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| Norwegian | |
|---|---|
| norsk | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈnɔʂːk] (East, Central and North) [ˈnɔʁsk] (West and South) |
| Native to | Norway |
| Ethnicity | Norwegians |
Native speakers | 4.32 million (2012)[1] |
Early forms | |
Standard forms | |
| Latin (Norwegian alphabet) Norwegian Braille | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Norway |
| Regulated by | Language Council of Norway (Bokmål and Nynorsk) Norwegian Academy (Riksmål) Ivar Aasen-sambandet (Høgnorsk) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | no |
| ISO 639-2 | nor |
| ISO 639-3 | nor – inclusive codeIndividual codes: nob – Bokmålnno – Nynorsk |
| Glottolog | norw1258 |
| Linguasphere | 52-AAA-ba to -be;52-AAA-cf to -cg |
 Areas where Norwegian is spoken, including North Dakota (where 0.4% of the population speaks Norwegian), western Wisconsin (<0.1% of the population), and Minnesota (0.1% of the population) (Data: U.S. Census 2000). | |
Norwegian (endonym: norsk [ˈnɔʂːk] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties; some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are not mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age.
Today there are two official forms of written Norwegian, Bokmål (Riksmål) and Nynorsk (Landsmål), each with its own variants. Bokmål developed from the Dano-Norwegian language that replaced Middle Norwegian as the elite language after the union of Denmark–Norway in the 16th and 17th centuries and then evolved in Norway, while Nynorsk was developed based upon a collective of spoken Norwegian dialects. Norwegian is one of the two official languages in Norway, along with Sámi, a Finno-Ugric language spoken by less than one percent of the population. Norwegian is one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries who speak Norwegian have the opportunity to use it when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.[3][4]
- ^ De Smedt, Koenraad; Lyse, Gunn Inger; Gjesdal, Anje Müller; Losnegaard, Gyri S. (2012). The Norwegian Language in the Digital Age. White Paper Series. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 45. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-31389-9. ISBN 9783642313882.
Norwegian is the common spoken and written language in Norway and is the native language of the vast majority of the Norwegian population (more than 90%) and has about 4,320,000 speakers at present.
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (24 May 2022). "Older Runic". Glottolog. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on 13 November 2022. Retrieved 13 November 2022.
- ^ "Konvention mellan Sverige, Danmark, Finland, Island och Norge om nordiska medborgares rätt att använda sitt eget språk i annat nordiskt land" [Convention between Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway on the right of Nordic citizens to use their own language in another Nordic country]. Nordic Council (in Norwegian). 2 May 2007. Archived from the original on 20 February 2009. Retrieved 4 May 2008.
- ^ "20th anniversary of the Nordic Language Convention". Nordic Council. 22 February 2007. Archived from the original on 27 February 2007. Retrieved 25 April 2007.