title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian ( ) is a North Germanic language 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.


title: Norwegian language

text: Today there are two official forms of "written" Norwegian, (literally 'book tongue') and (literally 'new Norwegian'), each with its own variants. 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 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 their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.


title: Norwegian language

text: Like most of the languages in Europe, the Norwegian language descends from the Proto-Indo-European language. As early Indo-Europeans spread across Europe, they became isolated and new languages were developed. In the northwest of Europe, the West Germanic languages evolved, which would eventually become English, Dutch, German, and the North Germanic languages, of which Norwegian is one.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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. They are the oldest written record of any Germanic language.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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.


title: Norwegian language

text: The economic and political dominance of the Hanseatic League between 1250 and 1450 in the main Scandinavian cities brought large Middle Low German–speaking populations to Norway. The influence of their language on Scandinavian is similar to that of French on English after the Norman conquest.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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 "koiné" had become the mother tongue of around 1% of the population.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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 "koiné", 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.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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, Landsmål, meaning "national language". The name "Landsmål" is sometimes interpreted as "rural language" or "country language", but this was clearly not Aasen's intended meaning.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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 Landsmål thought that the Danish character of the language should not be concealed. In 1899, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson proposed the neutral name Riksmål, meaning national language like Landsmål, and this was officially adopted along with the 1907 spelling reform. The name "Riksmål" is sometimes interpreted as "state language", but this meaning is secondary at best. (Compare to Danish rigsmål from where the name was borrowed.)


title: Norwegian language

text: 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. Riksmål was, in 1929, officially renamed "Bokmål" (literally "book language"), and Landsmål to "Nynorsk" (literally "new Norwegian"). A proposition to substitute Danish-Norwegian ("dansk-norsk") for "Bokmål" lost in parliament by a single vote. The name "Nynorsk", the linguistic term for modern Norwegian, was chosen to contrast with Danish and emphasis on 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 Bokmål.


title: Norwegian language

text: Bokmål and Nynorsk were made closer by a reform in 1938. This was a result of a state policy to merge Nynorsk and Bokmål 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 Bokmål text books in schools. In the reform in 1959, the 1938 reform was partially reversed in Bokmål, but Nynorsk was changed further towards Bokmål. Since then Bokmål has reverted even further toward traditional Riksmål, while Nynorsk still adheres to the 1959 standard. Therefore, a small minority of Nynorsk enthusiasts use a more conservative standard called Høgnorsk. The Samnorsk policy had little influence after 1960, and was officially abandoned in 2002.


title: Norwegian language

text: While the sound systems of Norwegian and Swedish are similar, considerable variation exists among the dialects.


title: Norwegian language

text: The retroflex consonants only appear in East Norwegian dialects as a result of sandhi, combining with , , , , and .


title: Norwegian language

text: The realization of the rhotic depends on the dialect. In Eastern, Central, and Northern Norwegian dialects, it is a tap , whereas in Western and Southern Norway, and for some speakers also in Eastern Norway, it is uvular or . And in the dialects of North-Western Norway, it is realized as , much like the trilled <rr> of Spanish.


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian is a pitch-accent language with two distinct pitch patterns, like Swedish. They are used to differentiate two-syllable words with otherwise identical pronunciation. For example, in many East Norwegian dialects, the word "" (farmers) is pronounced using the simpler tone 1, while "" (beans or prayers) uses the more complex tone 2. Though spelling differences occasionally differentiate written words, in most cases the minimal pairs are written alike, since written Norwegian has no explicit accent marks. In most eastern low-tone dialects, accent 1 uses a low flat pitch in the first syllable, while accent 2 uses a high, sharply falling pitch in the first syllable and a low pitch in the beginning of the second syllable. In both accents, these pitch movements are followed by a rise of intonational nature (phrase accent)—the size (and presence) of which signals emphasis or focus, and corresponds in function to the normal accent in languages that lack lexical tone, such as English. That rise culminates in the final syllable of an accentual phrase, while the utterance-final fall common in most languages is either very small or absent.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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.


title: Norwegian language

text: The letters "c", "q", "w", "x" and "z" are only used in loanwords. As loanwords are assimilated into Norwegian, their spelling might change to reflect Norwegian pronunciation and the principles of Norwegian orthography, e.g. "zebra" in Norwegian is written "sebra". Due to historical reasons, some otherwise Norwegian family names are also written using these letters.


title: Norwegian language

text: Some letters may be modified by diacritics: "é", "è", "ê", "ó", "ò", and "ô". In Nynorsk, "ì" and "ù" and "ỳ" are occasionally seen as well. The diacritics are not compulsory, but may in a few cases distinguish between different meanings of the word, e.g.: for (for/to), fór (went), fòr (furrow) and fôr (fodder). Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notably "ü", "á" and "à".


title: Norwegian language

text: As established by law and government policy, the two official forms of "written" Norwegian are "Bokmål" (literally "book tongue") and "Nynorsk" ("new Norwegian"). The official Norwegian Language Council ("Språkrådet") is responsible for regulating the two forms, and recommends the terms "Norwegian Bokmål" and "Norwegian Nynorsk" in English. Two other written forms without official status also exist. One, called "Riksmål" ("national language"), is today to a large extent the same language as Bokmål 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 "Høgnorsk" ("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.


title: Norwegian language

text: Nynorsk and Bokmål 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" (), in which the vocabulary coincides with Bokmål. Outside Eastern Norway, this spoken variation is not used.


title: Norwegian language

text: 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, Bokmål 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 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 is far closer to Danish while the unofficial "Høgnorsk" is more conservative than Nynorsk and is far closer to Faroese, Icelandic and Old Norse.


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. Each student gets assigned a native form based on which school they go to, whence the other form (known as Sidemål) will be a mandatory school subject from elementary school through high school. For instance, a Norwegian whose main language form is Bokmål will study Nynorsk as a mandatory subject throughout both elementary and high school. A 2005 poll indicates that 86.3% use primarily Bokmål as their daily written language, 5.5% use both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and 7.5% use primarily Nynorsk. Thus, 13% are frequently "writing" Nynorsk, though the majority "speak" dialects that resemble Nynorsk more closely than Bokmål. Broadly speaking, Nynorsk writing is widespread in western Norway, though not in major urban areas, and also in the upper parts of mountain valleys in the southern and eastern parts of Norway. Examples are Setesdal, the western part of Telemark county ("fylke") and several municipalities in Hallingdal, Valdres, and Gudbrandsdalen. It is little used elsewhere, but 30–40 years ago, it also had strongholds in many rural parts of Trøndelag (mid-Norway) and the southern part of northern Norway (Nordland county). Today, Nynorsk is the official language of not only four of the 19 Norwegian counties but also various municipalities in 5 other counties. NRK, the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, broadcasts in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and all governmental agencies are required to support both written languages. Bokmål is used in 92% of all written publications, and Nynorsk in 8% (2000).


title: Norwegian language

text: Like some other European countries, Norway has an official "advisory board" Språkrådet (Norwegian Language Council) that determines, after approval from the Ministry of Culture, official spelling, grammar, and vocabulary for the Norwegian language. The board's work has been subject to considerable controversy throughout the years.


title: Norwegian language

text: Both Nynorsk and Bokmål have a great variety of optional forms. The Bokmål that uses the forms that are close to Riksmål is called "moderate" or "conservative", depending on one's viewpoint, while the Bokmål that uses the forms that are close to Nynorsk is called "radical". Nynorsk has forms that are close to the original Landsmål and forms that are close to Bokmål.


title: Norwegian language

text: Opponents of the spelling reforms aimed at bringing Bokmål closer to Nynorsk have retained the name Riksmål and employ spelling and grammar that predate the Samnorsk movement. Riksmål and conservative versions of Bokmål 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 Bokmål can be adapted to be almost identical with modern Riksmål. The differences between written Riksmål and Bokmål are comparable to American and British English differences.


title: Norwegian language

text: Riksmål is regulated by the Norwegian Academy, which determines acceptable spelling, grammar, and vocabulary.


title: Norwegian language

text: There is also an unofficial form of Nynorsk, called "Høgnorsk", discarding the post-1917 reforms, and thus close to Ivar Aasen's original Landsmål. It is supported by Ivar Aasen-sambandet, but has found no widespread use.


title: Norwegian language

text: In 2010, 86.5% of the pupils in the primary and lower secondary schools in Norway receive education in Bokmål, while 13.0% receive education in Nynorsk. From the eighth grade onwards, pupils are required to learn both. Out of the 431 municipalities in Norway, 161 have declared that they wish to communicate with the central authorities in Bokmål, 116 (representing 12% of the population) in Nynorsk, while 156 are neutral. Of 4,549 state publications in 2000, 8% were in Nynorsk, and 92% in Bokmål. The large national newspapers (Aftenposten, Dagbladet, and VG) are published in Bokmål or Riksmål. Some major regional newspapers (including "Bergens Tidende" and "Stavanger Aftenblad"), many political journals, and many local newspapers use both Bokmål and Nynorsk.


title: Norwegian language

text: A newer trend is to write in dialect for informal use. When writing an SMS, Facebook update, or fridge note, most younger people write the way they talk rather than using Bokmål or Nynorsk.


title: Norwegian language

text: There is general agreement that a wide range of differences makes it difficult to estimate the number of different Norwegian dialects. Variations in grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation cut across geographical boundaries and can create a distinct dialect at the level of farm clusters. Dialects are in some cases so dissimilar as to be unintelligible to unfamiliar listeners. Many linguists note a trend toward regionalization of dialects that diminishes the differences at such local levels; there is, however, a renewed interest in preserving dialects.


title: Norwegian language

text: Below are a few sentences giving an indication of the differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk, compared to the conservative (closer to Danish) form Riksmål, Danish, as well as Old Norse, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic (the living language grammatically closest to Old Norse), Old English and some modern West Germanic languages:


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian nouns are inflected for number (singular/plural) and for definiteness (indefinite/definite). In a few dialects, definite nouns are also inflected for the dative case.


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian nouns belong to three noun classes (genders): masculine, feminine and neuter. All feminine nouns can optionally be inflected using masculine noun class morphology in Bokmål due to its Danish heritage. In comparison, the use of all three genders (including the feminine) is mandatory in Nynorsk.


title: Norwegian language

text: All Norwegian dialects have traditionally retained all the three grammatical genders from Old Norse to some extent. The only exceptions are the dialect of Bergen and a few upper class sociolects at the west end of Oslo that have completely lost the feminine gender.


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian and other Scandinavian languages use a suffix to indicate definiteness of a noun, unlike English which has a separate article "the" to indicate the same.


title: Norwegian language

text: In contrast, almost all nouns in Nynorsk follow these patterns (the noun gender system is more pronounced than in Bokmål):


title: Norwegian language

text: There is in general no way to infer what grammatical gender a specific noun has, but there are some patterns of nouns where the gender can be inferred. For instance, all nouns ending in -"nad" will be masculine in both Bokmål and Nynorsk (for instance the noun "jobbsøknad", which means job application). Most nouns ending in -"ing" will be feminine, like the noun "forventning" (expectation).


title: Norwegian language

text: There are some common irregular nouns, many of which are irregular in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, like the following:


title: Norwegian language

text: In Nynorsk, even though the irregular word "fot" is masculine, it is inflected like a feminine word in the plural. Another word with the same irregular inflection is "son – søner" (son – sons).


title: Norwegian language

text: In Nynorsk, nouns ending in -"ing" typically have masculine plural inflections, like the word "dronning" in the following table. But they are treated as feminine nouns in every other way.


title: Norwegian language

text: In general, the genitive case has died out in modern Norwegian and there are only some remnants of it in certain expressions: "til fjells" (to the mountains), "til sjøs" (to the sea). To show ownership, there is an enclitic -"s" similar to English -"s"; "Sondres flotte bil" (Sondre's nice car, Sondre being a personal name). There are also reflexive possessive pronouns, "sin", "si", "sitt", "sine"; "Det er Sondre sitt" (It is Sondre's). In both Bokmål and modern Nynorsk, there is often a mix of both of these to mark possession, though it is more common in Nynorsk to use the reflexive pronouns; in Nynorsk use of the reflexive possessive pronouns is generally encouraged to avoid mixing the enclitic -"s" with the historical grammatical case remnants of the language. The reflexive pronouns agree in gender and number with the noun.


title: Norwegian language

text: The enclitic -"s" in Norwegian evolved as a shorthand expression for the possessive pronouns "sin", "si", "sitt" and "sine".


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian adjectives, like those of Swedish and Danish, inflect for definiteness, gender, number and for comparison (affirmative/comparative/superlative). Inflection for definiteness follows two paradigms, called "weak" and "strong", a feature shared among the Germanic languages.


title: Norwegian language

text: The following table summarizes the inflection of adjectives in Norwegian. The indefinite affirmative inflection can vary between adjectives, but in general the paradigm illustrated below is the most common.


title: Norwegian language

text: Predicate adjectives follow only the indefinite inflection table. Unlike attributive adjectives, they are not inflected for definiteness.


title: Norwegian language

text: In most dialects, some verb participles used as adjectives have a separate form in both definite and plural uses, and sometimes also in the masculine-feminine singular. In some Southwestern dialects, the definite adjective is also declined in gender and number with one form for feminine and plural, and one form for masculine and neuter.


title: Norwegian language

text: In Norwegian, a definite noun has a suffixed definite article (cf. above) compared to English which in general uses the separate word "the" to indicate the same. However, when a definite noun is preceded by an adjective, the adjective also gets a definite inflection, shown in the inflection table above. There is also another definite marker "den" that has to agree in gender with the noun when the definite noun is accompanied by an adjective. It comes before the adjective and has the following forms


title: Norwegian language

text: If the adjective is dropped completely, the meaning of the preceding article before the noun changes, as shown in this example.


title: Norwegian language

text: Definiteness is also signaled by using possessive pronouns or any uses of a noun in its genitive form in either Nynorsk or Bokmål: "mitt grønne hus" ("my green house"), "min grønne bil" ("my green car"), "mitt tilbaketrukne tannkjøtt" ("my pulled gums"), "presidentens gamle hus" ("the president's old house").


title: Norwegian language

text: Examples of comparative and superlative inflections in Bokmål: "en grønnere bil" (a greener car), "grønnest bil" (greenest car).


title: Norwegian language

text: There is also predicative agreement of adjectives in all dialects of Norwegian and in the written languages, unlike related languages like German and Dutch. This feature of predicative agreement is shared among the Scandinavian languages. Predicative adjectives do not inflect for definiteness unlike the attributive adjectives.


title: Norwegian language

text: This means that nouns will have to agree with the adjective when there is a copula verb involved, like in Bokmål: «være» (to be), «bli» (become), «ser ut» (looks like), «kjennes» (feels like) etc.


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian verbs are not conjugated for person or number unlike English and most European languages, though a few Norwegian dialects do conjugate for number. Norwegian verbs are conjugated according to mainly three grammatical moods: indicative, imperative and subjunctive, though the subjunctive mood has largely fallen out of use and is mainly found in a few common frozen expressions. The imperative is formed by removing the last vowel of the infinitive verb form, just like in the other Scandinavian languages.


title: Norwegian language

text: Indicative verbs are conjugated for tense: present / past / future. The present and past tense also have a passive form for the infinitive.


title: Norwegian language

text: There are four non-finite verb forms: infinitive, passive infinitive, and the two participles: perfective/past participle and imperfective/present participle.


title: Norwegian language

text: The participles are verbal adjectives. The imperfective participle is not declined, whereas the perfect participle is declined for gender (though not in Bokmål) and number like strong, affirmative adjectives. The definite form of the participle is identical to the plural form.


title: Norwegian language

text: As with other Germanic languages, Norwegian verbs can be divided into two conjugation classes; weak verbs and strong verbs.


title: Norwegian language

text: There are ergative verbs in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, where there are two different conjugation patterns depending on if the verb takes an object or not. In Bokmål, there are only two different conjugations for the preterite tense for the strong verbs, while Nynorsk has different conjugations for all tenses, like Swedish and a majority of Norwegian dialects. Some weak verbs are also ergative and are differentiated for all tenses in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, like «ligge»/«legge» that both means to lie down, but «ligge» does not take an object while «legge» requires an object. «legge» corresponds to the English verb «lay», while «ligge» corresponds to the English verb «lie». There are however many verbs that do not have this direct translation to English verbs.


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian personal pronouns are declined according to case: nominative / accusative. Like English, pronouns in Bokmål and Nynorsk are the only class that has case declension. Some of the dialects that have preserved the dative in nouns, also have a dative case instead of the accusative case in personal pronouns, while others have accusative in pronouns and dative in nouns, effectively giving these dialects three distinct cases.


title: Norwegian language

text: In the most comprehensive Norwegian grammar, Norsk referansegrammatikk, the categorization of personal pronouns by person, gender, and number is not regarded as inflection. Pronouns are a closed class in Norwegian.


title: Norwegian language

text: Since December 2017, the gender-neutral pronoun "hen" is present in the Norwegian Academy's dictionary (NAOB). In June 2022, the Language Council of Norway (Språkrådet) started including "hen" in both Bokmål and Nynorsk Norwegian standards.


title: Norwegian language

text: The words for «mine», «yours» etc. are dependent on the gender of the noun it describes. Just like adjectives, they have to agree in gender with the noun.


title: Norwegian language

text: Bokmål has two sets of 3rd person pronouns. "Han" and "hun" refer to male and female individuals respectively, "den" and "det" refer to impersonal or inanimate nouns, of masculine/feminine or neutral gender respectively. In contrast, Nynorsk and most dialects use the same set of pronouns "han" (he), "ho" (she) and "det" (it) for both personal and impersonal references, just like in German, Icelandic and Old Norse. "Det" also has expletive and cataphoric uses like in the English examples it rains" and it was known by everyone (that) he had travelled the world".


title: Norwegian language

text: The ordering of possessive pronouns is somewhat freer than in Swedish or Danish. When there is no adjective, the most common word order is the one used in the examples in the table above, where the possessive comes after the noun, while the noun is in its definite form; «boka mi» (my book). If one wishes to emphasize the owner of the noun, the possessive pronoun usually come first. In Bokmål however, due to its Danish origins, one could choose to always write the possessive first «min bil» (my car), but this may sound very formal. Some dialects that have been very influenced by Danish do this too, some speakers in Bærum and the west of Oslo may always use this word order. When there is an adjective describing the noun, the possessive pronoun will always come first; «min egen bil» (my own car).


title: Norwegian language

text: The closed class of Norwegian determiners are declined in gender and number in agreement with their argument. Not all determiners are inflected.


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian has five closed classes without inflection, i.e. lexical categories with grammatical function and a finite number of members that may not be distinguished by morphological criteria. These are interjections, conjunctions, subjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs. The inclusion of adverbs here requires that traditional adverbs that are inflected in comparison be classified as adjectives, as is sometimes done.


title: Norwegian language

text: Adverbs can be formed from adjectives in Norwegian. English usually creates adverbs from adjectives by the suffix "-ly", like the adverb "beautifully" from the adjective "beautiful." By comparison, Scandinavian languages usually form adverbs from adjectives by the grammatical neuter singular form of the adjective. This is in general true for both Bokmål and Nynorsk.


title: Norwegian language

text: In the third sentence, "grusomt" is an adverb. In the first and second sentence "grusomt" and "grusom" are adjectives and have to agree in grammatical gender with the noun.


title: Norwegian language

text: Another example is the adjective "vakker" (beautiful) which exist in both Nynorsk and Bokmål and has the neuter singular form "vakkert."


title: Norwegian language

text: In Norwegian compound words, the head, i.e. the part determining the compound's class, is the last part. If the compound word is constructed from many different nouns, the last noun in the compound noun will determine the gender of the compound noun. Only the first part has primary stress. For instance, the compound "tenketank" (think tank) has primary stress on the first syllable and is a masculine noun since the noun «tank» is masculine.


title: Norwegian language

text: Compound words are written together in Norwegian, which can cause words to become very long, for example ' (maximum likelihood estimator) and ' (human rights organizations). Other examples are the title "høyesterettsjustitiarius" (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, originally a combination of supreme court and the actual title, justiciar) and the translation "En midtsommernattsdrøm" for "A Midsummer Night's Dream".


title: Norwegian language

text: If they are not written together, each part is naturally read with primary stress, and the meaning of the compound is lost. Examples of this in English are the difference between a green house and a greenhouse or a black board and a blackboard.


title: Norwegian language

text: This is sometimes forgotten, occasionally with humorous results. Instead of writing, for example, ' (lamb chops), people make the mistake of writing ' (lame, or paralyzed, chops). The original message can even be reversed, as when ' (lit. "smoke-free" meaning no smoking) becomes ' (smoke freely).


title: Norwegian language

text: These misunderstandings occur because most nouns can be interpreted as verbs or other types of words.


title: Norwegian language

text: Similar misunderstandings can be achieved in English too. The following are examples of phrases that both in Norwegian and English mean one thing as a compound word, and something different when regarded as separate words:


title: Norwegian language

text: Norwegian syntax is predominantly SVO. The subject occupies the sentence-initial position, followed by the verb and then the object. Like many other Germanic languages, it follows the V2 rule, which means that the finite verb is invariably the second element in a sentence. For example:


title: Norwegian language

text: Negation in Norwegian is expressed by the word "ikke", which literally means "not" and is placed after the finite verb. Exceptions are embedded clauses.


title: Norwegian language

text: Contractions with the negation, as is accepted in for example English ("cannot", "hadn't", "didn't") are limited to dialects and colloquial speech. In this case contractions apply to the negation and the verb. Otherwise "ikke" is applied in similar ways as the English "not" and general negation.


title: Norwegian language

text: Adverbs follow the verb they modify. Depending on the type of adverb, the order in which they appear in the phrase is pre-determined. Manner adverbs for example, precede temporal adverbs. Switching the order of these adverbs would not render the phrase ungrammatical, but would make it sound awkward. Compare this to the English phrase "John probably already ate dinner." Switching the adverbs position (already and probably) to "John already probably ate dinner" is not incorrect, but sounds unnatural. For more information on this see Cartographic syntax


title: Norwegian language

text: The adverb may precede the verb when the focus of the sentence is shifted. If special attention should be directed on the temporal aspect of the sentence, the adverb can be fronted. Since the V2 rule requires the finite verb to syntactically occupy the second position in the clause, the verb consequently also moves in front of the subject.


title: Norwegian language

text: Only one adverb may precede the verb, unless it belongs to a bigger constituent, in which case it does not modify the main verb in the phrase, but is part of the constituent.


title: Norwegian language

text: •"De tre store tjukke tunge røde bøkene stod i hylla." (The three big fat heavy red books stood on the shelf.)


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a genetic disorder characterized by mild-to-moderate intellectual disability. The average IQ in males with FXS is under 55, while about two thirds of affected females are intellectually disabled. Physical features may include a long and narrow face, large ears, flexible fingers, and large testicles. About a third of those affected have features of autism such as problems with social interactions and delayed speech. Hyperactivity is common, and seizures occur in about 10%. Males are usually more affected than females.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: This disorder and finding of Fragile X syndrome has an X-linked dominant inheritance. It is typically caused by an expansion of the CGG triplet repeat within the "FMR1" (fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein 1) gene on the X chromosome. This results in silencing (methylation) of this part of the gene and a deficiency of the resultant protein (FMRP), which is required for the normal development of connections between neurons. Diagnosis requires genetic testing to determine the number of CGG repeats in the "FMR1" gene. Normally, there are between 5 and 40 repeats; fragile X syndrome occurs with more than 200. A premutation is said to be present when the gene has between 55 and 200 repeats; women with a premutation have an increased risk of having an affected child. Testing for premutation carriers may allow for genetic counseling.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: There is no cure. Early intervention is recommended, as it provides the most opportunity for developing a full range of skills. These interventions may include special education, speech therapy, physical therapy, or behavioral therapy. Medications may be used to treat associated seizures, mood problems, aggressive behavior, or ADHD. Fragile X syndrome is estimated to occur in 1.4 per 10,000 males and 0.9 per 10,000 females.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Most young children do not show any physical signs of FXS. It is not until puberty that physical features of FXS begin to develop. Aside from intellectual disability, prominent characteristics of the syndrome may include an elongated face, large or protruding ears, flat feet, larger testes (macroorchidism), and low muscle tone. Recurrent otitis media (middle ear infection) and sinusitis is common during early childhood. Speech may be cluttered or nervous. Behavioral characteristics may include stereotypic movements (e.g., hand-flapping) and atypical social development, particularly shyness, limited eye contact, memory problems, and difficulty with face encoding. Some individuals with fragile X syndrome also meet the diagnostic criteria for autism.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Males with a full mutation display virtually complete penetrance and will therefore almost always display symptoms of FXS, while females with a full mutation generally display a penetrance of about 50% as a result of having a second, normal X chromosome. Females with FXS may have symptoms ranging from mild to severe, although they are generally less affected than males.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Individuals with FXS may present anywhere on a continuum from learning disabilities in the context of a normal intelligence quotient (IQ) to severe intellectual disability, with an average IQ of 40 in males who have complete silencing of the "FMR1" gene. Females, who tend to be less affected, generally have an IQ which is normal or borderline with learning difficulties. The main difficulties in individuals with FXS are with working and short-term memory, executive function, visual memory, visual-spatial relationships, and mathematics, with verbal abilities being relatively unaffected.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Data on intellectual development in FXS are limited. However, there is some evidence that standardized IQ decreases over time in the majority of cases, apparently as a result of slowed intellectual development. A longitudinal study looking at pairs of siblings where one child was affected and the other was not found that affected children had an intellectual learning rate which was 55% slower than unaffected children.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Individuals with FXS often demonstrated language and communicative problems. This may be related to muscle function of the mouth and frontal-lobe deficits.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Fragile X syndrome co-occurs with autism in many cases and is a suspected genetic cause of the autism in these cases. This finding has resulted in screening for FMR1 mutation to be considered mandatory in children diagnosed with autism. Of those with fragile X syndrome, prevalence of concurrent autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been estimated to be between 15 and 60%, with the variation due to differences in diagnostic methods and the high frequency of autistic features in individuals with fragile X syndrome not meeting the DSM criteria for an ASD.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Although individuals with FXS have difficulties in forming friendships, those with FXS and ASD characteristically also have difficulties with reciprocal conversation with their peers. Social withdrawal behaviors, including avoidance and indifference, appear to be the best predictors of ASD in FXS, with avoidance appearing to be correlated more with social anxiety while indifference was more strongly correlated to ASD. When both autism and FXS are present, a greater language deficit and lower IQ is observed as compared to children with only FXS.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: FXS is characterized by social anxiety, including poor eye contact, gaze aversion, prolonged time to commence social interaction, and challenges forming peer relationships. Social anxiety is one of the most common features associated with FXS, with up to 75% of males in one series characterized as having excessive shyness and 50% having panic attacks. Social anxiety in individuals with FXS is related to challenges with face encoding, the ability to recognize a face that one has seen before.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: It appears that individuals with FXS are interested in social interaction and display greater empathy than groups with other causes of intellectual disability, but display anxiety and withdrawal when placed in unfamiliar situations with unfamiliar people. This may range from mild social withdrawal, which is predominantly associated with shyness, to severe social withdrawal, which may be associated with co-existing autism spectrum disorder.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Females with FXS frequently display shyness, social anxiety and social avoidance or withdrawal. In addition, premutation in females has been found to be associated with social anxiety.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is found in the majority of males with FXS and 30% of females, making it the most common psychiatric diagnosis in those with FXS. Children with fragile X have very short attention spans, are hyperactive, and show hypersensitivity to visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory stimuli. These children have difficulty in large crowds due to the loud noises and this can lead to tantrums due to hyperarousal. Hyperactivity and disruptive behavior peak in the preschool years and then gradually decline with age, although inattentive symptoms are generally lifelong.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Aside from the characteristic social phobia features, a range of other anxiety symptoms are very commonly associated with FXS, with symptoms typically spanning a number of psychiatric diagnoses but not fulfilling any of the criteria in full. Children with FXS pull away from light touch and can find textures of materials to be irritating. Transitions from one location to another can be difficult for children with FXS. Behavioral therapy can be used to decrease the child's sensitivity in some cases. Behaviors such as hand flapping and biting, as well as aggression, can be an expression of anxiety.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Perseveration is a common communicative and behavioral characteristic in FXS. Children with FXS may repeat a certain ordinary activity over and over. In speech, the trend is not only in repeating the same phrase but also talking about the same subject continually. Cluttered speech and self-talk are commonly seen. Self-talk includes talking with oneself using different tones and pitches. Although only a minority of FXS cases will meet the criteria for obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), a significant majority will have symptoms of obsession. However, as individuals with FXS generally find these behaviors pleasurable, unlike individuals with OCD, they are more frequently referred to as stereotypic behaviors.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Mood symptoms in individuals with FXS rarely meet diagnostic criteria for a major mood disorder as they are typically not of sustained duration. Instead, these are usually transient and related to stressors, and may involve labile (fluctuating) mood, irritability, self-injury and aggression.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Individuals with fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) are likely to experience combinations of dementia, mood, and anxiety disorders. Males with the "FMR1" premutation and clinical evidence of FXTAS were found to have increased occurrence of somatization, obsessive–compulsive disorder, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, phobic anxiety, and psychoticism.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Ophthalmologic problems include strabismus. This requires early identification to avoid amblyopia. Surgery or patching are usually necessary to treat strabismus if diagnosed early. Refractive errors in patients with FXS are also common.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Individuals with FXS are at a higher risk of developing seizures, with rates between 10% and 40% reported in the literature. In larger study populations the frequency varies between 13% and 18%, consistent with a recent survey of caregivers which found that 14% of males and 6% of females experienced seizures. The seizures tend to be partial, are generally not frequent, and are amenable to treatment with medication.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Individuals who are carriers of premutation alleles are at risk for developing fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS), a progressive neurodegenerative disease. It is seen in approximately half of male carriers over the age of 70, while penetrance in females is lower. Typically, onset of tremor occurs in the sixth decade of life, with subsequent progression to ataxia (loss of coordination) and gradual cognitive decline.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: From their 40s onward, males with FXS begin developing progressively more severe problems in performing tasks that require the central executive of working memory. Working memory involves the temporary storage of information 'in mind', while processing the same or other information. Phonological memory (or verbal working memory) deteriorates with age in males, while visual-spatial memory is not found to be directly related to age. Males often experience an impairment in the functioning of the phonological loop. The CGG length is significantly correlated with central executive and the visual–spatial memory. However, in a premutation individual, CGG length is only significantly correlated with the central executive, not with either phonological memory or visual–spatial memory.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: About 20% of women who are carriers for the fragile X premutation are affected by fragile X-related primary ovarian insufficiency (FXPOI), which is defined as early menopause, which is menopause occurring before 40 ayears of age (average age at menopause is 51 years old in the US). The number of CGG repeats correlates with penetrance and age of onset, but it is not a linear relationship. However premature menopause is more common in premutation carriers than in women with the full mutation, and the highest risk for FXPOI is observed in women with between 70-100 repeats the risk of FXPOI. Fragile X-associated primary ovarian insufficiency (FXPOI) is one of three Fragile X-associated Disorders (FXD) caused by changes in the FMR1 gene. FXPOI affects female premutation carriers, of which is caused by the FMR1 gene, when their ovaries are not functioning properly. Women with FXPOI may exhibit changes in menstrual cycles and have changes in hormone levels but not be considered menopausal. Women with FXPOI still have the chance to get pregnant in about 10% of cases, because their ovaries occasionally release viable eggs through "escape" ovulation.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: FMRP is a chromatin-binding protein that functions in the DNA damage response. FMRP also occupies sites on meiotic chromosomes and regulates the dynamics of the DNA damage response machinery during spermatogenesis.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Fragile X syndrome is a genetic disorder which occurs as a result of a mutation of the "Fragile X Messenger Ribonucleoprotein 1" ("FMR1") gene on the X chromosome, most commonly an increase in the number of CGG trinucleotide repeats in the 5' untranslated region of "FMR1". Mutation at that site is found in 1 out of about every 2000 males and 1 out of about every 259 females. Incidence of the disorder itself is about 1 in every 3600 males and 1 in 4000–6000 females. Although this accounts for over 98% of cases, FXS can also occur as a result of point mutations affecting "FMR1".


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: In unaffected individuals, the "FMR1" gene contains 5–44 repeats of the sequence CGG, most commonly 29 or 30 repeats. Between 45 and 54 repeats is considered a "grey zone", with a premutation allele generally considered to be between 55 and 200 repeats in length. Individuals with fragile X syndrome have a full mutation of the "FMR1" allele, with over 200 CGG repeats. In these individuals with a repeat expansion greater than 200, there is methylation of the CGG repeat expansion and "FMR1" promoter, leading to the silencing of the "FMR1" gene and a lack of its product.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: This methylation of "FMR1" in chromosome band Xq27.3 is believed to result in constriction of the X chromosome which appears 'fragile' under the microscope at that point, a phenomenon that gave the syndrome its name. One study found that FMR1 silencing is mediated by the FMR1 mRNA. The FMR1 mRNA contains the transcribed CGG-repeat tract as part of the 5' untranslated region, which hybridizes to the complementary CGG-repeat portion of the FMR1 gene to form an RNA·DNA duplex.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: A subset of people with intellectual disability and symptoms resembling fragile X syndrome are found to have point mutations in "FMR1." This subset lacked the CGG repeat expansion in "FMR1" traditionally associated with fragile x syndrome.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Fragile X syndrome has traditionally been considered an X-linked dominant condition with variable expressivity and possibly reduced penetrance. However, due to genetic anticipation and X-inactivation in females, the inheritance of Fragile X syndrome does not follow the usual pattern of X-linked dominant inheritance, and some scholars have suggested discontinuing labeling X-linked disorders as dominant or recessive. Females with full FMR1 mutations may have a milder phenotype than males due to variability in X-inactivation.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Before the "FMR1" gene was discovered, analysis of pedigrees showed the presence of male carriers who were asymptomatic, with their grandchildren affected by the condition at a higher rate than their siblings suggesting that genetic anticipation was occurring. This tendency for future generations to be affected at a higher frequency became known as the Sherman paradox after its description in 1985. Due to this, male children often have a greater degree of symptoms than their mothers.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: The explanation for this phenomenon is that male carriers pass on their premutation to all of their daughters, with the length of the "FMR1" CGG repeat typically not increasing during meiosis, the cell division that is required to produce sperm. Incidentally, males with a full mutation only pass on premutations to their daughters. However, females with a full mutation are able to pass this full mutation on, so theoretically there is a 50% chance that a child will be affected. In addition, the length of the CGG repeat frequently does increase during meiosis in female premutation carriers due to instability and so, depending on the length of their premutation, they may pass on a full mutation to their children who will then be affected. Repeat expansion is considered to be a consequence of strand slippage either during DNA replication or DNA repair synthesis.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: FMRP is found throughout the body, but in highest concentrations within the brain and testes. It appears to be primarily responsible for selectively binding to around 4% of mRNA in mammalian brains and transporting it out of the cell nucleus and to the synapses of neurons. Most of these mRNA targets have been found to be located in the dendrites of neurons, and brain tissue from humans with FXS and mouse models shows abnormal dendritic spines, which are required to increase contact with other neurons. The subsequent abnormalities in the formation and function of synapses and development of neural circuits result in impaired neuroplasticity, an integral part of memory and learning. Connectome changes have long been suspected to be involved in the sensory pathophysiology and most recently a range of circuit alterations have been shown, involving structurally increased local connectivity and functionally decreased long-range connectivity.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: In addition, FMRP has been implicated in several signalling pathways that are being targeted by a number of drugs undergoing clinical trials. The group 1 metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) pathway, which includes mGluR1 and mGluR5, is involved in mGluR-dependent long term depression (LTD) and long term potentiation (LTP), both of which are important mechanisms in learning. The lack of FMRP, which represses mRNA production and thereby protein synthesis, leads to exaggerated LTD. FMRP also appears to affect dopamine pathways in the prefrontal cortex which is believed to result in the attention deficit, hyperactivity and impulse control problems associated with FXS. The downregulation of GABA pathways, which serve an inhibitory function and are involved in learning and memory, may be a factor in the anxiety symptoms which are commonly seen in FXS.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Cytogenetic analysis for fragile X syndrome was first available in the late 1970s when diagnosis of the syndrome and carrier status could be determined by culturing cells in a folate deficient medium and then assessing for "fragile sites" (discontinuity of staining in the region of the trinucleotide repeat) on the long arm of the X chromosome. This technique proved unreliable, however, as the fragile site was often seen in less than 40% of an individual's cells. This was not as much of a problem in males, but in female carriers, where the fragile site could generally only be seen in 10% of cells, the mutation often could not be visualised.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Since the 1990s, more sensitive molecular techniques have been used to determine carrier status. The fragile X abnormality is now directly determined by analysis of the number of CGG repeats using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and methylation status using Southern blot analysis. By determining the number of CGG repeats on the X chromosome, this method allows for more accurate assessment of risk for premutation carriers in terms of their own risk of fragile X associated syndromes, as well as their risk of having affected children. Because this method only tests for expansion of the CGG repeat, individuals with FXS due to missense mutations or deletions involving "FMR1" will not be diagnosed using this test and should therefore undergo sequencing of the FMR1 gene if there is clinical suspicion of FXS.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Prenatal testing with chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis allows diagnosis of FMR1 mutation while the fetus is in utero and appears to be reliable.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Early diagnosis of fragile X syndrome or carrier status is important for providing early intervention in children or fetuses with the syndrome, and allowing genetic counselling with regards to the potential for a couple's future children to be affected. Most parents notice delays in speech and language skills, difficulties in social and emotional domains as well as sensitivity levels in certain situations with their children.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: There is no cure for the underlying defects of FXS. Management of FXS may include speech therapy, behavioral therapy, occupational therapy, special education, or individualised educational plans, and, when necessary, treatment of physical abnormalities. Persons with fragile X syndrome in their family histories are advised to seek genetic counseling to assess the likelihood of having children who are affected, and how severe any impairments may be in affected descendants.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Current trends in treating the disorder include medications for symptom-based treatments that aim to minimize the secondary characteristics associated with the disorder. If an individual is diagnosed with FXS, genetic counseling for testing family members at risk for carrying the full mutation or premutation is a critical first-step. Due to a higher prevalence of FXS in boys, the most commonly used medications are stimulants that target hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attentional problems. For co-morbid disorders with FXS, antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are utilized to treat the underlying anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and mood disorders. Following antidepressants, antipsychotics such as risperidone and quetiapine are used to treat high rates of self-injurious, aggressive and aberrant behaviors in this population (Bailey Jr et al., 2012). Anticonvulsants are another set of pharmacological treatments used to control seizures as well as mood swings in 13%–18% of individuals with FXS. Drugs targeting the mGluR5 (metabotropic glutamate receptors) that are linked with synaptic plasticity are especially beneficial for targeted symptoms of FXS. Lithium is also currently being used in clinical trials with humans, showing significant improvements in behavioral functioning, adaptive behavior, and verbal memory. Few studies suggested using folic acid, but more researches are needed due to the low quality of that evidence. Alongside pharmacological treatments, environmental influences such as home environment and parental abilities as well as behavioral interventions such as speech therapy, sensory integration, etc. all factor in together to promote adaptive functioning for individuals with FXS. While metformin may reduce body weight in persons with fragile X syndrome, it is uncertain whether it improves neurological or psychiatric symptoms.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Current pharmacological treatment centers on managing problem behaviors and psychiatric symptoms associated with FXS. However, as there has been very little research done in this specific population, the evidence to support the use of these medications in individuals with FXS is poor.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: ADHD, which affects the majority of boys and 30% of girls with FXS, is frequently treated using stimulants. However, the use of stimulants in the fragile X population is associated with a greater frequency of adverse events including increased anxiety, irritability and mood lability. Anxiety, as well as mood and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, may be treated using SSRIs, although these can also aggravate hyperactivity and cause disinhibited behavior. Atypical antipsychotics can be used to stabilise mood and control aggression, especially in those with comorbid ASD. However, monitoring is required for metabolic side effects including weight gain and diabetes, as well as movement disorders related to extrapyramidal side effects such as tardive dyskinesia. Individuals with coexisting seizure disorder may require treatment with anticonvulsants.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: A 2013 review stated that life expectancy for FXS was 12 years lower than the general population and that the causes of death were similar to those found for the general population.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: Fragile X syndrome is the most "translated" human neurodevelopmental disorder under study. Hence, research into the etiology of FXS has given rise to many attempts at drug discovery. The increased understanding of the molecular mechanisms of disease in FXS has led to the development of therapies targeting the affected pathways. Evidence from mouse models shows that mGluR5 antagonists (blockers) can rescue dendritic spine abnormalities and seizures, as well as cognitive and behavioral problems, and may show promise in the treatment of FXS. Two new drugs, AFQ-056 (mavoglurant) and dipraglurant, as well as the repurposed drug fenobam are currently undergoing human trials for the treatment of FXS. There is also early evidence for the efficacy of arbaclofen, a GABA agonist, in improving social withdrawal in individuals with FXS and ASD. In addition, there is evidence from mouse models that minocycline, an antibiotic used for the treatment of acne, rescues abnormalities of the dendrites. An open trial in humans has shown promising results, although there is currently no evidence from controlled trials to support its use.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: The first complete DNA sequence of the repeat expansion in someone with the full mutation was generated by scientists in 2012 using SMRT sequencing.


title: Fragile X syndrome

text: In 1943, British neurologist James Purdon Martin and British geneticist Julia Bell described a pedigree of X-linked intellectual disability, without considering the macroorchidism (larger testicles). In 1969, Herbert Lubs first sighted an unusual "marker X chromosome" in association with intellectual disability. In 1970, Frederick Hecht coined the term "fragile site". And, in 1985, Felix F. de la Cruz outlined extensively the physical, psychological, and cytogenetic characteristics of those with the condition in addition to prospects for therapy. Continued advocacy later won him an honour through the FRAXA Research Foundation in December 1998.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Grindhouse is a 2007 American film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Presented as a double feature, it combines Rodriguez's "Planet Terror", a horror comedy about a group of survivors who battle zombie-like creatures, and Tarantino's "Death Proof", an action thriller about a murderous stuntman who kills young women with modified vehicles. The former stars Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Josh Brolin, and Marley Shelton; the latter stars Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Zoë Bell. "Grindhouse" pays homage to exploitation films of the 1970s, with its title deriving from the now-defunct theaters that would show such films. As part of its theatrical presentation, "Grindhouse" also features fictitious exploitation trailers directed by Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth, and Jason Eisener.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: The film was released theatrically on April 6, 2007, to positive reviews for its tone, thrills, and tribute to exploitation cinema. However, "Grindhouse" was a commercial failure, grossing $25.4 million on a $53–67 million budget. Due to underperforming at the domestic box office, "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" were released separately in other countries. Initial home media releases also separated "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof"; the theatrical version with both films and the fictitious trailers did not appear on home media until 2010. Despite the box office failure, Rodriguez and Tarantino have expressed interest in a possible sequel due to "Grindhouse"s positive reviews and successful home media sales. The fake trailers directed by Rodriguez and Eisener later became the basis for their respective feature films "Machete" and "Hobo with a Shotgun".


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: In a rural town in Texas, go-go dancer Cherry Darling decides to quit her low-paying job and find another use for her numerous "useless" talents. She runs into mysterious ex-boyfriend "El Wray" at the Bone Shack, a restaurant owned by J.T. Hague. Meanwhile, a group of military officials, led by the demented Lieutenant Muldoon, is making a business transaction with a scientist named Abby for mass quantities of a deadly biochemical agent known as DC2 (codename "Project Terror"). Muldoon learns that Abby has an extra supply on hand and attempts to take him hostage. Abby intentionally releases the gas into the air. The gas reaches the town and turns its residents into deformed, bloodthirsty, man-eating psychopaths, mockingly referred to as "sickos" by the surviving humans. The infected townspeople are treated by the sinister Dr. William Block and his abused, neglected, anesthesiologist wife Dakota at a local hospital. As the patients quickly become enraged aggressors, Cherry and El Wray lead a team of accidental warriors into the night, struggling to find safety.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Three friends – Arlene, Shanna, and radio disc jockey "Jungle" Julia – spend a night in Austin, Texas, for fun, unknowingly followed by a mysterious man in a souped-up, stunt modified 1971 Chevy Nova. The man, Stuntman Mike, stalks the young women with his "death proof" car, eventually killing all three and additional friend, Lanna Frank. Fourteen months later, Stuntman Mike, now in Tennessee and driving a 1969 Dodge Charger, tails another group of young women – Lee, Abernathy, and stuntwomen Kim and Zoë – a group of women working below the line in Hollywood, whose stock 1970 Dodge Challenger proves a worthy adversary.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Before each segment, trailers advertising fake films are shown, as well as vintage theater snipes and an ad for a fictional restaurant called Acuña Boys. According to Rodriguez, Tarantino had the idea to film fake trailers for "Grindhouse". "I didn't even know about it until I read it in the trades. It said something like 'Rodriguez and Tarantino doing a double feature and Tarantino says there's gonna be fake trailers.' And I thought, 'There are? Rodriguez and Tarantino had originally planned to make all of the film's fake trailers themselves. According to Rodriguez, "We had so many ideas for trailers. I made "Machete". I shot lobby cards and the poster and cut the trailer and sent it to Quentin, and he just flipped out because it looked so vintage and so real. He started showing it around to Eli Roth and to Edgar Wright, and they said, 'Can we do a trailer? We have an idea for a trailer!' We were like, 'Hey, let them shoot it. If we don't get around to shooting ours, we'll put theirs in the movie. If theirs come out really great, we'll put it in the movie to have some variety.' Then Rob Zombie came up to me in October at the Scream Awards and said, 'I have a trailer: "Werewolf Women of the SS".' I said, 'Say no more. Go shoot it. You got me. Each trailer was shot in two days. While Wright and Roth shot only what ended up on screen, Zombie shot enough footage to work into a half-hour film and was particularly pained to edit it down. Some Canadian screening releases included the South by Southwest-winning trailer "Hobo with a Shotgun".


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Rodriguez wrote "Machete" in 1993 as a full feature for Danny Trejo. "I had cast him in "Desperado" and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this guy should have his own series of Mexploitation movies like Charles Bronson or like Jean-Claude Van Damme.' So I wrote him this idea of a "federale" from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, 'That's Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him, but for everyone else over here it's peanuts.' But I never got around to making it." Trejo had previously portrayed the character in a supporting capacity in the "Spy Kids" film series, also directed by Rodriguez. The trailer was made into a feature film, which was released in September 2010; a sequel, "Machete Kills", followed in 2013.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Rob Zombie's contribution, "Werewolf Women of the SS", starred Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, Udo Kier as Franz Hess, the commandant of Death Camp 13, Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Sybil Danning as SS officers/sisters Eva and Gretchen Krupp (the She-Devils of Belzac). Professional wrestlers Andrew "Test" Martin and Oleg "Vladimir Kozlov" Prudius also featured, plus Olja Hrustic, Meriah Nelson, and Lorielle New as the Werewolf Women. According to Zombie, "Basically, I had two ideas. It was either going to be a Nazi movie or a women-in-prison film, and I went with the Nazis. There're all those movies, like "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS", "Fräulein Devil", and "Love Camp 7"—I've always found that to be the most bizarre genre." Zombie is also quoted as saying, "I was getting very conceptual in my own mind with it. ... A lot of times these movies would be made like, 'Well, you know, I've got a whole bunch of Nazi uniforms, but I got this Chinese set, too. We'll put 'em together!' They start jamming things in there, so I took that approach."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Edgar Wright's contribution, "Don't", was produced in the style of a 1970s' Hammer House of Horror film trailer. The trailer featured appearances from Jason Isaacs, Matthew Macfadyen, singer Katie Melua, Lee Ingleby, Georgina Chapman, Emily Booth, Stuart Wilson, Lucy Punch, Rafe Spall, Wright regulars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and a voice-over by Will Arnett. Mark Gatiss, MyAnna Buring, Peter Serafinowicz, Michael Smiley, and Nicola Cunningham (who played the zombie "Mary" in "Shaun of the Dead"), among others, made uncredited cameo appearances. To get the necessary 1970s look, Wright used vintage lenses and old-style graphics. During editing, he scratched some of the film with steel wool and dragged it around a parking lot to make it appear neglected by wayward projectionists. According to Wright, "In the '70s, when American International would release European horror films, they'd give them snazzier titles. And the one that inspired me was this Jorge Grau film: In the UK, it's called "The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue". In Spain and in Italy, I think it's called "Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead". But in the States, it was called "Don't Open the Window". I just loved the fact that there isn't a big window scene in the film—it's all based around the spin and the voiceover not really telling you what the hell is going on in the film." On the Charlie Rose talk show, Quentin Tarantino also pointed out another aspect of American advertising of British films in the 1970s that was being referenced—none of the actors has any dialogue in the trailer, as if the trailer was intentionally edited to prevent American viewers from realizing that the film is British.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Eli Roth's contribution is a promotion for the slasher opus "Thanksgiving". Produced in the style of holiday-themed slasher films such as the Canadian horror classic "Black Christmas", "Halloween", "Silent Night, Deadly Night", "April Fool's Day", and "My Bloody Valentine", the trailer starred Jeff Rendell as a killer who stalks victims while dressed as a Pilgrim; Jordan Ladd, Jay Hernandez, and Roth himself as his intended victims; and Michael Biehn as the Sheriff. The design for the titles in "Thanksgiving" was based on a "Mad" magazine slasher parody titled "Arbor Day". Excerpts of the score from "Creepshow" were used in the faux trailer.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: According to Roth, "My friend Jeff, who plays the killer Pilgrim – we grew up in Massachusetts, we were huge slasher-movie fans and every November we were waiting for the Thanksgiving slasher movie. We had the whole movie worked out: A kid who's in love with a turkey, and then his father killed it, and then he killed his family and went away to a mental institution and came back and took revenge on the town. I called Jeff and said, 'Dude, guess what, we don't have to make the movie, we can just shoot the best parts. "Shooting the trailer was so much fun", Roth has stated, "because every shot is a money shot. Every shot is decapitation or nudity. It's so ridiculous, it's absurd. It's just so wrong and sick that it's right."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Roth's fake trailer contained elements that almost earned "Grindhouse" an NC-17 rating, including a cheerleader simultaneously stripping, bouncing on a trampoline, and getting stabbed in the vulva, and three decapitations; the first victim dressed as a Pilgrim turkey at a parade gets decapitated and his headless body stumbles around in an exaggerated manner, the second occurs as the victim's girlfriend performs fellatio on him, and the last decapitation occurs on a man while he is being kissed by a female victim. According to Roth, "Instead of seeing it spread out in a feature, watching it all jammed together nonstop makes it more shocking. But we had a great discussion with the ratings board. They got it. Once they saw it with all the bad splices and the distress and scratches they were fine with it." Roth confirmed in an interview with Cinema Blend's Eric Eisenberg that he and co-writer Jeff Rendell are working on a possible feature film.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Some screenings of "Grindhouse" (mainly in Canada) also featured a fake trailer for a film titled "Hobo with a Shotgun". The trailer, created by Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, filmmakers Jason Eisener, John Davies, and Rob Cotterill, won Robert Rodriguez's South by Southwest "Grindhouse" trailers contest. In the trailer, David Brunt plays a vagabond with a 20-gauge shotgun, who becomes a vigilante. In the trailer, he is shown killing numerous persons, ranging from armed robbers to corrupt cops to a pedophilic Santa Claus. The trailer was available in certain selected movie theaters in the United States and Canada.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: In 2010, the trailer was made into a full-length feature film starring Rutger Hauer as the hobo, with Brunt playing a dirty cop. "Hobo with a Shotgun" was the second of "Grindhouse"s fake trailers to be turned into a feature film. The film was released March 25, 2011, in Canada, April 1, 2011, on American Video On Demand and May 6, 2011, in U.S. theatres.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: The idea for "Grindhouse" came to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino when Tarantino set up screenings of double features in his house, complete with trailers before and in between the films. During one screening in 2003, Rodriguez noticed that he owned the same double-feature movie poster as Tarantino for the 1957 films "Dragstrip Girl" and "Rock All Night". Rodriguez asked Tarantino, "I always wanted to do a double feature. Hey, why don't you direct one and I'll do the other?" Tarantino quickly replied, "And we've got to call it "Grindhouse"!"


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: The film's name originates from the American term for theaters that played "all the exploitation genres: kung fu, horror, "giallo", sexploitation, the 'good old boy' redneck car-chase movies, blaxploitation, spaghetti Westerns—all those risible genres that were released in the 70s." According to Rodriguez, "The posters were much better than the movies, but we're actually making something that lives up to the posters."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Rodriguez first came up with the idea for "Planet Terror" during the production of "The Faculty": "I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long. I said, 'We've got to be there first.' I had [a script] I’d started writing. It was about 30 pages, and I said to them, 'There are characters for all of you to play.' We got all excited about it, and then I didn't know where to go with it. The introduction was about as far as I'd gotten, and then I got onto other movies. Sure enough, the zombie [movie] invasion happened and they all came back again, and I was like, 'Ah, I knew that I should've made my zombie film. The story was approached again when Tarantino and Rodriguez developed the idea for "Grindhouse".


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: As "Planet Terror" took shape, Tarantino developed the story for "Death Proof", based on his fascination for the way stuntmen would "death-proof" their cars. As long as they were driving, stuntmen could slam their cars headfirst into a brick wall at 60 mph (100 km/h) and survive. This inspired Tarantino to create a slasher film featuring a deranged stuntman who stalks and murders sexy young women with his "death-proof" car. Tarantino remembers, "I realized I couldn't do a straight slasher film, because with the exception of women-in-prison films, there is no other genre quite as rigid. And if you break that up, you aren't really doing it anymore. It's inorganic, so I realized—let me take the structure of a slasher film and just do what I do. My version is going to be fucked up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the structure of a slasher film, hopefully against you."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: According to Rodriguez, "[Tarantino] had an idea and a complete vision for it right away when he first talked about it. He started to tell me the story and said, 'It's got this death-proof car in it.' I said, 'You have to call it "Death Proof". I helped title the movie, but that's it." Of the car chases, Tarantino stated, "CGI for car stunts doesn't make any sense to me—how is that supposed to be impressive? ... I don't think there have been any good car chases since I started making films in '92—to me, the last terrific car chase was in "Terminator 2". And "Final Destination 2" had a magnificent car action piece. In between that, not a lot. Every time a stunt happens, there's twelve cameras and they use every angle for Avid editing, but I don't feel it in my stomach. It's just action."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: According to actress Marley Shelton, "Rodriguez and Tarantino really co-directed, at least "Planet Terror". Quentin was on set a lot. He had notes and adjustments to our performances and he changed lines every once in a while. Of course, he always deferred to Robert on "Planet Terror" and vice versa for "Death Proof". So it's really both of their brainchild." Tarantino has stated, "I can't imagine doing "Grindhouse" with any other director in the way me and Robert did it because I just had complete faith and trust in him. So much so that we didn't actually see each other's movie completed until three weeks before the film opened. It was as if we worked in little vacuums and cut our movies down, and then put them together and watched it all play, and then made a couple of little changes after that, and pretty much that was it."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Many of the cast members had previously worked with both directors. Before appearing in "Grindhouse", Marley Shelton had auditioned for "The Faculty", but Rodriguez chose not to cast her. She was eventually cast in the role of a customer in the opening sequence of "Sin City". Bruce Willis had appeared in both Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" and Rodriguez's "Sin City", in addition to having a cameo appearance in a segment Tarantino directed for the anthology film "Four Rooms". Tom Savini had previously acted in "From Dusk Till Dawn", which was written by Tarantino and directed by Rodriguez. Michael Parks reprises the role of Texas Ranger Earl McGraw in "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof". Parks first portrayed the role in "From Dusk Till Dawn". His son, James, appears in "Death Proof" as Edgar McGraw, a character that first appeared in "". The first time the two characters appeared together was in Tarantino's "Kill Bill". Tarantino himself plays small roles in both segments of "Grindhouse", and director Eli Roth, who contributed the fake trailer "Thanksgiving" and whose film "Hostel" was produced by Tarantino, has a cameo in "Death Proof".


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Tarantino attempted to cast both Kal Penn and Sylvester Stallone in "Death Proof", but both were unable to work due to prior commitments. In an interview, Tarantino revealed that he decided to cast Kurt Russell as the killer stunt driver because "for people of my generation, he's a true hero ... but now, there's a whole audience out there that doesn't know what Kurt Russell can do. When I open the newspaper and see an ad that says 'Kurt Russell in "Dreamer",' or 'Kurt Russell in "Miracle",' I'm not disparaging these movies, but I'm thinking: When is Kurt Russell going to be a badass again?"


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Rodriguez later revealed that he cast Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling in response to McGowan's blacklisting from the productions of The Weinstein Company (then the parent company of "Grindhouse"s distributor Dimension Films) following Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual assault of her.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Rodriguez and Tarantino each acted as cinematographer on their segments. Although Rodriguez had previously worked as the cinematographer on six of his own feature films, "Death Proof" marked Tarantino's first credit as a cinematographer. The director of photography for Rob Zombie's fake trailer "Werewolf Women of the SS" was Phil Parmet, with whom Zombie had first worked on "The Devil's Rejects". The director of photography for Eli Roth's fake trailer "Thanksgiving" was Milan Chadima, with whom Roth had previously worked on "Hostel".


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Though set in the modern day, the film uses various unconventional techniques to make the films look like those that were shown in grindhouse theaters in the 1970s. Throughout both feature-length segments and the fake trailers, the film is intentionally damaged to make it look like many of the exploitation films of the 1970s, which were generally shipped around from theater to theater and usually ended up in bad shape. To reproduce the look of damaged film reels in "Planet Terror", five of the six 25,000-frame reels were edited with real film damage, plug-ins, and stock footage.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Planet Terror" makes heavy use of digital effects throughout the film. Perhaps the most notable effect is Cherry's (Rose McGowan) fake leg. To accomplish the fake leg that Cherry sports after her accident, during post-production, the effects teams digitally removed McGowan's right leg from the shots and replaced it with computer-generated props—first a table leg and then an M16 rifle. During shooting for these scenes, McGowan wore a special cast which restricted her leg movement to give her the correct motion, and helped the effects artists to digitally remove it during post-production.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: During editing, Tarantino and Rodriguez came up with the idea of inserting "missing reels" into the film. "[Quentin] was about to show an Italian crime movie with Oliver Reed", Rodriguez recalls, "and he was saying, 'Oh, it's got a missing reel in it. But it's really interesting because after the missing reel, you don't know if he slept with a girl or he didn't because she says he did and he says that he didn't. It leaves you guessing, and the movie still works with 20 minutes gone out of it.' I thought, 'Oh, my God, that's what we’ve got to do. We've got to have a missing reel!' I'm going to use it in a way where it actually says 'missing reel' for 10 seconds, and then when we come back, you're arriving in the third act. ... The late second acts in movies are usually the most predictable and the most boring, that's where the good guy really turns out to be the bad guy, and the bad guy is really good, and the couple becomes friends. Suddenly, though, in the third act, all bets are off and it's a whole new story anyway."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: On the editing of "Death Proof", Tarantino stated, "There is half-an-hour's difference between my "Death Proof" and what is playing in "Grindhouse". ... I was like a brutish American exploitation distributor who cut the movie down almost to the point of incoherence. I cut it down to the bone and took all the fat off it to see if it could still exist, and it worked." An extended, 127-minute version of "Death Proof" was screened in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 60th Cannes Film Festival. Tarantino is quoted as saying, "It works great as a double feature, but I'm just as excited if not more excited about actually having the world see "Death Proof" unfiltered. ... It will be the first time everyone sees "Death Proof" by itself, including me."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Grindhouse" is rated R in the United States for "strong graphic bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity, and drug use". On March 15, 2007, "The New York Post" reported that the film would possibly require heavy and extensive cuts to avoid an NC-17 rating. Shortly after, the film officially received an R-rating from the MPAA. Ain't It Cool News reported that according to Tarantino, only minimal cuts were made which ended up totaling 20 seconds.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: The music for "Planet Terror" was composed by Rodriguez. Inspiration for his score came from John Carpenter, whose music was often played on set. A cover version of the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck" performed by Nouvelle Vague was also featured. The soundtrack for "Death Proof" consists entirely of nonoriginal music, including excerpts from the scores of other films. Soundtrack albums for both segments were released on April 3, 2007.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Grindhouse" performed poorly at the box office, surprising box-office analysts and fans alike given the strong reviews and favorable media buzz. Costing $53 million to produce, "Grindhouse" opened poorly with "a disappointing $11.5 million" in the United States, making a per-theater average of $4,417; box office analysts originally predicted an opening weekend total of at least $20–$30 million.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: The opening weekend box-office total stood below not only the second weekends of "Blades of Glory" and "Meet the Robinsons", but also fell below the opening weekend gross of the poorly reviewed "Are We Done Yet?". In an attempt to explain the film's disappointing opening weekend, box-office analyst Brandon Gray suggested that "Grindhouse" "suffered the usual horror comedy dilemma that afflicted "Snakes on a Plane" and "Slither", among others - too funny to be scary, too scary to be funny." Box-office analyst Lee Tistaert of tracking website Lee's Movie Info compared the result with what may have happened if Tarantino's "Kill Bill" saga had been released as one film, instead of two separate volumes. "Is it possible that Tarantino got his wish this time as a result of two back-to-back $60 million grosses?" he asked. Others attributed the film's disappointing opening to the timing of Easter weekend, noting that the weekend is more tailored for family-oriented films or light comedy, not exploitative horror films. The film's length—running more than three hours—also hurt, keeping away casual theater-goers and limiting the number of screenings that could be held in a day.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Quentin Tarantino was quoted as saying about the film's box-office results, "It was disappointing, yeah. But the movie worked with the audience. ... People who saw it loved it and applauded. ... I'm proud of my flop." Harvey Weinstein said that he was so "incredibly disappointed" with the film's opening weekend that he was considering re-releasing it as two separate films and possibly adding back the "missing" scenes. The film altogether earned $25,422,088 in ticket sales.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Grindhouse" was separated and released internationally: "Death Proof" grossed $30,663,961, while "Planet Terror" grossed $10,871,224, bringing "Grindhouse" total gross to $67 million.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: In 2017, Rodriguez told "Variety" that he thinks Weinstein "buried" the film, due to the director's decision to cast Rose McGowan in "Planet Terror". The actress had previously accused Weinstein of raping her.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: In 2020, Tarantino said he considers "Grindhouse" his most misunderstood film:“With Grindhouse, I think me and Robert just felt that people had a little more of a concept of the history of double features and exploitation movies. No, they didn’t. At all. They had no idea what the fuck they were watching. It meant nothing to them, alright, what we were doing. So that was a case of being a little too cool for school.“


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Grindhouse" was well-received by critics; review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 84% of critics gave the film a positive review based on a sample of 195 reviews, with an average score of 7.38/10. The site's consensus reads, ""Grindhouse" delivers exhilarating exploitation fare with wit and panache, improving upon its source material with feral intelligence." At the website Metacritic, which utilizes a weighted average rating system, the film earned a favorable rating of 77/100 based on 36 reviews by mainstream critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Entertainment Weekly" awarded the film a "B+" rating, praising it as a "crazily funny and exciting tribute to the grimy glory days of 1970s exploitation films" that "will leave you laughing, gasping, thrilled at a movie that knows, at long last, how to put the bad back in badass." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film a positive review, commenting, "by stooping low without selling out, this babes-and-bullets "tour de force" gets you high on movies again." Critic James Berardinelli also enjoyed the film, but was not as positive as other critics. Awarding the film three stars (out of four), Berardinelli found the film to be "cinema as an expression of pulp with attitude ... [Rodriguez and Tarantino] are speaking from the hearts ... but that doesn't mean everyone sitting in the theater will get it."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: The critics who did not like the film were not amused by the film's graphic and comical violence, with Larry Ratliff of "San Antonio Express-News" noting, "this ambitious, scratched, and weathered venture never manages a real death grip on the senses." Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" awarded the film a high rating, but noted, "the Rodriguez segment is terrific; the Tarantino one long-winded and juvenile." Others considered "Death Proof" to be a deeper and more noteworthy segment. Critic A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" noted, "[a]t a certain point in "Death Proof", the scratches and bad splices disappear, and you find yourself watching not an arch, clever pastiche of old movies and movie theaters, but an actual movie." "Chicago Sun-Times" critic Roger Ebert was divided. He gave "Grindhouse" as a whole two and a half stars out of four, awarding "Planet Terror" two stars and "Death Proof" three stars. Ebert also noted the irony of grindhouse films largely being superseded by many big-budget, R-rated, mainstream films that included a great deal of nudity and graphic violence.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Critics generally enjoyed the fake trailers. Geoff Pevere of the "Toronto Star" wrote that the use of the trailers helps the film establish "its credibility as both mock-artifact and geeky fetish object even before the opening feature." Todd McCarthy of "Variety" claimed that the trailers were "excellent candidates for exploitation immortality". Jeff Vice of "Deseret News", who gave the feature films negative reviews, called the trailers "the strongest aspect of the entire presentation". Maitland McDonagh of "TV Guide" added, "With the exception of "Werewolf Women", which tries a little too hard, they're all spot-on pastiches."


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: The double feature appeared at number six on Jack Mathews and Owen Gleiberman's respective top-10 lists for "New York Daily News" and "Entertainment Weekly", and at number seven on Stephanie Zacharek's list for "Salon". Marc Savlov listed "Death Proof" at number 10 on his list for "The Austin Chronicle".


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Outside the US and Canada, "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" were released separately in extended versions, about two months apart. The poster artwork for each film's release in the Netherlands claimed that "Death Proof" would feature "coming attractions" from Rodriguez, while "Planet Terror" would feature "coming attractions" from Tarantino. While the separated version of "Planet Terror" includes the "Machete" trailer, none of the other fake trailers was included when the features were released individually.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: In reaction to the possibility of a split in a foreign release, Tarantino stated, "Especially if they were dealing with non-English language countries, they don't really have this tradition ... not only do they not really know what a grindhouse is, they don't even have the double-feature tradition. So you are kind of trying to teach us something else." Many European fans saw the split as an attempt to increase profits by forcing audiences to pay twice for what was shown as a single film in the United States.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: In the United Kingdom, "Death Proof" was released on September 21, 2007. The release of "Planet Terror" followed on November 9 with an eventual, theatrical, limited run of the entire "Grindhouse" feature the following year. "Death Proof" was screened in Europe in the extended version that was presented in competition at the Cannes film festival. The additional material includes scenes that were replaced in the American theatrical release version with a "missing reel" title card, such as the lap dance scene. A total of about 27 minutes was added for this version. In Australia, the edited version of "Death Proof" was first screened on November 1, 2007, as a separate film. However, from January 17, 2008, "Grindhouse" had limited screenings. In April 2008, "Grindhouse" was screened by Dendy Cinemas in one venue at a time across the country, through the use of a traveling 35 mm reel. In South America, "Planet Terror" was released in January 2010, while Death Proof was released in July 2010 at least in Brazil.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Death Proof" and "Planet Terror" were released separately on DVD in the United States. The trailers were omitted from "Death Proof", with the exception of "Machete" which was from "Planet Terror". "Death Proof" was released on September 18, 2007, with "Planet Terror" following on October 16, 2007. Both were two-disc special editions featuring extended versions of the films. Robert Rodriguez stated in his 10-Minute Film School that a box set of the two films would be available soon, and that his 10-Minute Cook School would appear on it. This release would also reportedly include "Hobo with a Shotgun". A six-DVD edition of the film was released on March 21, 2008, in Japan, featuring the films in both their individual extended versions and in the abridged double feature presentation along with previously-unreleased special features.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" were released individually on Blu-ray Disc on December 16, 2008, in North America. The Blu-ray edition of "Planet Terror" also contained a "scratch-free" version of the film that removed much of the damage effects, while the Blu-ray edition of "Death Proof" only contained the "damaged" version of the film. The theatrical version of "Grindhouse" was released on Region 2 DVD and the stand-alone version of "Death Proof" HD DVD was released in Germany on December 31, 2009.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: A two-disc Blu-ray "Special Edition" of "Grindhouse" was released on October 5, 2010, in the US by Vivendi Entertainment and has exclusive bonus features. This release marked the first time that US viewers could view the full "Grindhouse" "Double Feature Presentation" experience at home as it was originally released in theaters. The first disc of the 2-disc set contains "Death Proof" and "Planet Terror", along with the faux trailers, including the "trailer" for "Machete". The theatrical cut was released on DVD in Canada from Alliance Atlantis. All of the extras from the previous individual DVD releases were included, however none of the extras from the Special Edition Blu-ray were included.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: Bill Moseley stated at FanExpo on August 27, 2010, that the Blu-ray would also include a 5-minute version of "Werewolf Women of the SS".


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: In 2010, Rodriguez wrote and co-directed a feature-length adaptation of his fake trailer, "Machete". Many of the original actors from the trailer returned to their roles for it, including Danny Trejo in the title role. "Machete" screened September 1 at the Venice Film Festival and was released across cinemas in the US on September 3, 2010. It proved to be more of a success at the box office than "Grindhouse", grossing $44 million internationally against a just-over $10 million budget. Two sequels were announced at the end of the film, which Rodriguez confirmed were scheduled to be filmed. "Machete Kills", the second film, was released in 2013, but was unable to match the critical and commercial success of its predecessor. In 2015, Trejo said filming was scheduled to begin on "Machete Kills Again... In Space", the planned third film, but no updates on the project have been made since.


title: Grindhouse (film)

text: A trailer that played in some theaters in the United States and Canada, "Hobo with a Shotgun", was also adapted into a feature. Rutger Hauer replaced Dave Brunt as the eponymous character, although Brunt makes a cameo as a corrupt cop.