Norwegian Language Video
Josephina
Like most of the languages in Europe, Norwegian derives from Proto-Indo-European. As early Indo-Europeans spread across Europe, they became isolated from each other and new languages developed. In northwest Europe, the Germanic languages evolved, further branching off into the North Germanic languages, of which Norwegian is one.
Proto-Norse is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect of Proto-Germanic during the first centuries AD in what is today Southern Sweden. It is the earliest stage of a characteristically North Germanic language, and the language attested in the Elder Futhark inscriptions, the oldest form of the runic alphabets. A number of inscriptions are memorials to the dead, while others are magical in content. The oldest are carved on loose objects, while later ones are chiseled in runestones.[5] They are the oldest written record of any Germanic language.
Around 800 AD, the script was simplified to the Younger Futhark, and inscriptions became more abundant. At the same time, the beginning of the Viking Age led to the spread of Old Norse to Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. Viking colonies also existed in parts of the British Isles, France (Normandy), North America, and Kievan Rus. In all of these places except Iceland and the Faroes, Old Norse speakers went extinct or were absorbed into the local population.[5]
Around 1030, Christianity came to Scandinavia, bringing with it an influx of Latin borrowings and the Roman alphabet. These new words were related to church practices and ceremonies, although many other loanwords related to general culture also entered the language.
The Scandinavian languages at this time are not considered to be separate languages, although there were minor differences among what are customarily called Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Gutnish, Old Danish, and Old Swedish.
In the late Middle Ages, dialects began to develop in Scandinavia because the population was rural and little travel occurred. When the Reformation came from Germany, Martin Luther's High German translation of the Bible was quickly translated into Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. Norway entered a union with Denmark in 1397 and Danish, over time, replaced Middle Norwegian as the language of the elite, the church, literature, and the law. When the union with Denmark ended in 1814, the Dano-Norwegian koin had become the mother tongue of around 1% of the population.[6]
From the 1840s, some writers experimented with a Norwegianised Danish by incorporating words that were descriptive of Norwegian scenery and folk life, and adopting a more Norwegian syntax. Knud Knudsen proposed to change spelling and inflection in accordance with the Dano-Norwegian koin, known as "cultivated everyday speech." A small adjustment in this direction was implemented in the first official reform of the Danish language in Norway in 1862 and more extensively after his death in two official reforms in 1907 and 1917.
Meanwhile, a nationalistic movement strove for the development of a new written Norwegian. Ivar Aasen, a botanist and self-taught linguist, began his work to create a new Norwegian language at the age of 22. He traveled around the country collecting words and examples of grammar from the dialects and comparing the dialects among the different regions. He examined the development of Icelandic, which had largely escaped the influences under which Norwegian had come. He called his work, which was published in several books from 1848 to 1873, Landsml, meaning 'national language'. The name Landsml is sometimes interpreted as 'rural language' or 'country language', but this was clearly not Aasen's intended meaning.
The name of the Danish language in Norway was a topic of hot dispute throughout the 19th century. Its proponents claimed that it was a language common to Norway and Denmark, and no more Danish than Norwegian. The proponents of Landsml thought that the Danish character of the language should not be concealed. In 1899, Bjrnstjerne Bjrnson proposed the neutral name Riksml, meaning 'national language' like Landsml, and this was officially adopted along with the 1907 spelling reform. The name Riksml is sometimes interpreted as 'state language', but this meaning is secondary at best. (Compare to Danish rigsml from where the name was borrowed.)
After the personal union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905, both languages were developed further and reached what is now considered their classic forms after a reform in 1917. Riksml was, in 1929, officially renamed Bokml (literally 'book language'), and Landsml to Nynorsk (literally 'new Norwegian'). A proposition to substitute Danish-Norwegian (dansk-norsk) for Bokml lost in parliament by a single vote.[citation needed] The name Nynorsk, the linguistic term for modern Norwegian, was chosen to contrast with Danish and emphasise the historical connection to Old Norwegian. Today, this meaning is often lost, and it is commonly mistaken as a "new" Norwegian in contrast to the "real" Norwegian Bokml.
Bokml and Nynorsk were made closer by a reform in 1938. This was a result of a state policy to merge Nynorsk and Bokml into a single language, to be called Samnorsk. A 1946 poll showed that this policy was supported by 79% of Norwegians at the time. However, opponents of the official policy still managed to create a massive protest movement against Samnorsk in the 1950s, fighting in particular the use of "radical" forms in Bokml text books in schools. In the reform in 1959, the 1938 reform was partially reversed in Bokml, but Nynorsk was changed further towards Bokml. Since then Bokml has reverted even further toward traditional Riksml, while Nynorsk still adheres to the 1959 standard. Therefore, a small minority of Nynorsk enthusiasts use a more conservative standard called Hgnorsk. The Samnorsk policy had little influence after 1960, and was officially abandoned in 2002.
There are significant variations in pitch accent between dialects. Thus, in most of western and northern Norway (the so-called high-pitch dialects) accent 1 is falling, while accent 2 is rising in the first syllable and falling in the second syllable or somewhere around the syllable boundary. The pitch accents (as well as the peculiar phrase accent in the low-tone dialects) give the Norwegian language a "singing" quality that makes it easy to distinguish from other languages. Accent 1 generally occurs in words that were monosyllabic in Old Norse, and accent 2 in words that were polysyllabic.
The two legally recognized forms of written Norwegian are Bokml (literally 'book tongue') and Nynorsk ('new Norwegian'), which are regulated by the Language Council of Norway (Sprkrdet).[10] Two other written forms without official status also exist. One, called Riksml ('national language'), is today to a large extent the same language as Bokml though somewhat closer to the Danish language. It is regulated by the unofficial Norwegian Academy, which translates the name as 'Standard Norwegian'. The other is Hgnorsk ('High Norwegian'), a more purist form of Nynorsk, which maintains the language in an original form as given by Ivar Aasen and rejects most of the reforms from the 20th century; this form has limited use.
Nynorsk and Bokml provide standards for how to write Norwegian, but not for how to speak the language. No standard of spoken Norwegian is officially sanctioned, and most Norwegians speak their own dialects in all circumstances. Thus, unlike in many other countries, the use of any Norwegian dialect, whether it coincides with the written norms or not, is accepted as correct spoken Norwegian. However, in areas where East Norwegian dialects are used, a tendency exists to accept a de facto spoken standard for this particular regional dialect, Urban East Norwegian or Standard East Norwegian (Norwegian: Standard stnorsk), in which the vocabulary coincides with Bokml.[11][12] Outside Eastern Norway, this spoken variation is not used.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban discourse, and Norway's literary history. Historically, Bokml is a Norwegianised 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 Bokml and Nynorsk into one common language called Samnorsk through a series of spelling reforms has created a wide spectrum of varieties of both Bokml and Nynorsk. The unofficial form known as Riksml is considered more conservative than Bokml and is far closer to Danish while the unofficial Hgnorsk is more conservative than Nynorsk and is far closer to Faroese, Icelandic and Old Norse.
Both Nynorsk and Bokml have a great variety of optional forms. The Bokml that uses the forms that are close to Riksml is called moderate or conservative, depending on one's viewpoint, while the Bokml that uses the forms that are close to Nynorsk is called radical. Nynorsk has forms that are close to the original Landsml and forms that are close to Bokml.
Opponents of the spelling reforms aimed at bringing Bokml closer to Nynorsk have retained the name Riksml and employ spelling and grammar that predate the Samnorsk movement. Riksml and conservative versions of Bokml have been the de facto standard written language of Norway for most of the 20th century, being used by large newspapers, encyclopedias, and a significant proportion of the population of the capital Oslo, surrounding areas, and other urban areas, as well as much of the literary tradition. Since the reforms of 1981 and 2003 (effective in 2005), the official Bokml can be adapted to be almost identical with modern Riksml. The differences between written Riksml and Bokml are comparable to American and British English differences.
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