Norwegian
Norwegian |
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Norwegian-speaking nations:
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Norwegian-speaking regions:
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Norwegian is a Germanic language spoken in a variety of nations. Norwegian is closely related to, and generally mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish. Together with these two languages as well as Faroese and Icelandic, Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages). Native speakers of Norwegian are, for the most part, quite proficient in understanding Danish and Swedish in spoken as well as written form.
Reforms
Written Norwegian is often subject to a great deal of controversy. The language has undergone numerous spelling reforms which have led to a wide variety of optional forms in written Norwegian. Combinations of various spellings create differences in written Norwegian which are loosely referred to as conservative and radical ways of writing Norwegian.
"Bokmål" and "nynorsk"
Norwegian is divided into two forms, sometime mentioned as own languages. Bokmål is the most used form, and more like Danish than nynorsk. Nynorsk was created in th 19th century by Ivar Aasen, who went on cross of Norway and collected dialect words, and made the form called nynorsk out of it. Nynorsk means new Norwegian, and is mostly used in Western and Southern Norway. Bokmål is most used in Eastern, Central and Northern Norway. The most of the NationStates players from RL Norway therefore speaks bokmål. Speakers of bokmål and nynorsk can understand eachother without difficulties.
- Example 1: Bowing of the noun Native American:
- Bokmål: Indianer - indianeren - indianere - indianerne
- Nynorsk: Indianar - indianaren - indianarar - indianarane
- Example 2: Bowing of the adjective black:
- Bokmål: Svarter - svartere - svartest
- Nynorsk: Svart - svartare - svartast
- Example 3: Translation of the noun love:
- Bokmål: Kjærlighet
- Nynorsk: Kjærleik
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