållagNoregs Mållag
Noregs Mållag is the main organisation for Norwegian Nynorsk , one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language. In the Norwegian language struggle, it advocates the use of Nynorsk...
; a year later, the corresponding organization to promote riksmål was founded, naming itself Riksmålsforbundet
Riksmålsforbundet
Riksmålsforbundet is the main organisation for Riksmål, one of the written standard of the Norwegian language ....
. The formation of these organizations coincided with the rule that all incoming university students - those who passed examen artium
Examen artium
Examen artium was the name of the academic certification conferred in Denmark and Norway, qualifying the student for admission to university studies. Examen artium was originally introduced as the entrance exam of the University of Copenhagen in 1630...
- had to demonstrate mastery of both for admission to university programs. They had to write a second additional essay in the Norwegian language that was not their primary language.
In 1911, the writer Gabriel Scott
Gabriel Scott
Gabriel Scott was a Norwegian poet, novelist, playwright and children's writer.-Personal life:Gabriel Scott Jensen was born in Leith in Scotland as the son of sailors' priest Svend Holst Jensen and his wife writer and composer Caroline Mathilde Schytte...
's comedic play Tower of Babel had its premiere in Oslo. It is about a small town in eastern Norway that is overtaken by proponents of landsmål who take to executing all those who resist their language. The play culminates in the landsmål proponents killing each other over what to call their country: Noregr, Thule, Ultima, Ny-Norig, or Nyrig. The last line is spoken by a country peasant who, seeing the carnage, says: "Good thing I didn't take part in this!"
There was at least one brawl in the audience during the play's run, and the stage was set for a linguistic schism that would characterize Norwegian politics to this day.
To confuse matters further, Eivind Berggrav
Eivind Berggrav
Eivind Josef Berggrav was a Norwegian Lutheran bishop, primarily known as Primate of the Church of Norway and remembered for his unyielding resistance against the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II.-Background:Berggrav was born in Stavanger, Norway...
, Halvdan Koht
Halvdan Koht
Halvdan Koht was a Norwegian historian and politician representing the Labour Party.As a politician he served as the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1935 to 1941. He was never elected as a member of the Parliament of Norway, but was a member of Bærum municipal council in 1917–1919 and...
, and Didrik Arup Seip
Didrik Arup Seip
Didrik Arup Seip was Professor of North Germanic languages at the University of Oslo.He earned his doctorate in 1916 and was appointed professor the same year, retiring in 1954. Together with Herman Jæger, he edited and published the collected works of Henrik Wergeland in 23 volumes...
formed a third organization called Østlandsk reisning that sought to increase the representation, as it were, of Eastern Norwegian dialects in landsmål, since they felt Aasen's language as overly influenced by the dialects of Western Norway.
1917 reforms and their aftermath
In 1917, the Norwegian parliament passed the first major standard for both Norwegian languages. The standard for riksmål was for the most part a continuation of the 1907 reforms and added some optional forms that were closer to Norwegian dialects, but those for landsmål sought to reduce forms that were considered idiosyncratic for Western Norway.As it turned out, the reforms within riksmål themselves caused controversy - between those who held that the written language should closely approximate the formal language of the educated elite on the one hand, and those who held that it should reflect the quotidian language of commoners. A distinction was made between "conservative" and "radical" riksmål. This added a further political dimension to the debate that opened for a possible convergence between more liberal forms of landsmål and radical forms of riksmål. This was to form the basis for the notion of samnorsk, a synthesis - yet to be realized - of the two main streams of written Norwegian.
By 1921, school districts had made their choice in the growing controversy: 2,000 taught landsmål as the primary written language; 2,550 the radical form of riksmål, and 1,450 conservative riksmål. In 1920, national authorities decided that the issue of language should be put to voters in local referendums, which brought the dispute to a local level where it was no less contentious. In Eidsvoll
Eidsvoll
is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Romerike traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Sundet.-Name:...
, for example, a local banker (Gudbrand Bræk, the father of Ola Skjåk Bræk
Ola Skjåk Bræk
Ola Skjåk Bræk was a Norwegian banker and politician for the Liberal Party. He was Minister of Industry in 1972–1973....
) was threatened with being run out of town over his support for samnorsk.
New place names
Already in the late 19th century, place namesToponymy
Toponymy is the scientific study of place names , their origins, meanings, use and typology. The word "toponymy" is derived from the Greek words tópos and ónoma . Toponymy is itself a branch of onomastics, the study of names of all kinds...
in Norway started changing, ideally to reflect what they were called by their residents. In 1917, 188 municipalities were renamed; all counties were given new names in 1918; and several of the largest cities were renamed in the 1920s; notably Kristiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
became "Oslo", Fredrikshald became "Halden", for example. Some of these changes were less popular. For example, some residents of Sandviken were none too pleased about the "radical" change to "Sandvika
Sandvika
is the administrative centre of the municipality of Bærum in Norway. It was declared a city by the municipal council in Bærum on 4 June 2003.Sandvika is situated approximately west of Oslo. It is the main transportation hub for Western Bærum, and has a combined bus and railway station. Sandvika is...
," nor were many in nearby Fornebo
Fornebu
Fornebu is a peninsular area in the suburban municipality of Bærum in Norway, bordering western parts of Oslo.Oslo Airport, Fornebu served as the main airport for Oslo and the country since before WWII and until the evening of October 7, 1998, when it was closed down...
willing to accept "Fornebu." The greatest controversy erupted over the city of Trondheim
Trondheim
Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...
, which had until then been known as "Trondhjem," but in the Viking era had been called "Nidaros." After the authorities had decided - without consulting the population - that the city should be renamed "Nidaros," a compromise was eventually reached, with "Trondheim."
The Grimstad case and the spoken language in schools
In 1911, the KristiansundKristiansund
Kristiansund is a city and municipality on the western coast of Norway, in the Nordmøre district of Møre og Romsdal county. It was officially awarded township status in 1742, and it is still the major town for the region. The administrative center of the municipality is the city of Kristiansund...
school board in circulated among its teachers a document that required that their oral instruction had to be in the same language as the district's written language, in this case riksmål. A teacher, Knut Grimstad, refused to accept this on the grounds that neither the school district nor the Norwegian national authorities had the right to impose a version of a spoken language as instruction. He found support in the 1878 resolution that required that all students - "as much as possible" - should receive instruction in a language close to their native tongue. This was subsequently clarified to mean that they were supposed to be taught in "the Norwegian language," a phrase also open to interpretation.
Grimstad was forced to apologize for the form of his protest, but the issue nevertheless came up in parliament in 1912. This became one of the first political challenges for the new Konow
Wollert Konow (SB)
Wollert Konow was a Norwegian politician. He was Prime Minister of Norway from 1910 to 1912.-Background:In 1842 his father, Wollert Konow, Ph.D., who was a Norwegian writer and politician, had purchased the historic Stend Manor in the Fana borough of Bergen, Norway where Wollert Konow was born...
cabinet, falling under the auspices of Edvard Appoloniussen Liljedahl, the minister of churches and education. Liljedahl was a respected and dyed-in-the-wool member of the landsmål camp, having actually addressed the parliament in his native dialect from Sogn
Sogn
Sogn is a traditional district in Western Norway . It is located in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, surrounding the Sognefjord. Sogn consists of the municipalities of Aurland, Balestrand, Hyllestad, Høyanger, Gulen, Leikanger, Luster, Lærdal, Sogndal, Solund, Vik, and Årdal. The district covers ...
. For his rebuke of Grimstad's position, he was vilified by his own. Trying to find a compromise, his department confirmed the principle of teaching in the "local common spoken language" while also requires that they be "taught in the language decided for their written work." This now attracted the ire of the riksmål camp.
Parliament and the department hoped that this clarification would put the issue to rest; but in 1923, the school board in Bergen
Bergen
Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , ....
decided that the spoken language in all its schools would be riksmål. Olav Andreas Eftestøl, the school director for this region - there were seven such appointees for the entire country of Norway - took this decision to the department in 1924, and another parliamentary debate ensued. Eftestøl's view was endorsed, and this put an end to the discussion about spoken language in schools; though it must be noted it took longer before native speakers of Sami
Sami languages
Sami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently and erroneously believed to be a single language. Several names are used for the Sami...
and Kven
Kven language
The Kven language is a Finnic language spoken in Northern Norway by the Kven people. For political and historical reasons it received the status of a minority language in 2005 within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
got the same rights; and the issue has re-emerged recently with respect to immigrant children's native language.
The Labour Party and the reforms of 1938
Norwegian Labour Party
The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in Norway. It is the senior partner in the current Norwegian government as part of the Red-Green Coalition, and its leader, Jens Stoltenberg, is the current Prime Minister of Norway....
turned out to be decisive in passing the 1917 reforms, and one Labour politician - the illustrious Halvdan Koht
Halvdan Koht
Halvdan Koht was a Norwegian historian and politician representing the Labour Party.As a politician he served as the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1935 to 1941. He was never elected as a member of the Parliament of Norway, but was a member of Bærum municipal council in 1917–1919 and...
- was in the early 1920s asked to develop the party's political platform for the Norwegian language.
Koht was for some years both the chairperson in Noregs mållag and Østlandsk reisning and clearly deeply immersed on the issue of language. He published his findings in 1921, and framed them in a decidedly political context.
His view, which was to gain currency among his fellow Laborites, was that the urban working class and rural farming class had a convergence of interests in language, giving rise to the emergent "people's language" (folkemålet). He wrote that "The struggle for the people's language is the cultural side of the labor movement." This notion of convergence led the Labor Party to embrace the ideal of a synthesis of the two main languages into one language, built on the spoken forms of the "common person", or samnorsk.
Having already changed the names of the languages: riksmål became bokmål and landsmål nynorsk by parliamentary resolution of 1929, the Labor party made Koht their thought leaders and spokesperson on these issues, formalizing his views into their platform.
The 1938 reforms, proposed under the first durable Labor cabinet of Johan Nygaardsvold
Johan Nygaardsvold
Johan Nygaardsvold was a Norwegian politician from the Labour Party. He was Prime Minister of Norway from 1935 to 1945 , as head of the cabinet Nygaardsvold.-Political career:...
, represented a radical departure from previous reforms.
- Bokmål
- The forms common in cultivated daily speech (dannet dagligtale) lost their normative status in bokmål and instead became one of several factors.
- A new distinction was made: between primary and secondary forms, in which preference would be given to primary forms, which usually were more "radical"
- Some forms found in conservative riksmål/bokmål were outright rejected. For examples, diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
spelling became mandatory; and a number of feminine words had to be declined with an -a rather than -en. - Nynorsk
- Preference was given to "broad" rather than "narrow" root vowels, e.g., "mellom" rather than "millom"
- The -i suffix was set aside for the -a suffix in most cases, removing a form many found idiosyncratic to Western Norway
The reforms clearly aspired to bring the two languages closer together and predictably angered advocates in either camp. In particular, the proponents of riksmål felt the reforms were a frontal assault on their written language and sensibilities, since many elements of their previous norm - dannet dagligtale - were deprecated. But also purists in the landsmål camp were unhappy, feeling that the reforms gutted their language.
World War II
The occupation of Norway by Nazi GermanyOccupation of Norway by Nazi Germany
The occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany started with the German invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940, and ended on May 8, 1945, after the capitulation of German forces in Europe. Throughout this period, Norway was continuously occupied by the Wehrmacht...
from 1940 to 1945 took the language issue off the national political scene. The Quisling
Vidkun Quisling
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was a Norwegian politician. On 9 April 1940, with the German invasion of Norway in progress, he seized power in a Nazi-backed coup d'etat that garnered him international infamy. From 1942 to 1945 he served as Minister-President, working with the occupying...
government rescinded the 1938 reforms and made some changes on its own, but as with virtually everything Quisling did, this was rendered null and void by the post-war Norwegian government.
Liberation, and the debate intensifies
As it turned out, the war set the nynorsk movement back substantially. The momentum gained by the Labour party's activism for nynorsk was lost during the war, and Noreg mållag's entire archive was lost in 1944. An opinion poll in 1946 showed that 79% of all Norwegians favored the formation of samnorsk, setting further back the cause of the purists who favored the traditional landsmål forms.On the other side of the issue, the poet Arnulf Øverland
Arnulf Øverland
Ole Peter Arnulf Øverland was a Norwegian author born in Kristiansund and raised in Bergen. His works include Berget det blå and Hustavler .-Life:...
galvanized Riksmålsforbundet in opposition not to nynorsk, which he respected, but against the radical bokmål recommended by the 1938 reforms. Their efforts were particularly noted in Oslo, where the school board had decided to make radical forms of bokmål the norm in 1939 ("Oslo-vedtaket"). In 1951, concerned parents primarily from the affluent western neighborhoods of Oslo organized the "parents' campaign against samnorsk" (foreldreaksjonen mot samnorsk), which in 1953 included "correcting" textbooks.
In 1952, Øverland and Riksmålsforbundet published the so-called "blue list" that recommended more conservative orthography and forms than most of the 1938 reforms. This book established for the first time a real alternative standard in riksmål to legislated bokmål. It set the standard for two of the capital's main daily newspapers, Aftenposten
Aftenposten
Aftenposten is Norway's largest newspaper. It retook this position in 2010, taking it from the tabloid Verdens Gang which had been the largest newspaper for several decades. It is based in Oslo. The morning edition, which is distributed across all of Norway, had a circulation of 250,179 in 2007...
and Morgenbladet
Morgenbladet
Morgenbladet is a Norwegian weekly newspaper. It was founded in 1819 by the book printer Niels Wulfsberg, and was the country's first daily newspaper. For a long time, it was also the country's biggest newspaper. It was closed down by the German Wehrmacht during World War II...
. It also contributed to the reversal of the "Oslo decision" in 1954.
In 1951, the Norwegian parliament established by law Norsk språknemnd, which later was renamed Norsk språkråd
Norwegian Language Council
The Norwegian Language Council was the regulation authority for the Norwegian language. It has been superseded by The Language Council of Norway .The council had 38 members, and created lists of acceptable word forms...
(Norwegian Language Council). Riksmålsforeningen disagreed with the premises of the council's mandate, namely that Norwegian was to be built on the basis of the "people's language." The council was convened with 30 representatives, 15 from each of the main languages. However, most of them supported samnorsk.
In 1952, a minor reform passed with little fanfare and controversy: in spoken official Norwegian, numbers over 20 were to be articulated with the tens first, e.g., "twenty-one" as is the Swedish and English practice rather than "one-and-twenty," the previous practice also found in Danish and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
.
The apex of the controversy and the 1959 textbook reform
Arnulf Øverland, who had so successfully energized the riksmål movement after the war, did not see nynorsk as the nemesis of his cause. Rather, he appealed to the nynorsk movement to join forces against the common enemy he found in samnorsk. By several accounts, however, much of the activism within the riksmål camp was directed against all "radical" tendencies, including nynorsk.The use of bokmål and nynorsk in the government-controlled Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) came under a particular scrutiny. As a government agency (and monopoly) that has traditionally been strongly associated with the Nynorsk-supporting Norwegian Labour Party
Norwegian Labour Party
The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in Norway. It is the senior partner in the current Norwegian government as part of the Red-Green Coalition, and its leader, Jens Stoltenberg, is the current Prime Minister of Norway....
, NRK was required to include both languages in its broadcasts. According to their own measurements, well over 80% was in bokmål and less than 20% nynorsk. Still, the riksmål advocates were outraged, since they noted that some of the most popular programs (such as the 7 pm news) were broadcast in nynorsk, and the bokmål was too radical in following the 1938 norms.
This came to a head in the case of Sigurd Smebye, a meteorologist
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
who insisted on using highly conservative riksmål terms in reporting the weather. This ended up on the parliamentary floor, where the minister had to assure the public that anyone was entitled to use his/her own dialect on the air. However, Smebye was effectively disallowed from performing on television and ended up suing and prevailing over NRK in a supreme court case.
At the same time, one of the announcers for children's radio shows complained that her texts had been corrected from riksmål to 1938-bokmål, e.g., from Dukken lå i sengen sin på gulvet to Dokka lå i senga si på golvet. With the 1959 reforms, the issue seems to have been resolved - everyone in NRK could use their own natural spoken language.
As its first major work, the language council published in 1959 new standards for textbooks. The purpose of a unified standard was to avoid multiple versions of standard books to accommodate "moderate," "radical," and "conservative" versions of the languages. The standard was by its nature a continuation of the convergence movement toward the ever-elusive goal of samnorsk. Double consonants to denote short vowels are put in common use; the silent "h" is eliminated in a number of words; more "radical" forms in bokmål are made primary; while nynorsk actually offers more choices.
However, it appeared that the 1959 attempt was the last gasp of the samnorsk movement. After this, the Norwegian Labour Party decided to depoliticize language issues by commissioning expert panels on linguistic issues.
"Language peace"
Helge Sivertsen
Helge Sivertsen was a Norwegian discus thrower and politician. He was born in Mandal, but represented Inderøy IL in athletics competitions. His party affiliation was to the Labour Party....
, minister of education, with professor Hans Vogt
Hans Vogt
Hans Vogt was a Norwegian linguist specialized in the Caucasian languages, especially Georgian. He also did significant early work on the Kalispel language....
as its chair. It was variously known as the "Vogt committee" or "language peace committee" (språkfredskomitéen). Its purpose was to defuse the conflict about language in Norway and build an atmosphere of mutual respect.
The committee published its findings in 1966, pointing out that:
- Nynorsk was in decline in the nation's school districts, now tracking toward 20% of all primary school students
- The written language was in any event increasing its influence over the Norwegian language, as the differences between dialects was gradually eroding
- Even with the disputes over the matter, there was no question that nynorsk and bokmål had come closer to each other in the last 50 years
- The literary forms in Norwegian literature (i.e., riksmål used by prominent writers) should not be neglected or disowned
These findings were subject to hearings and discussions in coming years in a decidedly more deliberate form than before; and a significant outcome was the Norsk språknemnd became Norsk språkråd, responsible less for prescribing language than for cultivating it. Still, the Vogt committee promoted convergence as a virtue.
Nynorsk finds new favour in the 1960s and 1970s
The Norwegian countercultural movement and the emergence of the New LeftNew Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
sought to disassociate itself from the conservative establishment in many ways, including language. At the universities, students were encouraged to "speak their dialect, write nynorsk," and radical forms of bokmål were adopted by urban left wing socialists.
The first debate about Norwegian EU membership leading to the 1972 referendum gave new meaning to rural culture and dialects. The nynorsk movement gained new momentum, putting rural districts and the dialects more in the center of Norwegian politics.
In 1973, Norsk språkråd instructed teachers to no longer correct students who used conservative riksmål in their writing, provided these forms were used consistently.
The end of Samnorsk
The 1973 recommendation by the council was formally approved by parliament in 1981 in what was known as the "liberalization resolution" (liberaliseringsvedtaket). With the exception of a few "banner words" (riksmål nu rather than bokmål nå ("now"), efter rather than etter ("after"), sne rather than snø ("snow"), and ironically sprog rather than språk ("language")), traditional riksmål forms were fully accepted in contemporary bokmål, though all the radical forms were retained.On December 13, 2002, the samnorsk ideal was finally officially abandoned when the Ministry of Culture and Church affairs sent out a press release to that effect. The primary motivation for this change in policy was the emerging recognition that government policy should not prohibit forms that are in active use and had a strong basis in the body of Norwegian literary work.
This was further formalized in the so-called "2005-reforms" that primarily affected orthography for bokmål. So-called "secondary forms" (sideformer) were abolished. These forms were variant spellings that would be tolerated by the general public, but disallowed among text book authors and public officials. The 2005 changes now made all allowable forms equal standing. These changes effectively recognize approximately full usage of riksmål forms.
Urban vs. Rural Divide
In modern Norway, many of the largest urban centres' municipal governments have chosen to declare themselves neutral. However, it can be seen that several large centres have declared as using Bokmål, and very few larger urban centres use Nynorsk exclusively:| Largest Urban Centres (Neutral) | Population (2009) |
|---|---|
| Oslo Oslo Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King... |
876,391 |
| Bergen Bergen Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , .... |
227,752 |
| Trondheim Trondheim Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of... |
160,072 |
| Drammen Drammen Drammen is a city in Buskerud County, Norway. The port and river city of Drammen is centrally located in the eastern and most populated part of Norway.-Location:... |
96,562 |
| Skien Skien ' is a city and municipality in Telemark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Grenland. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Skien. Skien is also the administrative centre of Telemark county.... /Porsgrunn Porsgrunn is a town and municipality in Telemark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Grenland. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Porsgrunn.... |
86,923 |
| Tromsø Tromsø Tromsø is a city and municipality in Troms county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromsø.Tromsø city is the ninth largest urban area in Norway by population, and the seventh largest city in Norway by population... |
55,057 |
| Ålesund Ålesund is a town and municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the traditional district of Sunnmøre, and the center of the Ålesund Region. It is a sea port, and is noted for its unique concentration of Art Nouveau architecture.... |
46,471 |
| Moss Moss, Norway is a coastal city and a municipality in Østfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Moss. The city of Moss was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838... |
41,725 |
| Bodø Bodø is a city and a municipality in Nordland county, Norway. It is part of the Salten region.The city of Bodø was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . Bodin was merged with Bodø on 1 January 1968. Skjerstad was merged with Bodø on 1 January 2005... |
36,482 |
| Hamar Hamar is a town and municipality in Hedmark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Hedmarken. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Hamar. The municipality of Hamar was separated from Vang as a town and municipality of its own in 1849... |
30,015 |
| Largest Urban Centres (Bokmål) | Population (2009) |
|---|---|
| Stavanger Stavanger Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway... /Sandnes Sandnes is a city and municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. It is part of the region of Jæren.-History:Sandnes was separated from Høyland as a municipality of its own in 1860, and gained city status the same year... |
189,828 |
| Fredrikstad/Sarpsborg Lower Glomma Region The Lower Glomma Region is a statistical metropolitan region in Østfold in southeastern Norway. It is centered on the cities of Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg near the Swedish border. It is located at the end of the Glomma River.... |
101,698 |
| Kristiansand Kristiansand -History:As indicated by archeological findings in the city, the Kristiansand area has been settled at least since 400 AD. A royal farm is known to have been situated on Oddernes as early as 800, and the first church was built around 1040... |
67,547 |
| Tønsberg Tønsberg is a city and municipality in Vestfold county, southern Norway, located around north-east of Sandefjord. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tønsberg.... |
47,465 |
| Haugesund Haugesund is a town and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.-Location:Haugesund was separated from Torvastad as a town and municipality of its own in 1855. The rural municipality of Skåre was merged with Haugesund on January 1, 1958. Haugesund is a small municipality, only 73 km²... |
42,850 |
| Sandefjord Sandefjord is a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Sandefjord. The municipality of Sandefjord was established on 1 January 1838... |
40,817 |
| Arendal Arendal is a town and municipality in the county of Aust-Agder, Norway. Arendal belongs to the traditional region of Sørlandet.The town of Arendal is the administrative center the municipality and also of Aust-Agder county... |
32,439 |
| Larvik Larvik is a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Larvik. Larvik kommune - has about 41 364 inhabitants and covers 530 km2.... |
23,899 |
| Halden Halden is a both a town and a municipality in Østfold county, Norway. The seat of the municipality, Halden is a border town located at the Tista river delta on the Iddefjord, the southernmost border crossing between Norway and Sweden.-History:... |
22,986 |
| Lillehammer Lillehammer is a town and municipality in Oppland county, Norway, globally known for hosting the 1994 Winter Olympics. It is part of the traditional region of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Lillehammer. As of May 2011, the population of the town of Lillehammer was... |
20,097 |
| Largest Urban Centres (Nynorsk) | Population (2009) |
|---|---|
| Leirvik Leirvik Leirvik is a town and the administrative centre of Stord municipality in the county of Hordaland, Norway. Leirvik is the regional centre of Sunnhordland, and has many public services and offices such as the regional court and Sunnhordland Museum, as well as shops and restaurants... |
11,424 |
| Bryne Bryne Bryne is a city, located in, and the administrative centre of, the municipality of Time, Norway. Bryne is located about 25 minutes south of Stavanger by train. The area of Bryne is 4,79 km².... |
9,627 |
| Knarrevik/Straume Fjell Fjell is a municipality in the county of Hordaland, Norway. The parish of Fjæld was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838... |
9,409 |
| Førde Førde Førde is a municipality in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Sunnfjord. The administrative center is the town of Førde which in 2010 had 12,035 inhabitants. The historic village of Bruland is located just east of the town of Førde... |
9,248 |
| Osøyro Osøyro Osøyro is a village in and municipal administration seat of Os in Hordaland, Norway. The village had 8,772 residents in 2009.-References:... |
8,772 |
| Florø Florø is a town and the administrative centre of Flora municipality in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. It is also a former municipality that existed for just over 100 years. The town was founded on the Florelandet island between the Botnafjorden and Solheimsfjorden by royal decree in 1860. In... |
8,448 |
| Kleppe Kleppe Kleppe is a village in, and the administrative centre of, the municipality of Klepp, in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Kleppe, an abbreviated form of its former name Kleppekrossen, is in the centre of the municipality. The population around Kleppe is growing rapidly, mostly in the form of suburban... /Verdalen Verdalen Verdalen is a village in Klepp municipality, Norway.... |
7,348 |
| Ørsta Ørsta is a village and municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Sunnmøre region of Western Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Ørsta... |
6,495 |
| Kvernaland Kvernaland Kvernaland is a village in Rogaland, Norway. The village is located by lake Frøylandsvatnet, right at the division between municipalities Klepp and Time. Of its total population of 5,454, 3,153 reside in Klepp and 2,301 in Time. Several factories, mainly producing equipment for agriculture, are... |
6,098 |
| Vossevangen Vossevangen Vossevangen is the centre of Voss municipality in Hordaland, Norway. The population is about 5500. It's located in the center of Voss at the north-east edge of Vangsvatnet.... |
5,860 |
Future evolution of Norwegian
The samnorsk issue turned out to be fateful for two generations of amateur and professional linguists in Norway and flared up into a divisive political issue from time to time. By letting bokmål be bokmål (or riksmål) and nynorsk nynorsk, the Norwegian government allowed each - in principle - to develop on its own.As Norwegian society has integrated more with the global economy and European cosmopolitanism, the effect on both written and spoken Norwegian is evident. There is a greater prevalence of English loan words (låneord) in Norwegian, and some view this with great concern.
In 2004, the Norwegian Language Council issued Norwegian orthography for 25 originally English words, suggesting that for example "bacon" be spelled "beiken." This was in keeping with previous practices that made "stasjon" the Norwegian writing for "station," etc., but the so-called "beiken reforms" fell on hard ground, and "beiken" was one of the spelling changes that was voted down.
There is also a trend, which has been ongoing since the dissolution of the Dano-Norwegian Union
Denmark–Norway
Denmark–Norway is the historiographical name for a former political entity consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the originally Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands...
in 1814, to assimilate individual Swedish loan words into Norwegian. Although it lost momentum substantially after the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905 it has remained an ongoing phenomenon of Norwegian linguistics. Indeed, the prominent Norwegian linguist Finn-Erik Vinje
Finn-Erik Vinje
Finn-Erik Vinje is a Norwegian philologist. He was a professor at the University of Trondheim from 1971 to 1975, and at the University of Oslo from 1975 to 2006. He was a language consultant for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation from 1971 to 1992. He has written several books on...
characterizes this influx since the second world war as a breaking wave.
There is further a concern in some quarters that poor grammar and usage is becoming more commonplace in the written press and broadcast media, and consequently among students and the general population. While the sociolinguistic view that language constantly evolves is duly noted among these critics, there is some call for more vigilance in written language. Broadcast programs such as Typisk Norsk
Typisk norsk
Typisk norsk is a news and magazine program about language and communication produced by Dropout Productions and Rubicon TV for NRK. Three seasons of the program have been produced...
and Språkteigen are intended to raise the general awareness of the Norwegian language; the "language director" Sylfest Lomheim
Sylfest Lomheim
Sylfest Lomheim is a Norwegian philologist.He was the director of the Norwegian Language Council from 2003 to 2010. He is also associate professor in the Norwegian language at the University of Agder...
is working to make language issues more visible.
Sources, bibliography and external links
- Petter Wilhelm Schjerven (ed): Typisk Norsk, Oslo, NRK/Dinamo forlag. ISBN 8252561608
- Egil Børre Johnsen (ed): Vårt eget språk, Aschehoug, ISBN 82-03-17092-7
- Oddmund Løkensgard Hoel: Nasjonalisme i norsk målstrid 1848-1865, Oslo 1996, Noregs Forskingsråd, ISBN 82-12-00695-6
- Norwegian Language Council (Språkrådet)
- Noregs mållag
- Riksmålsforbundet
- Landslaget for språklig samling (samnorsk.no)