From: haavardf@boson.uio.no (Haavard Fosseng)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Re: Closeness of the Nordic Languages
Date: 31 Dec 92 02:25:31 GMT
Organization: University of Oslo, Norway

In article <BzzMAp.CFu@cs.uiuc.edu> blix@milton.cs.uiuc.edu (Gunnar Blix) 
writes:

   Paul Shuttle is generally right in his characterization, but I'd like
   to clear up a few minor things:

   >Until very recently, the Official _written_ language of Norway
   >was Danish. (Norway was under Danish Rule from the 1300s --
   >1384 I think -- until 1814.)  So one written form of Norwegian
   >is Bokmal, or Book-Language. This is very similar to Danish. This
   >also survives as Riksmal, or National-Language.

   Just so that you don't misunderstand "very recently", Norway was in a
   Union with Sweden after the Danish rule and until 1905, and you will
   find a gradual change from Danish into what today is known as Bokmaal.
   Most of the change in written language probably happened in the later
   half of this century, and reflects a change towards the spoken
   language.  Riksmaal was primarily a spoken language that comprised the
   official dialects found in the major cities that had dealings with the
   Danish, but nowadays Riksmaal often refers to a stricter subset of
   Bookmaal that grew as a reaction to the effort to accomodate more
   dialects into Bookmaal.  Note that "riks" can be interpreted as
   'National' in the sense 'Official'.

   [...]

   >However, unofficially, each Norwegian district (often isolated
   >by valleys or fjords) has its own dialect.  These were often
   >quite divergent.  Collectively these were known as Landsmal, or
   >Country (Rural)-Language.  Recently, the various dialects were
   >standardized in written form to create a new language called
   >Ny-Norsk (New-Norwegian).  Norway is actually a bilingual country:
   >Ny Norsk and Bokmal are both offical languages.  Sami (Lapp) is
   >an unofficial language.  In general, however, there is not a
   >great difference in these various dialects of Norwegian.

   Landsmaal includes the dialects that are further from Danish, and my
   guess is that the term originally was used to refer to anything other
   than the official language, Riksmaal.  Today, Bokmaal and Nynorsk are
   both official written languages, and you can in general choose one as
   your first (written) language, but learn to write both in school.
   Most dialects will be closer to one of the two, while some fit equally
   well (the two overlap) or poorly with either.

Some clarifications of the clarifications:

Norway became a state in 1814. This was the time of National Romanticism,
and it was commonly agreed that one of the things it needed the most to
distinguish itself as a nation, was its own written language (to make
a national literature etc.). Two ways to go about creating this were 
seen as possible:

 - "Norwegianify" the existing written standard (Danish)

 - Make a Norwegian standard "from scratch" based on spoken Norwegian.

Which path should be taken was the subject of some (at times rather 
heated) debate, and in the end both were chosen.

During the period 1842-47, Ivar Aasen traveled most of Norway gathering
samples of the dialects spoken. In the following years he published 
books setting forth a written standard based on those dialects. *Some*
preference was given to the dialects of the north-western coastal
region and the southern inlands. Also, ancient written Norwegian and
the written standards of Sweden and Denmark were guidelines. M}lr|rsla,
(`}' signifies the Norwegian letter "a with a ring over" and `|' signifies
"o with a diagonal slash from the upper right to the lower left) a movement 
to promote Aasen's proposal as the national written standard, was formed 
in 1870.

In 1885, Parliament passed a law to the effect that "Riksmaal" (the
modified Danish) and "Landsmaal" (Aasen's standard) were equal as
official norms.

1907 and 1917 both saw extensive orthographic/grammatic reforms in
Riksmaal, and reforms of both standards were and are taking place all 
th time. Nynorsk and bokm}l today are both markedly different from 
landsmaal and riksmaal respectively of a century ago. 

In 1929, riksmaal was renamed bokm}l, and landsmaal nynorsk.

As a last remark, Sami is not "unofficial". By Norwegian law, a Sami
has the right to conduct his/her correspondence with the authorities
in sami, i.e. write all letters in Sami, and receive answers in Sami.




H}vard Fosseng
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic